Letter July 30 2017

Caleb and Jacob:

It's another week in the books and I can't believe how fast it goes.

Monday was the 24th and I went for a quick ride in the morning and spent the rest of the day with the family.  The rest of the week was work related.

Wednesday I was in SLC at the office there and heard that a plane had crashed on I-15 at Riverdale Road in Ogden.  I was basically trapped in SLC.  I left the office at 3:30 and headed home.  Once I got past the airplane wreck, there was another accident in Wellsville.  Basically, it took me 3 hours to get home from SLC.

That was one experience for the week.  

Another experience that taught me a great lesson had to do with a prospective client.

I've been working with a large business most of the summer trying to bring it into the firm.  The client has had an experience with another firm where the firm refused to finish the 2016 work and and had withheld all of it's work product once the firm found out that the client was changing to our firm.  As a result, the client is suing for the fees to be returned.  It's a mess.  As a result, the client wanted something in the contract dealing with fees being returned in the event we unilaterally pulled out of the engagement.

This past week we signed the contract for the tax work and I negotiated the final details for the audit work.  I don't do audit work and gave the final required contract changes to the audit partner that I intended to put in charge (I had agreed to these changes with the client in advance).  He took the changes to the managing partner and I had a call with that partner to agree to the final contractual changes.  We agreed and I told him that provided he incorporated the agreed upon provisions into the final draft of the contract, he could send the contract to the client.

He must've decided to he knew better than to do what we agreed to and sent a contract that lacked the one key provision that we'd agreed needed to be in the contract.  The client was ready to sign and because we failed to incorporate the needed changes, the client walked.  30K in fees gone.

There are spiritual applications to this type of fact pattern.  I think of Justice and Mercy.  There are laws that are immovable and Christ has interceded on our behalf as long as we do what he requires to obtain mercy.  If we choose another path, we are on our own.

On a temporal note, that little mistake by our managing partner  cost me personally about 5-10K.  So it pains me on a temporal level as well.

I'm buying a bunch of stuff to submit a claim against the insurance for the theft of my bike.  It's tough.  I'm a horrible shopper.

Blink and the summer is almost gone.  The days are noticeably shorter now that we are 1.5 months past the summer solstice.  Work while the sun shines on your mission  It will set soon enough.

I love you,

Dad