Today as I woke up I followed my usual routine. The first thing I do each morning is pull my iPhone from under my pillow and check the new texts, emails, missed calls, and voicemails. At first glance, nothing was unusual. 13 new emails, a couple texts, a few missed calls. Since the number of emails was the greatest, I went to my inbox to read them. What I found there was somewhat shocking though not surprising to me. Apparently I was very close to being caught up and swindled in a business deal with a criminal. This is what happened, and how I avoided it. Hopefully you can take the principles I used and apply them to your own business dealings. I won’t go into the specifics of the particular deal because the principles are universal.
To make this long and perhaps boring story very short and get to the good stuff; the email I received included a report that this man whom I had befriended, met with, ate with, even visited with in his home, was arrested last night in San Francisco after a “nationwide manhunt”. He had previously been convicted of kidnapping, robbery, grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and was out on parole from a 15-life sentence handed down in the 80’s. Many people whom we met with ended up doing business with him, including a very well known actor who is currently starring on a primetime show on ABC, and other business owners around the uptown Dallas area. I ended up walking away from the deal because of a gut feeling but there were 3 principles or “red flags” that stood out and prevented me from conducting any business with this wolf in sheep’s clothing.
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