The Maître d’ for a high-end, business account level restaurant in New York City is handled with a certain amount of deference. He or she can determine if you wait or are seated immediately. Your reservation could be "lost" or on the VIP list. Most importantly, that person determines, on a sold-out, reservations only evening, how a walk-up party of five will be handled. The standard answer is, "I am so sorry sir, we have been overbooked for several weeks now. I could possibly book your party for three months after Christmas of next year." All of this is said with a smile and an almost sincere raising of the eyebrows expectantly, as if that date would be immediately acceptable on all five of your party's calendars. The natural response is to look around at the other people with you, collectively sigh, mutter a "no, thanks anyway," and shuffle off. My brother taught me an approach that I have now loosely applied like butter to hot bread in other areas of my life. If it is just a matter of money, money is easy compared to time, dignity or inconvenience. For example, his approach in the first scenario, was to approach the big wooden dais with the little brass lamp shining over the reservation and table schedule. He folded a $100 bill in thirds, slipped it between his first finger and middle finger of his right hand and inserted that hand in his right pocket. He approached the dais and asked for a table for five. After being gently brushed off by the Maître d’, he said the following; "I don't know a lot about these things, so forgive me if I am being rude in any way, but is this a problem that money could solve?" and out came the $100 bill with his right hand lightly grabbing on to the top edge of the dais and in discreet view of the Maître d’. The Maître d’ looked at the bill, the schedule, the table arrangements and said, "It is possible there will be an opening in about an hour to an hour and a half. If you would like to wait in the bar, I will come and get you. Will that work?" Tim said thank you, and the $100 bill moved from Tim’s had to the Maître d’ so quickly that no one in the crowded lobby saw a thing. Suddenly, the impossible became possible for the price of one bottle of wine in this restaurant. An important business meal was had, a memory had and a story created, not to be forgotten by any who were there. So little for so much. I was on a double-date once, at a club for New Year's Eve. I knew this place would be packed and that getting timely table service might be a problem with so many people. I grabbed our waiter right when we sat down and said, "I know that you are going to be swamped tonight. I don't know how tips go for you on a night like tonight, but you will get a tip of 25% for all of the food and liquor served to this table. Will that take us to the top of your list to keep drinks full?" His answer was perfect, "Absolutely, let's start off with double rounds for the table." No one at our table got to the bottom of a drink before a fresh drink was ready in front of them. I would have tipped 20% any way. I declared 5% more up front and owned first class service in a standing room only club during the busiest night of the year. Obviously, there are problems that money cannot solve; death, a broken heart and the ridiculous selections of winners for Oscars each year. However, in each case, there is an enormous amount of money being spent to change and solve even these. Possibly, money can solve more problems than I give it credit for. Steve Case, former CEO of AOL, once said that, "The only modern time machine available is a private plane." I spent about a year working for a client that used a private plane very well answering the question, "Is this a problem that money can solve?" A private plane? Really? This client was not a multi-billion-dollar company. In fact, they were less than $20M. Why have a plane? Time machine. In less than 11 weeks, that company closed $127M business in new contracts. One to three appointments per day, three days a week, all of the meetings within two hours of flight from each other and all of the contracts over $2M in the first year. The plane was cheap. The company owner had figured out that his sales team could take an industry by storm and accelerate the sales cycle tremendously if the scheduling period from first meeting to closing was no longer dictated by conflicting calendars. Not one of his competitors would ever consider something so extreme or consider the idea that being able to say "yes" to any appointment time a prospect proposed was the limitation to acquiring new business. It was a problem that money could solve. On my list of "Things Most Precious to Me," is my time. Each of us gets only so many minutes alive on the planet and I want to have a say so in what I do with those. This is one of the reasons that I outsource. I would outsource everything including dressing myself in the morning. (There has been some disagreement as what are the appropriate attributes of a person in our closet each morning to dress me, so I accept my wife as the veto and I dress myself.) Can I paint, mow, trim, clean and other household maintenance things? Opinions vary as to the quality of my work, but that aside, the answer is yes. I just don't enjoy it, so I pay other people to do it. I like an open calendar. I used to like a very full one. Full meant active and busy. Open means that I have the opportunity to make more choices. My kids and my wife ask me for Christmas, Father's Day and my Birthday what I want as a gift. My answer is always the same- I want time with each of them, one-on-one. I can get other things or not, but I cannot get more time. Once the time is gone, it is irreplaceable. Preserving and protecting time is often a problem that money can solve. Replaceable is money. Irreplaceable is time. A dear friend of mine is addicted to "proving a point." She wants to show that she is not above mowing, cleaning, washing her car and a wide list of other things. She has the means to not do many of these things. She takes little enjoyment in doing them. She just wants to prove a point. To whom? What will the funeral services be like? "There she rests, a good person who wasted hours of time doing things she did not enjoy and missing the opportunity to be with people she did enjoy. However, she was able to prove to many that she was not too uppity that she couldn't pull weeds." Does this mean that only rich people can solve problems and they use money to do it? I like my brother's approach. 1. Ask the question - "Is this a problem that money can solve?" 2. Determine how much the problem is worth solving and how much you are worth spending to solve it. 3. Offer to spend that to solve it. For Tim, it was about the cost of a bottle of wine to entertain a client at an exclusive restaurant he should not have been able to get into. A client used a private plane as part of a plan to close over $100M in business. I used only a small lift in a tip I had planned to pay to increase dramatically the quality of service. Based upon our budget and our choices, my wife and I choose to outsource things or to do them ourselves. These trades are not forever choices because there are times where the money is not available to make the most desired choice. I will admit this. There is a unique satisfaction to leveraging a small amount of money to change circumstances in your favor that others out of fear or a lack of creativity have not.
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