I was having one of my infamous conversations with a Wall Street elitist, renowned for their intelligence, ingenuity and financial acumen; in other words an investment banker. The meeting’s purpose was to elicit my writing expertise to draft a business plan to raise capital. Once we completed the rapport building small talk, which generally last 3-5 minutes, he began to describe his current deal flow.

 With vigor, I took mental note of every word spoken believing that each sentence contained valuable information needed to complete the project. However, the more he spoke the less disciplined my listening skills became. Right about the “deployment of capital through the Caymen Islands” comment, my ears ostensibly refused to put forth any effort and shut down completely.

In an attempt to summarize the conversation I would list the following key identifiers: each “deal” involved a few billionaires, that they personally knew, from whom they now have exclusive rights to pursue, some had an international play, and, of course, all had promises of a huge upside.

 The fast flowing deal conversation abruptly ended in an anticlimactic fashion as he turned to me and said, “So do you find these interesting and do you want in?” I then learned, of course, part n parcel with the deal, each said billionaire for individual reasons such as ego, need to trust, desire to share more on the upside and a slew of other similarly justifiable reasons  was not paying anything upfront. For involvement, I would be awarded the golden opportunity to participate for a generous 10% on the back-end. At my protest, it was stated that they understood and respected my need for some upfront monetary value and agreed to award my 60 plus hours time investment with a check for $5000. To which I just sat motionless for a moment as if needing to swallow my stomach after having survived a massive storm at sea where the ship had violently rocked from side to side.  

Even if I temporarily suspended judgment regarding the ridiculous pittance, and decided to engage in writing a business plan, I would have no idea what I was to write about. My only surmise would be a comedy stint describing the interplay that I had just witnessed. However, given the fact that I do not proclaim to be an entertainment writer, I was at a total loss for words and not sure how to proceed.

My mind began to feverously strategize an exit strategy; my own.  The plan was to act interested, politely decline and exit out the back door. My need for an escape route suddenly became unnecessary, as the investment banker surprisingly looked at his watch noting his plane was to leave in 45 minutes. He then publicly announced the need for a ride to the airport to which I happily stated the limitations of my two-seater car unless he found comfort in riding on the roof. I left him to his cohort to fulfill his logistic requirements and proceeded to the closest Starbucks to replenish my lost energy and find some sanity.

As I sat there aggressively clinging to my non-fat latte, I reflected upon what had happened and unsuccessfully tried to make sense of it all. Recalling the other nonsensical conversations I had witnessed from decades long past, I wondered when bragging rights for known millionaires fell out of fashion. It now appeared that those who proclaim to be “in the know” must brag of relationships with billionaires instead. This thought led me to contemplate the exact number of billionaires that actually exist in the world. Does there need to be a 2-1 ratio given all the investment bankers who now claim allegiance with this elect group of individuals? More importantly, I questioned what had happened to the business models of the past, whereby you sold a tangible product or value-added service, profiting a few bucks per transaction and through business prowess and acumen built an empire, which incidentally did not require deployment of capital through the Caymen Islands. Finally, I just remained amused and bewildered and wondered how two seemingly bright and talented men could sit there through such a discussion and not note how ridiculous it sounded.

I ended my reflection as I sipped the last few drops of my latte and congratulated myself on the ability to keep a straight face during it all. Although this experience has now left the forefront of my mind, I must admit that part of me is still waiting to hear the famous line, “Smile—you’re on candid camera”.