How To Sell Something You Love

It was one of those moments in life that seems stuck in a time warp, forever feeling like it was yesterday even though decades have passed. It was spring quarter of my freshman year of college. I was standing in line at the registrar’s office, waiting to sign up for classes. When I got to the front of the line I was told that I couldn’t register. “Why not?” I asked. “Because your tuition hasn’t been paid,” came a flat response from behind the counter.

After the initial shock wore off, I realized that what I had suspected might happen for a long time had finally come to pass. Between two parents, five marriages and four divorces, I was about to have the financial rug ripped out from under me at the age of 19. No one had told me this was going to happen (the depths of family denial know no bounds), but I had sensed that paying for college was going to be a problem, and the work-study guy at the registrar’s office had just confirmed my worst fears.

My tendency – since the age of two, according to my mother – is to rely on logic to make most big decisions, and I immediately came to the conclusion that a) I was officially on my own in life, and b) I needed to come up with some money…fast. I had two assets to my name with any market value to speak of: my 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit and my horse. It was clear that my horse would have to go.

I’d been riding since the age of nine, and being a rider had pretty much defined my entire life up to that point. I spent the first seven years of my hunter/jumper showing career posting mediocre results, but I honestly didn’t care. I competed purely for the fun of it, not for ribbons or trophies. There were opportunities to play other sports, but by the time I got to high school I had sacrificed almost everything for the sake of riding.

When I was 16 years old I bought a horse no one wanted for next to nothing. His name was Raisin’ Kane (Raisin for short). My former trainer saw the spark in the little gelding, but couldn’t convince anyone in his barn to buy him. Raisin was young, small, had a bad reputation as a stallion and a deadbeat owner to boot. I fell in love with him immediately. At our first show Raisin was entered in two divisions: he won champion in both, and we came home with a whopping 14 blue ribbons. I went from an also-ran to the horse to beat from that moment on.

When people heard I was selling Raisin — after three years of tireless campaigning and many more wins than losses — there were gasps of horror. How could I part with such an amazing animal? Most people only dreamed of owning a horse like him. Some comments cut to the core of my identity, of how the world viewed me and how I viewed myself: “Barbara just won’t be Barbara anymore without a horse.”

There’s a lot about the Raisin’ Kane story that is analogous to building a business of value and selling it. Here are four things that got me through the most difficult asset sale of my life –much tougher than when I was selling my business years later as an adult:

1. Get someone else to do the actual selling

It was my trainers who sold Raisin for me. They put the word out and other trainers flew in from all over the west coast and Canada to look at him for their clients. Most of the time I stayed as far in the background as I possibly could. My trainers found the buyer, helped me negotiate the best price amongst competing offers, and I paid them a commission for their work afterwards. Selling a business is much the same way, best done by someone who knows how to market to qualified buyer candidates and get the deal done.

Let the intermediaries run their process. They’re better at it than you are, and you’ve got plenty of others things to worry about.

2. Avoid getting stuck in the present

According to Daniel Gilbert, author of the national bestseller , humans are good at creating all sorts of mental images, but we are bad at predicting our emotional futures. There’s no denying a sense of loss when you are in the process of selling something you love, but once you are no longer the owner you will gradually start to feel differently about what you parted with. Raisin’s new owner — whose family had much deeper pockets than mine — took him to the biggest shows in the country, including Madison Square Garden. Rather than feeling regret, I was happy that Raisin was able to compete at the highest level, and I knew he was being treated like royalty. Gradually he became someone else’s horse, and I had moved on with a new phase in my life.

Remember that the way you feel on the day you sell will not be the way you feel a year later.

3. Get support wherever you can

Sadly, those closest to you may not be the ones to offer support in this situation. The business of selling something you love is difficult. There are many who will want you to retain the asset not for your own good, but in part because they can’t bear the tawdry thought of turning a “dream” into a liquidity event. These people make you feel like you’ve wandered into an episode of Pawn Stars, trading something dear for quick cash. Find people who support the larger goal of your life, and understand that while it may be hard to sell, not selling would be downright foolish.

For me, support came primarily from my friends at school and a few extended family members. They knew that the alternative of not going to college was ludicrous, and helped me focus on how good it would feel to take control of my financial life — and my tuition bill.

4. Consider yourself lucky

I knew then and know now that I was damn lucky to have a horse to sell that would pay for my college education. I was lucky to have the experience of owning Raisin, and I was lucky I could sell him when I needed to. Most horses are money pits. Few owners find a diamond in the rough that sells for big bucks like Raisin did – the same holds true in small business, by the way. (And while I didn’t realize it at the time, I bought low and sold near the peak.)

There is a lot of interesting literature about , and how those who consider themselves to be lucky usually are. The same people also have the ability to turn their bad luck into good fortune. Was it bad luck that my parents told me they would pay for college and then didn’t? I don’t know. What I do know when I look back on it is this:

I was, and still am, a very lucky girl.