Approach to the inmost cave: the opportunity that deceives

After years of tests, at last a cushion. The capital saved from events and digital printing is in the account. For the first time, Bairo can choose instead of chasing.

An opportunity arrives. A company, a partnership, a seat as an investing partner. This time he won't be founding from zero. He will invest in a business that, by all appearances, is already up and running.

It looks like the well-earned rest of someone who has fought hard. The signature goes on the page. The money goes in.

He doesn't know it yet, but he has just reached the mouth of the cave.

What this stage is

In Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey (1949), organized into twelve stages by Christopher Vogler, the seventh stage is the approach to the inmost cave.

It is the stretch where the hero draws near the most dangerous place on the journey. In myths, it is the entrance to the labyrinth, the dark forest, the enemy's castle. In life, it is usually something less dramatic and more treacherous: an important decision made in a moment of confidence, a step that looks safe and isn't.

Vogler describes this stage as preparation. Tension builds. Sometimes the hero notices the signs and gets ready; sometimes they only understand them later, looking back. The cave is not yet the fall. It is the road to it.

In Bairo's life

Bairo's approach looked like an opportunity.

After the painful exit from the previous partnership, he had reinvented himself. Events and digital printing had worked well enough to generate capital. And, for the first time, he decided to play a different position: instead of founding, investing. He joined a company as an investing partner.

The business was not what it seemed. In his account, the sentence is short: the business was not what it seemed. What presented itself as a going concern did not hold.

This page does not say who, or how. The story is Bairo's, not that of whoever sat on the other side of the table. What matters here is something else, more useful to the reader: the cave rarely announces itself as a cave. It announces itself as relief.

There is a hard irony in this stage. The man who had learned to distrust the "nos" found danger in a "yes" that came too easily. After so many closed doors, an open door can lower anyone's guard. Whoever has spent years hearing it won't work becomes vulnerable, precisely, to the first offer that says it will.

And more people were involved than just him. The next stage tells how much was at stake: the many lives that depended on him.

In your life

Many people who are broke today did not fall out of laziness or lack of ideas. They fell into an opportunity that looked like the way out.

If you are an entrepreneur who went broke, you may recognize this stage in the partner who arrived with everything ready, in the contract signed in a hurry, in the "investment" that promised too much. If you are an immigrant, you may recognize the job offer that was too good, the middleman asking for money up front, the document someone promises to sort out under the table. If you are starting over, you may be standing right now in front of a door that looks like relief.

Questions to examine the door before going in:

• Did this opportunity appear at a moment when you were tired, out of money or badly needing a win?
• Can you explain, in one sentence, where the money in this business comes from?
• Is anyone asking you for haste, secrecy or payment up front?
• Who, outside the conversation, has reviewed the numbers and the documents?

Three steps before signing anything

1. Check what can be checked. Look up the company's CNPJ with the Federal Revenue Service, its status at the Commercial Registry (Junta Comercial), lawsuits on the state court's website and complaints on public channels. If the proposal involves an investment offered to the public, check with the CVM, Brazil's securities regulator, whether the offer is authorized. Ten minutes of research are worth more than a good conversation.
2. Put a third party at the table. An accountant, a lawyer, a friend who knows the sector. If you can't pay, look for the Public Defender's Office or a university's legal aid clinic. The cave shows itself better to someone looking from outside.
3. Decide how much you can lose. Before going in, decide the maximum amount you accept to risk without endangering your home, your food and the people who depend on you. Never put everything that took you years to save behind a single door.

Be wary of any promise of quick, safe gains. In finance, the word "guaranteed" is the first sign of the cave.

None of this is retroactive blame for those who have already fallen. It is a map for not falling again.

The line for this stage

"Not every open door is a way in."

A line written for this series, drawn from Bairo's story.

Next stage

Stage 8: The ordeal, when you lose everything

Read also

• Fifty lives
• Bairo's Hero's Journey, stage by stage
• My company went bankrupt: now what?