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About a year ago I negotiated a business deal worth a little over quarter of a million $ with a guy I’ll call “The Doctor”. Not a medical doctor but a doctor nonetheless. He had asked me earlier about my education so I had told him, truthfully, The High School I had attended in SoCal, Class of ‘66. He said “No. I mean what college” “Oh, three semesters at (the nearby state JC)”.

The Doctor grinned a clever grin and I proceeded, to use a term from the car business, to “Rip his head off and sh!t down his neck”. Metaphorically speaking of course.

I was negotiating the purchase of a business on behalf of a friend and set it up so that she will almost literally be buying the business (Including prime real estate) from him with his own money. In the end, he won’t have the property, the business or the money. He is now paying her a monthly rental fee which she turns right around to pay the note that HE is carrying at a rather cleverly structured interest and payment schedule that turns inflation to my friend’s advantage.

The fool laid right down for it. In about a year she will own it all outright. The business has strong positive cash flow that should have been his. But he, you know, being a Doctor and all, is uninterested in such things. In the end she will be set up for life and he will have neither the business nor his money.

I left thinking ‘Why, oh why did this clown not walk into the showroom when I was selling cars’!? That was three years, hard sell, straight commission, no safety net sales in the late eighties. I consider it an important part of my business education that has stood me in good stead over the years...but he didn’t ask about my work experience and I didn’t volunteer the information.

I wonder if he ever asked himself how an uneducated dummie like me managed to retire at 57 and spend the next 15 years cruising around in his boat while he is still working at 70. I wonder if he will ever figure out what happened.