Page 324 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

They say in business that your best loss is your first loss. What
they mean is that, when you look at the books and you see a loss,
you have a chance to get out before the next set of accounts arrive
with an even bigger loss marked out in red. That first loss gives
you an opportunity to get out, and that’s what we did. You also
hear the expression, ‘Don’t catch a falling knife’; with Benjy’swe
came close to losing our fingers.
Looking back, returning Benjy’s to the administrators was the
smartest thing we could have done in the circumstances. I am so
glad that I put my hand up and said, This isn’t working.
Sometimes, out of pride people in business carry on just to prove
a point or not to lose face. That’s not me: we failed, we recognised
it, and that meant we were able to limit our losses to the cash we’d
already spent. If we had dithered over the decision to hand it back
and breached that six-month deadline, Hamilton Bradshaw would
have been saddled with the losses for a lot longer and we could
have lost three times as much money.
On the one hand I was relieved that it was over, on the other
hand I was absolutely gutted. Failure hit me hard, and I was so
annoyed at myself for buying into a business that I didn’t
understand. And we’d bought it in a week! What had I been
thinking? That I could walk on water? It was time to stop
believing my own publicity!

314