Should I drive to a potential client, who no longer returns my calls, and see what’s going on?

Greg R ‏@TheRakker: potential client that has shown interest in my product no longer returns my calls, should I drive to him and see what’s going on?

Answer:

This is a law of the universe: time is relative. When you need money or love, time moves faster for you. When you are giving money or love, time moves slower.

When I was raising money for a hedge fund I’d pitch someoneone on Thursday. It would be a great meeting. On Friday I’d be pacing back and forth, “is he really going to let this weekend go by without calling me about the money?” I’d think. Would someone actually be THAT RUDE?

Or one time I was going out with someone. I listed for her the reasons why I thought we were great together. I wanted her to come up with a similar list. “I’ll sit by the phone until you call me back with your list,” I said. The phone never rang all night. When I woke up I, of course, had to call her. “Oh,” she said, “you mean you wanted that list right away?”

RIGHT AWAY? IT WAS THE WHOLE FUCKING NIGHT THAT WENT BY.

When someone wanted me to put money in their business I said, “looks good, I’ll get back to you on it.” Three weeks later I got an impassioned hand-written note: “Did I do something wrong? I thought you were a good guy and then I didn’t hear from you for three weeks.” When I was single I would lose facebook friends if I didn’t call a girl back fast enough. Not only would she unfriend me but all of our mutual friends.

Time is relative. But there are corollaries to that. If somethinig approaches the speed of light, mass gets infinitely big and time slows down to zero. If you love someone A LOT and they don’t return that love then the importance of everymoment gets unnnaturally big and timefeels infinitely slow.

So what you are going through is the “time is relative” phenomenon. Basically, your client hates you. But you want your client badly. He has no interest at all and never wantsto hear from you again. But his importance has become unnaturally big and time waiting for him has become infinitely slow. SO it’s hard to move on with life. You need to moving at the same speed and as all of your other potenital opportunities.

You need to diffuse the matter. Or reach a middle ground. Here’s how you reach a middle ground. Send update letters once a month. No pressure. “Here’s our latest products”. “Here’s our latest returns.” “here’s our latest clients”. And so on. Just an update. Your moving timeand space back to normal. Will he ever respond. Probably not.

But the laws of the universe have been obeyed. And you haven’t fallen into a black hole of waiting and frustration. The world is safely in it’s normal orbit. And you get a chance to spring forward life again instead of falling right into the sun.