GO WITH YOUR GUTS!

A lot of people deliberate for so long before taking a decision and while that can be a good thing, it is not always appropriate for all situations. You may not know enough about a decision but you should always know enough about what you feel about it. I will share you a story on this. Years ago, when my dad retired from his job at CAT, he went into private practice. Before this, he had used his retirement benefits to help build up my mom’s school - Glory Heights Schools and then the school was not turning over as expected. Also, another investment of his went sour. He bought a generator that he was to be using for rental services but the contractor that was expected to maintain the generator got greedy and bought inferior parts to use in making the generator ready for use, after only two days of use, the generator’s engine packed up and that was it, millions of naira worth of investment was down the drain. We were all hoping for some kind of intervention to really drive his private business. Then in our marketing efforts, sending our introduction letters to several facility managers, we were getting fed up but we did not give up. And good thing we did not because an opportunity came from it; my dad got a call to come carry out a contract worth millions of naira, the pay was good but the terms were dicy. The completion of the job was not enough, it had to be approved and if the approval did not pull through then not a dime was paid. Well, that would not have been a problem except for one thing, my dad had to personally finance the contract and was at a big risk of losing all the money if something went wrong. However, the diciest of all was that if there was a shortage of funds at any point in the contract, it was over, another contractor would be called in and that would be it. Sadly, we did not have the kind of money to finance such a contract and we reached a consensus as a company to forfeit the contract and continue the way we were. But my dad had a different idea, he knew it would be hard work to get the money needed but it was possible. In his wisdom, he was able to cut costs on various aspects of the contract, he took the chance and signed the contract; accepting whatever consequences may follow. It was not really a financially safe decision, it was a risk and the cards were not really in his favour but he followed his gut and today his company, Gosch Technologies is one of the biggest names in generators servicing and maintenance in Lagos, Nigeria, that contract was a door to may others. As a matter of fact we are still reaping the benefits of that daring decision today. Sometimes you just have to go with your guts…period.