In June 1791, King Louis XVI of France made a run for it. The Revolution was closing in around the royal family in Paris, so they hatched an escape — slip out of the city by night, race east, and link up with loyal soldiers who would escort them to safety near the border.
It was a good plan. General de Bouillé had arranged detachments of cavalry to wait at towns along the route — Pont-de-Somme-Vesle, Sainte-Menehould, Clermont. Each unit had one job: be there when the King arrived, and pass him safely up the line to the next.
But the royal family ran late. They left Paris behind schedule. The carriage they’d chosen was enormous and slow. Every stop ran long. And here’s the part worth holding onto: the soldiers waiting along the road didn’t know why the King hadn’t appeared. Hour after hour ticked by. Eventually they assumed the plan had failed or been discovered — so they packed up and rode away.
By the time the King’s carriage finally rolled into each town, the protection that had been arranged for him had already melted into the countryside. There was no one left to wave him through. At a town called Varennes, a local postmaster recognised the King’s face, raised the alarm, and the royal family was arrested and hauled back to Paris.
Louis XVI never escaped again. Eighteen months later he was executed.
He wasn’t undone by a battle or a betrayal. He was undone by being late — because lateness didn’t just cost him a few hours. It dissolved the entire network of people who had shown up to support him.
And that’s the bit for us
When we walk into the room late, we tend to think the only cost is our own — a missed coffee, a rushed setup. But the real cost is the same one the King paid: the people who turned up for us start to drift.
Think about who’s waiting along our road. Our referral partners, who can’t pass us a lead if we’re not there to receive it. And most of all, our visitors — sitting in a strange room, forming a first impression in the opening five minutes. A visitor who walks in to a full room, buzzing, members already set up and ready, thinks one thing: these people are reliable. A visitor who watches us straggle in late thinks something far more dangerous for our wallets: would this person actually turn up for my client?
Because referability isn’t built on how good we are at our trade. It’s built on whether people trust us to show up. Every time we’re early, we’re answering the visitor’s unspoken question before they’ve even asked it.
Admiral Nelson — who knew a thing or two about turning the tide — put it best:
I owe all my success in life to having been a quarter of an hour beforehand.
So this week, let’s be Nelson, not Louis. Let’s be the soldiers who were still at their post when it mattered. Get there early, be set up and ready, and give every visitor the one impression that makes us all more referable: this is a group that turns up.