Last week, Hank from MyInvestingBlog tagged me with the Lemonade Meme. I was delighted to be tagged. The idea is to write about a time when things went wrong and you somehow turned it into something good, a blessing.

My story happened about 9 years ago. Life was sweet, then. I was a part of a social/business community based on personal development. I had started public speaking a couple of years before and found I had a talent for it. I took every opportunity to speak and, before long, the opportunities were lining up…

I had just finished a tour of the UK, speaking in most of the major cities. There was a big event lined up and I was billed as the top UK speaker, right before the international keynote speaker. My speech was a triumph, I got a standing ovation. This was the highest point of my life up till then. I had two partners lined up to begin a big project within the community and couldn’t wait to get started. Everything was finally going my way. I was in debt, had no cash but I could see that was all about to end. At last, I believed I could fly!

Around this time there had been a few new people join the community. Some of us were less than happy about the new element. It seemed they were all about money and less about growth, more profit and less service. Before we knew it, the Department of Trade and Industry had begun to take an interest in what we were up to. It all happened very fast. Suddenly there was a court case going on and the DTI was trying to shut us down. 70 of us headed of to the high court to watch the proceedings. They had to move the case to a bigger courtroom to accomodate us. Both sides laid out their case. The prosecution talked about the unscrupulous nature of the new element and one person in particular. Then the defence talked about the virtues of the more established members of the community and one person in particular - me! I had no idea this was going to happen. All the details of my business, personality and values were laid out in court for anyone to hear. It wasn’t that anything nasty was said, on the contrary, it was just mortifying.

After 3 days the case ended. The DTI had more money than us and based on the bad boys, a fairly strong case. They won and we were shut down immediately. My business, income, future plans, opportunity to speak and my social life all went in one short pronouncement. I went home devastated.

I crawled into a corner and, for six weeks, I pretty much stayed there. I wasn’t whimpering and singing a poor me song, I was thinking. OK, I did whimper and sing a poor me song for a couple of days, then I started thinking. I realised I could still speak, I still had the ability. I could still inspire people. I could still teach personal development and leadership, I just didn’t have the environment. The court case had embarrassed me but enhanced my reputation and, although I had lost my social life, I still had real friends. I realised they could take away my job, but never my work. I had lots left in me.

I spoke to the people I had agreed to partner up with for the big project. We couldn’t do what we had originally planned, but we could do something similar but bigger. One decided to come with me, the other moved on.

So, we started The Wow Factor. We had decided on the triangle and circle logo and it was with the designer. I was in the bath and had a sudden thought. I jumped out and rang the designer asking him to put fire on the top of the logo. It just had to be there. But, apart from some pretty design, we didn’t have a clue how to move forward.

Six weeks later we got a call from London Fire Brigade (as it was then, Fire and Rescue Services is what they are called now) asking if we could do leadership courses with a strong emotional intelligence leaning. YES, we most certainly could. Not much later I bought my partner out so that she could go and do her thing. Nine years later, Zandria and I are still teaching leadership in The British Fire Service amongst other things, and still loving it.

The company we have built was the lemonade squeezed from a nasty court case. Around the time it happened I found a card and carried it with me for a long time. It has a quote from Albert Camus on it,

In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me, an invincible summer.

Pass it on

The Rules

Life gave me lemons, so I made lemonade - MEME
Rules:
* Copy and paste these rules to your blog post.
* Link back to person who tagged you.
* Write about an incident in your life you first thought was really bad, but ended up being a blessing.
* Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
* Let each person you tagged know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
(* And if you want to - link back to this original Lemonade Meme post too.)

I’m tagging;

G Blogmaster from CanIGetRichOnASalary?

Bill from Money-Hacks

Nina from Queer Cents

Shawna at Bumblefucked

This post appears in the carnival of money stories at Money Ning