Frustrated is an understatement for how Vince Cerano felt when he first came to see me. From his outward appearance, however, Vince seemed totally together. Impeccably dressed and groomed, with a deep tan and the handsome good looks of a young James Caan, he seemed the personification of self-confidence. The veneer crumbled after two minutes in my office. Vince began recounting an endless stream of problems, and recounting them at such a rapid rate that even I, with years of experience listening to New Yorkers, couldn’t keep up. After I finally got him to slow down I was able to piece together the story.

Vince was a home builder. For five years he had owned his own carpentry business. He was doing okay financially, but hungered for more. Vince had grown up in an upper-middle-class family. Both his parents were schoolteachers. Though they outwardly accepted his desire to work with his hands, he always sensed they were somewhat disappointed in his choice of professions. When two other contractors, a roofer and a foundation specialist, came to him with the idea of forming a partnership, he jumped at the chance.

For a few years things were great. The three partners began by buying odd lots in already developed areas and putting up individual, single-family homes. With all three of them working on each job they were able to keep costs under control and meet their deadlines. They’d take the profit from one job and use it to finance the next. Eventually they also moved into renovation work, gutting and renovating “handyman specials,” and then reselling them for a tidy profit. Finally, after five years, they bought a large plot of land in an exurban area. One of Vince’s partners had learned that a new corporate park was about to be built nearby, dramatically increasing the demand for homes. The three partners, subcontracting out much of the work, quickly built ten nouveau Victorian homes, sold them all, and made a small fortune.

From there the business boomed. It now made less and less sense for the partners to do any of the actual work themselves. In feet, the former foundation specialist bought a winter home in Florida and announced his intention of spending more time golfing than pouring cement. The now ex-roofer divorced his wife of twenty years, bought an Italian sports car he could barely squeeze into, and was spending a small fortune wining and dining, allegedly for the company. Vince’s tastes ran more to Hugo Boss suits and weekly manicures. After only two years of this type of extravagance the bottom began to fall out of the business.

Because the three partners were so busy spending money, there wasn’t sufficient supervision of one of the company’s developments. Not only was it delayed and over budget, but the final workmanship was shoddy. The first handful of homeowners who had bought off the plans and the model complained bitterly about the problems as soon as they took up residence. Vince and his partners hadn’t kept any financial cushion, and they had tapped their credit out building the development. In order to pay for the necessary repairs they needed to sell more of the homes. But the current homeowners made sure to warn every visitor about the situation. The homeowners then sued Vince’s business. The construction loan fell into arrears and the bank was threatening to take over the development. And with the business in a nosedive Vince had no income. He could no longer afford the mortgage on his own house.

Vince came to me in search of a magic bullet: a quick, painless cure to all his business problems; basically he wanted my help in turning back the clock. It took me a good hour and a half to unravel all the threads in Vince’s story. And in that time I tried to point out to him that he wasn’t facing one problem, a foiling business, he was facing a cluster of interconnected problems. I suggested that it was his attempt to solve all his problems at once that was leading to his frustration and feeling of impotence. Instead, I urged him to start examining each problem individually.

Together we compiled a prioritized list of his problems. Though he had been focusing on his business, it was clear that Vince’s most important problem was his lack of a stream of income; without money coming in the most pressing nos for Vincent were no food on his family’s table and no roof over their heads. We made getting a job his first goal. Simply by concentrating on one specific obstacle, Vince’s spirits stabilized. Within four weeks Vince found work as a construction manager for a firm he had worked for and with in the past. It wasn’t the income he was used to, but it did keep the wolves from the door. Those first two nos had been turned to yes.

Over the course of the next two years I worked with Vince, dealing with one problem after another. At one point in the process he accepted that rather than trying to save his business he should just try to disentangle himself from the whole mess. Today, Vince is in business once again, as a partner in the construction management business he first joined as an employee.