Walterp
Member
- Location
- Pembrokeshire
A friend, now beset by bereavement and illness, used to declare that 'if I didn't have bad luck I'd have no luck at all...'. And it's true, I believe, that some people seem to receive very little luck in their endeavours.
For the rest of us, good and bad luck probably comes in waves - things can be on a roll, with things falling neatly into place just as if it was planned that way, or things go wrong one thing after another.
I like to think it all evens out over a lifetime (others prefer to ascribe their good fortune to superior judgement - I reckon they obviously haven't had enough bad luck happen to them; but that's just me). The trick in business is, I think, to ride out the bad luck long enough for some good luck to reappear.
Looking back on a working lifetime of generally good luck, my luckiest break came early on. I was beavering away for an employer with a wonderful practice suffering from benign neglect. My boss had inherited it from his father, an able but irascible solicitor, and since he had decided to be the polar opposite of his old man he treated his clients with a mixture of charm and indifference. It worked well enough, because no one else was particularly well-organised either.
The timing was interesting: by the mid 1980's it became obvious that computers would alter professional practice enormously. By then my employer was 'almost ready to retire' - a phrase that, along with 'our farm' and 'a real character', ought to be proscribed. I drew the obvious conclusion, and decided that I wanted 'in'.
In a burst of over-enthusiasm and naivety I pointed out to my employer that my contract did not contain a non-competition clause, and that I could volunteer a ten mile/two year restriction. God knows why I said anything so stupid. God decided to make my employer just as stupid, when he replied 'that's perfectly alright old boy, nothing wrong with competition if it doesn't work out between us'.
It didn't, of course. And I was then able to set up in direct competition with a modern and efficient practice which - in a surprisingly short time - both denuded my old boss of most of his clientele and made me enough money to contemplate buying a farm.
My boss ended up retiring after all, but not in the way he envisaged.
Just good luck, really - if he'd thought about it, and took the threat I represented rather more seriously, none of it would've happened.
For the rest of us, good and bad luck probably comes in waves - things can be on a roll, with things falling neatly into place just as if it was planned that way, or things go wrong one thing after another.
I like to think it all evens out over a lifetime (others prefer to ascribe their good fortune to superior judgement - I reckon they obviously haven't had enough bad luck happen to them; but that's just me). The trick in business is, I think, to ride out the bad luck long enough for some good luck to reappear.
Looking back on a working lifetime of generally good luck, my luckiest break came early on. I was beavering away for an employer with a wonderful practice suffering from benign neglect. My boss had inherited it from his father, an able but irascible solicitor, and since he had decided to be the polar opposite of his old man he treated his clients with a mixture of charm and indifference. It worked well enough, because no one else was particularly well-organised either.
The timing was interesting: by the mid 1980's it became obvious that computers would alter professional practice enormously. By then my employer was 'almost ready to retire' - a phrase that, along with 'our farm' and 'a real character', ought to be proscribed. I drew the obvious conclusion, and decided that I wanted 'in'.
In a burst of over-enthusiasm and naivety I pointed out to my employer that my contract did not contain a non-competition clause, and that I could volunteer a ten mile/two year restriction. God knows why I said anything so stupid. God decided to make my employer just as stupid, when he replied 'that's perfectly alright old boy, nothing wrong with competition if it doesn't work out between us'.
It didn't, of course. And I was then able to set up in direct competition with a modern and efficient practice which - in a surprisingly short time - both denuded my old boss of most of his clientele and made me enough money to contemplate buying a farm.
My boss ended up retiring after all, but not in the way he envisaged.
Just good luck, really - if he'd thought about it, and took the threat I represented rather more seriously, none of it would've happened.
Don’t think your alone
