Why timing changes everything
A guy told me this story the other day, and I haven’t been able to shake it.
He and his brother were fishing a shoreline, standing under a tall tree. Out of nowhere, a rabbit blew up out of its hole and shot right between them — middle of the day, full sun.
These were woods-wise men.
They knew a rabbit doesn’t come out of the ground like that in broad daylight unless something has already gone wrong.
They looked at each other, spidey senses turned on. Then they felt a slight shift in the ground.
They knew exactly what it meant.
They dropped their poles and ran.
One brother cleared it.
The other didn’t.
He caught the branches across his back as the tree came down.
Here’s Why It Stuck With Me
The business owner is the rabbit.
An owner is entrenched. The business is his hole, his lifestyle, his identity, and his daily rhythm.
He is not coming out until there is a very good reason to do so.
So when he finally comes bolting out — suddenly motivated, suddenly ready to sell, suddenly available — every buyer in the woods reads it the same way those two brothers read that rabbit:
Something ran him out.
Something is wrong down in the hole.
That is the conundrum at the center of this whole business.
The very motion that finally gets an owner moving is often the same motion that warns the market his value may already be slipping.
By the time the tree is coming down, the only questions left are how fast he can run and whether he takes the branches across his back on the way out.
Now Picture a Third Man in Those Woods
He is not fishing.
He is not running.
He is also woods-wise.
He has spent his life learning how to read this landscape — and he felt the ground quiver even before the rabbit did.
That is the good broker.
He does not wait for the owner to bolt.
He walks into the hole, sits down with the man, and tells him the truth:
The tree is leaning.
I can see it from here.
We have time — but only if we move now, on our terms, before anything starts chasing you.
And that changes everything.
The owner who leaves with a good broker beside him is not a fleeing rabbit.
He is not eating branches across his back on the way out the door.
He walks away on his own two feet, on his own timeline, safely and with dignity.
He sells the burrow he carved out of nothing for what it is truly worth — because someone who could read the woods got to him before the tree did.
What the Good Broker Actually Changes
A good broker doesn’t change nature.
Everyone is entrenched in their situation, and it’s the nature of life for us all to stay the way we are for as long as we can.
But a good broker changes the timing.
He converts the bolt into a walk.
He buys the owner the one thing the fleeing rabbit never had:
Time.
This is older wisdom than the market. Scripture put it plainly long before anyone drew up a deal:
“A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.”
— Proverbs 22:3, KJV
That is the entire job in a single verse.
The prudent man foresees danger and change. He reads the lean in the tree while the sun is still high.
And he does not just save himself.
He brings the owner under cover with him.
The simple man passes on, never sensing the shift in the ground, and is punished for it under a tree he never saw coming.
The Takeaway
The good broker’s job is not to chase rabbits out of holes or force business sales for the sake of a commission.
It is to read the landscape before the quiver reaches the surface.
It is to dive into the hole with a flashlight, cast light on a path forward, and walk the owner out clean — before anything starts chasing him.
The rabbit bolts when it has no choice.
The owner who finds that good broker early sells the burrow he carved out of nothing for what it is truly worth — and walks away to enjoy another day.
The rabbit who does not finds out what the branches feel like on the way down.
There is a world of difference between those two exits.
If You Suspect the Tree Is Leaning
If you are a business owner and you have felt even a slight shift in the ground lately, let’s talk before the tree starts leaning.
The best time to plan your exit is while nothing is chasing you.
