It is often the overlooked, mundane facts of life that give us the biggest problems in the end.   A friend of mine nearly saw the destruction of his business this past weekend not because of the failure of his business model or weaking credit markets.  His landlord notified him that his lease would be terminated today because he failed to comply with what could be best described as boilerplate language in the lease.

How difficult was it to comply with this clause? About a 15 minute phonecall and maybe $500.  That’s probably why he put it off for so long.  There is always the tendency to put off simple tasks and focus on the meatier projects.  The danger is that these simple tasks will be forgotten.  I’m not sure if his business could have survived a forced relocation and I doubt he wanted to find out.