Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunities Only Happen Three or Four Times

I had the good fortune to have dinner with some old friends the other night. All in all, this does not sound like a major accomplishment, but when your inner circle consists of in-demand artists, investment bankers and other self-determined powerhouse business types, time becomes a scarce commodity. Consequently, the time you do get to spend together becomes all the more precious and the conversations tend to be a lot more to the point just the way I like it.

He Makes How Much?!

One rather attractive 35-plus blonde (let’s call her Jesse) told me a story about her only single regret. She had been quasi-engaged to a man when she was 19. She worked hard at her craft while he seemed to have inordinate amounts of spare time. She never really stressed over money but she hustled to pay the bills. On the other hand, he seemed that he couldn’t have cared less about cash flow. The topic of finances never even came up between them in the course of general conversation.

About two years into the relationship her boyfriend’s father bought him and his two brothers, red, white and blue Mercedes (for real). She thought it was a little eccentric at the time but the mind of a 19 year-old blonde artist is a wonderful thing. She hadn’t accumulated enough life experience to realize that the very man she was already dating, a good-looking guy who was madly in love with her I might add, was actually a VERY well-off lad who could provide her with a storybook existence without really asking for anything in return except loyalty, appreciation and maybe, just maybe, what poets and Hallmark executives refer to as love.

You Don’t Know What You Got Until It’s Gone

Jesse and her young suitor dated for about two years but she figured that if she didn’t break up with him right then and there she would never break up with him (sound logic when you’re 19). In her mind, guys with fathers who doled out Mercedes for birthday presents roamed the streets like feral pack animals. If she ever wanted to circle back around and find another one just like him all she had to do was look up from her canvas and there would be at least two or three of them standing in line like old women waiting at a deli counter.

She was wrong.

More than two decades of dead-end dating ensued and just three years ago she discovered accidentally that her ex-boyfriend was one of the wealthiest men in the northeast. We’re not going to name his home state or get into any more detail about him aside from the fact that he actually made the Forbes’s list.

Jesse leads a rich and meaningful existence but not a single day goes by when she doesn’t think about what might have been. She imagines that posh gallery in SOHO packed with her originals, New York’s elite climbing over one another like hungry dogs, clawing at other’s backs for the opportunity to buy a piece of her artwork regardless of the price. Her mind replays scenarios of her setting up her easel somewhere in Nice or Marseille, overlooking the water and painting from the perspective of a very, very wealthy woman.

This is not to say that her art is any less desirable, or that she is any less desirable, for that matter. It’s just that timing is more important than most people realize.

Without the exposure that can be generated by having a disgustingly wealthy husband, her paintings sell for about $5,000 to $10,000 apiece as opposed to $500,000 to $1,000,000 a piece. That’s the most amazing thing about art, collectors actually buy the artist.

A part of her believes that she’s missed the boat, but nothing could be further from the truth. Jesse is still Grade A Sugar Baby material, and there are thousands of wealthy Sugar Daddies out there who would crawl through broken glass to set her up with that dream gallery or buy her very own set of red, white, and blue Mercedes.

The moral to the story is that it is never too late to find the Sugar Daddy of your dreams. The key is making your life experience work for you, not against you. Replace regret with ambition.

When the universe unfolds again and Jesse is afforded with yet another opportunity to settle down with another fabulously wealthy Sugar Daddy she’ll seal the deal this time.

In closing, buy her artwork while it is relatively cheap. Once she is the toast of Manhattan you’ll have to stand in line just like everyone else.