If you are an active trader you will constantly be cooking up new deals, meeting new people and making new offers.  Many times of course you don’t end up closing the deal, but the times when you do more than make up for the times that you don’t.  I recently had a monumental rejection that reminded me that not everyone wants to be my friend.  It’s important to understand those so they are easier to let go and move on.  Otherwise they can eat you up and keep you from making future deals.

Here’s what happened:

I was looking for a piano tuner to tune both the baby grand that we just inherited from my mother-in-law and my church’s piano.  It seems like a pretty good gig to me because I only live 4 blocks from my church.  It’s a two-for-one for the right tuner.  Additionally I understand the importance of having them tuned on a regular basis so this is potentially ongoing work for years for whoever I make a deal with.  I checked out my local barter exchange and they didn’t have a tuner.  Next I looked to see if there were any local tuners that were posting in the barter area of craigslist.  When I didn’t find anything there I sent out a canned email to all the tuners that post on craigslist for cash explaining that I’d like to barter and asking them to get back to me if they are interested.  I had two different guys respond who both seemed qualified.  The first guy who contacted me (we’ll call him Mr. Pain) was willing to trade but wanted something very specific in trade that I did not have immediate access to.  Additionally it was worth a lot more than his services so we were going to have to figure out how he could make up the difference.  I worked on bartering for that item for him while in the mean time also kept working on the second guy (we’ll call him Mr. Easy).  After spending an hour or more I was able to put together a trade to get the item Mr. Pain wanted.  I emailed him and let him know that I could get the item and sent him some details to see if it was acceptable to him.  The deal was not closed by any stretch of the imagination.  In the mean time Mr. Easy got back to me, was extremely flexible about what we could trade, and his rates were HALF of what Mr. Pain’s were.  As his name implies I easily closed the deal with Mr. Easy, and set up the appointments.  I also dropped a line to Mr. Pain thanking him for his time and letting him know that I ended up hiring someone else.  I also let him know that I’d be happy to reconsider his services if my other deal fell through.  Mr. Pain responded with the following email:

Please don’t contact me anymore with your nonsense. Energy waste when sleazy deals change with an eye blink everytime. I DO NOT NEED ANYHING FROM YOU.

Well thank you too Sunshine!!!!!  So….what happened here?  In retrospect I think Mr. Pain is simply not a particularly happy guy and has a propensity for distrust in the first place.  So…with folks like that if you throw barter into the mix you just never know what you might get.  I could choose to dwell on his negativity OR I could think about how cool it was that Mr. Easy showed up and saved the day.  I choose the later.  Honestly every deal that happens makes up for 10 or more that fall through.  AND… this also reminds me that I really need to take good care of Mr. Easy.

So cheers to all you Mr Easys out there!  It’s not worth spending any spiritual energy on Mr. Pain because he’s his own punishment anyway.

Here’s a recent email I sent this morning to a contact I have who works in the technology department of a large barter exchange.

I think most people mean to leave tax and a good tip when they go out, but the calculations are difficult to work out sometimes.  This could be very helpful in keeping restaurants happy members and make life simpler for members as well.