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My neighbor Charlie, just filed for bankruptcy

Guest post by: Mark Satterfield

Article Overview: My neighbor Charlie, just filed for bankruptcy It was the prime topic for conversation this past weekend, so I suppose you could say this is a cautionary tale. What’s got everyone talking (and one or two of the neighbors a bit fearful) is that Charlie seemed to be doing OK. He had solo-consulting practice, advising retailers on supply chain issues such as transportation and warehousing.

My neighbor Charlie, just filed for bankruptcy

My neighbor Charlie, just filed for bankruptcy.

It was the prime topic for conversation this past weekend, so I suppose you could say this is a cautionary tale.

What’s got everyone talking (and one or two of the neighbors a bit fearful) is that Charlie seemed to be doing OK. He had solo-consulting practice, advising retailers on supply chain issues such as transportation and warehousing.

Had a couple of fairly large accounts as I recall.

I bumped into Charlie at Kroger this morning-said I had heard the news. What Charlie said was interesting. I’ll try to quote the essence, although the exact wording is my own, not his.

“I guess I saw if coming for a while but I kept thinking that things would turn around. Obviously, they didn’t. The thing is, I thought I was doing all the right stuff. Clients liked me. One of them kept me on retainer for 2 years.

I suppose in hindsight that lulled me into a false state of security.

The problem is that I never really had a big base of people who knew me. I wasn’t good at attracting new people into my ‘circle of relationships’ and obviously didn’t do a good job of converting the few I did have into new clients.”

“Never really had a system for marketing…”

“Quite frankly, I thought I didn’t need one.”

I asked Charlie, what he was going to do next?

“Haven’t a clue”, he responded.

I feel bad for Charlie. He wasn’t a particularly close friend, he wasn’t a client, but still, his story makes me sad. I guess we could argue that this is the risk anyone who operates their own business faces. And certainly, at age 48 the odds of Charlie getting another job in corporate America (especially in this economy) are slim.

But I guess what makes me the saddest is that it didn’t have to turn out this way. There’s more than enough information out there (or which mine is only one voice in the choir) that would have been enormously helpful to Charlie.

Yet he never took advantage of any of it.

Never even tried.

I’ll admit that as a marketing person, I don’t really understand that-the unwillingness to try.

But even though I don’t understand it, what happened to Charlie makes me sad.

But the sense I get is that this happens a lot.

And that’s a shame.

Certainly food for thought.

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Article Tags: guerilla marketing, marketing agency, new clients



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