Yes, we found $20,000 in the wall.

Grace or Luck?   Whatever you call it, admit it.  (Especially in business.)

Admit it. We have all had moments when something wonderful happened and we thought, “This is amazing!  I didn’t see that coming.”

The fact is, sometimes out of nowhere we are blessed.  I am convinced that those who are successful in business and have their heads on straight always remind themselves that luck played a role in their success.  My charming, but sometimes-hard-headed type A wife, even admits to it.  (Which in my eyes makes her even more charming.) 

 

That's a bank wrapper.  It wraps cash. 

This will make sense in a minute...keep reading.  

As an example, let me tell you the true story of the time when we were hurting financially (I mean really. Hurting.) and we found $20,000 in the wall of the house I had recently moved into.

Yup.  We found $20,000 in a wall.

I stretch the truth here a bit, because it was actually $19,630; and boy, howdy, was that money ever needed. 

Back then, my lovely wife was my girlfriend and a type A person-in-training.  She was going through what could mildly be called the worst divorce in modern history and had lost everything.  Her kids, her home and every last dime had been taken from her.  Oh, and she had just been told she had to pay a share of HIS attorney’s fees. (This is a long and involved story that we will blissfully skip.)

My side of the equation didn’t look much better. I had lost all my meager cash reserves when it turned out this small bachelor pad I had just bought for myself and my dog, Boomer, had a very bad case of mold in both bathrooms. (My home inspector was a joke.)  It was going to require money I did not have to make the place livable.

With things looking bleak for the both of us, I did the only thing that made sense to me…I asked her to move in with me. She had agreed (looking back on it, I am not sure she could have done anything else). It was apparent to us both that we needed to weather this storm together.

Among the many challenges we faced, she had this large glass studio that was going to be problematic to move and to find space for.  It needed to go into the garage, but so did my ’64 Buick.  As we were having our first-ever fight about how much space that damn glass needed in my garage, we got a huge surprise.

“Well, how much space do you need? I mean, is the cutting table this big?” I said as stood at the head of the empty garage, spreading my arms wide.  She was facing me as she stood at the opening of the garage, fighting for more space, arms crossed in a defiant pose (I would get to know that pose well.)

And as I glanced to the left, I saw a crisp $50 bill sticking out of the cardboard that the previous owner had tacked up for make-shift insulation. 

“Wait…come over here,” I said.  She wasn’t budging.  “No, really, come over here and look at this.”  Keeping her arms fold, she grudgingly came over. “Look at that,” I said pointing to the wall.

End of fight.

To condense the details, we pulled $19,630 in un-circulated bills, still in the bank wrappers nicely bundled in a plastic lunch bag, out of the wall of my garage.  

This is one of the bank wrappers.

Beautiful, isn't it?

After counting it out on the dining room table, I recounted 10 grand and kept it, sliding the rest over to her.  It is the only time I have ever seen her speechless.

That money went to fund mold repairs, attorney payments, and begin a business that exists to this day.

For us, luck or grace or whatever you want to call it has played a very large part in our lives and our business.  Oh, and when we apply for a line of credit and the bank asks the very serious question, “How did you fund the startup of your business?”  We never say, “We pulled it out of a wall.”