Can you ruin your life in 10 seconds?

Sometimes the rational part of our brain shuts down. We’ve all been there.

?Ex-Ratners CEO Gerald Ratner used to visit London’s Petticoat Market as a boy.?

?“The people who shouted the loudest and appeared to give the best offers sold the most,” he observed.

?In 1966 he joined his family business and built a small empire by using loud signage and advertising displaying their huge discounts and cut-price products.

His shops were everywhere in the UK and the US. And life was good.

Expensive boats, houses, cars and everything that comes with great wealth. He was well acquainted with the (then) Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

But on April 23, 1991, that all changed.

Ratner was a speaker at the Institute of Directors, with 6000 business people and journalists listening in.??

He was asked how he could possibly sell a sherry decanter for the low price of ￡4.95. His answer was simple?

“Because it’s total crap.”?

A room of gasps must have ensued (I assume). But Ratner doubled down and moved on to earrings:

“Cheaper than a prawn sandwich…but probably wouldn’t last as long.”

The impact of those ten seconds led to the value of the company dropping ￡500m and Ratner’s wealth was reduced to virtually nothing.

The term ‘doing a Ratner’ stuck around for a while. You can guess what it means. ???

Sometimes you have to make decisions in the blink of an eye and it can have huge consequences for the future of your business.

Ok, so you may not be speaking in front of 6000 people and have thousands of stores (or maybe you will one day), but it can serve as a warning that lack of preparation combined with poor judgement can ruin everything in the blink of an eye.

So, whatever you do, don’t ‘do a Ratner’ with your stations.