Page 185 - James Caan - The Real Deal

17 · The Recession

ready to throw in the towel and close the business down. That in
itself felt weird because I had never thought of myself as a quitter.
But I didn’t see a way out, so what else could I do? Then I
discovered that giving in to those feelings of failure made me feel
even worse and I started spiralling downwards. I became moody,
I didn’t eat, and, looking back, I can see that I was deeply
depressed.
What I found difficult to deal with was that friends, colleagues
and even family had come to see me as the kind of guy who could
sort anything out. They saw me as resourceful and successful, and
I suppose that was how I had started to see myself. Everyone
thought I would come up with an answer, but I just couldn’t find
one. Without a secure future in recruitment, I felt emotionally lost.
Who was I if I wasn’t successful in recruitment? That was my
identity, not just my occupation, and without it I felt very
unstable.
I started frantically looking round for another business in
another sector that wasn’t so vulnerable to the economy as a
whole. I talked on the phone to my father and talked things over
with Aisha, and she was really worried about me leaving recruit-
ment, because what else did I know?
‘Well, I know a bit about fashion. People will always need
clothes.’
By now she had sold the boutiques so as to be able to spend
more time with the kids, but she knew – we both knew – that
fashion is actually one of the first things people stop spending
money on when money gets tight. So I started looking around for
a business that could buck the trend.
With property prices low it seemed there might be an opportun-
ity to shift some of my capital into the property markets, and so I
started spending time with some friends of mine who were
property developers. If I had been a mature, experienced property
investor I might have had the inclination to say it was a good time

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