A rug stands up and walks.

A general scenario:

1. Tell a multi-million dollar business prospect who wants to spend quality time getting to know your product that you available a specific two days in the near future.

2. Contact that business prospect when you don’t hear from them, asking why you have not heard from them, ask what’s going on for those two days.

3. Prospect returns contact and affirms desire to commit to meeting; asks for phone call the next day.

4. You do not call prospect.

5. Prospect sends multiple detailed messages in various formats to once again affirm strong desire for meeting.

6. You do not return any of those messages.

7. Date for meeting comes and goes, you do not return contact.

Would any of you treat a stranger, a business contact, this way? I highly doubt it. If you did, it either means that you are (A) rude and disrespectful in general, (B) did not really want their business anyway, or (C) take their interest utterly for granted.

Whichever it is, you have just lost a business contact that may have either fizzled out or may have had untold potential for gain. But you’ll never know.

Sure, things come up, shit happens, but if it was a relationship you value, you would contact your prospect unless completely physically incapacitated.

Now... imagine you have done this not ONCE, but a dozen times over the last many weeks. Not showing up for meetings, showing up late for meetings, and not observing the quid pro quo of equity during meetings which is essential to forming new partnerships.

Would you still have a business prospect?

No. When you make it impossible for someone to learn the ins and outs of your product, they lose interest in the product. They begin to suspect it is perhaps defective in some way, if you don’t have the confidence to sell it and be open about it.

Stay with me here…

So WHY would you do this to a person you are in a personal relationship with and expect that they will be okay with it? Apply the above scenario to a dating relationship and think about it.

(A) Rude and disrespectful in general?

(B) Does not really want my regard and affection (and potentially my love and commitment) anyway?

(C) Takes my interest utterly for granted?

I have truthfully lost interest in the answer. I wonder if I’ll even go shopping for a new product. I question whether I really need one. No one product can satisfy every need, but at minimum it should reliably satisfy the basic need for which it was acquired. Has one even been manufactured that does that? They don’t exactly come with labels.

The moral of this story is: Show someone that you are a rug and they WILL walk on you. Do you really want to still be lying there when the day comes that they need to wipe the dirt and shit off their shoes?