Ten Minutes Late
Good morning.
This week is not about strategy, revenue, or positioning.
It is about something smaller that costs business owners more than they realize.
Everyone has a pet peeve.
Mine is being late to a Zoom meeting.
What Happens Before the Meeting
Here is what most people never think about.
We get ready for work. We prepare. We pull the file, review the notes, check what was promised last time. We clear the space. We log in early.
And then, nothing.
Five minutes. Ten minutes.
Somewhere in there a text arrives.
“On my way.”
“Be right there.”
Sometimes there is no text at all.
Sometimes the person appears at minute twelve with a quick, “Oh, hi. Sorry, I was late,” and moves into conversation as if those twelve minutes belonged to nobody.
They belonged to us.
Consequential Thinking
What is missing in that moment is consequential thinking.
Consequential thinking is the ability to consider the effect of an action before taking it. It is a core competency of emotional intelligence, and the one most often absent in business relationships.
The person running late is thinking about their own calendar.
They are not thinking about the people on the other end who scheduled by appointment, blocked that hour around an enormous amount of other work, and now have to compress sixty minutes into forty-five.
The point reaches well past meetings.
Our behavior lands on other people.
Every choice about time, tone, and follow-through carries a cost that someone else absorbs. Most of us track our own intentions and assume the impact matches.
It rarely does.
That awareness separates the people who are easy to do business with from the people who are exhausting to do business with.
Nobody tells us which one we are.
They just stop scheduling.
Lateness on Zoom is the clearest example because it is the most avoidable.
Traffic is not a factor.
Parking is not a factor.
The meeting is on the screen in front of us.
The Fix
Every meeting has a frame.
Who set the time, who holds the end, what happens when the conversation runs long.
Most business owners never set that frame, so it gets set for them by whoever is least organized in the room.
Lecturing people about lateness does not work, and it starts the meeting badly.
Set the frame instead, at the front, in plain language.
At the top of the call:
“Before we get started, I want to let you know I have a hard stop at two. I have a client meeting right after this.”
No tone. No edge.
It sets the end time, tells the other person their portion is finite, and makes the close a shared expectation instead of something imposed later.
Then, ten minutes out, if the conversation is still running:
“So we need to wrap up. I do have another meeting in ten minutes. Let’s take a look at scheduling and make sure that we’re moving forward.”
That ends the meeting and advances the relationship in the same breath.
The conversation is not cut off.
It is moved to the next date.
Saying those words without apologizing for them is a skill.
It is learned.
It is repeatable.
And it shows up in revenue.
Work With Me
If your meetings run long, end without a decision, or start ten minutes late, that is a communication problem with a communication fix.
I work with business owners on exactly this, hourly or by project, built around what your conversations actually sound like.
Reply on shelly@smallbusresults.com and tell me what your meetings are costing you. We will start there.
Focus. Accountability. Revenue.
Shelly Berman
Small Business Results
