Business Owners: What Was Your Best Moment?

**F360** · 07-15-2006 07:04 PM

I stole this thread idea from another forum, but thought it would be good here. I'll kick start with some examples posted elseware....then lets hear yours

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"I was wondering, if you are a business owner, what was your epiphany, where you:

- found what you wanted to do/came up with a product idea
- had your business opportunity
- imagined your company's focus
- went for it

It might be like, "I was working at such-and-such, and I came up with this idea for a product that..." or "I was doing X, but really wanted to do Y. When a friend approached me about a partnership to make this widget..."

I think these kinds of stories would very much help and inspire the members of the board, and are much more valuable that just knowing what you do. Really, it's knowing how you got there that is key, in my opinion. As you know, life tends to herd you onto an academic path, and it's discussion of that series of events that causes the entrepreneur to leave the path of the salatariat and control his own destiny that is particularly enlightening."

**F360** · 07-15-2006 07:05 PM

From successful business owner/ product developer:

When I was 11, I was pretty good with a table saw and other tools. I built two dulcimers. They were pretty good and I sold both of them. I started to build kits, where I just made the pieces and made instructions. I had about $7 in materials and sold them for $20. I probably sold about 25! My eye for product development probably started at that time.

From owner of motorsport supplies business. Is about 18, owns Maserati/Supra, and a reastraunt:

I was buying parts online for my Toyota Supra oneday and said wait a minute why don't I do this. Then I just jumped in and got my feet wet, no research just took the chance.

**F360** · 07-15-2006 07:07 PM

Comment from a chart topping DJ and entrepreneur:

My current career started as a hobby and just kinda took off. As far as selling product, I think I discovered I was on to something when I realized I could manufacture products for my industry with full packaging for less than $1 a piece and sell them to distributors for $9 each in lots of 1k-2k at a time. The day I got my first payment, I about fell out of my chair. I have extremely low overhead (does a cel phone count as overhead?) and depreciate the hell out of my equipment. No matter, it's so much fun I would have likely done it for much less. Reality is I've had serious ups and downs (I'm about in the middle of the "up" cycle currently), but I've so far ridden those out.

Do what you enjoy and stick with it.

Unknown entrepreneur:

I know this is an old thread, but it's a good one. Here is my story, hope it helps someone out. Or at least make you laugh!

When I was 15, I did a summer co-op for a local computer manufacturer that sold PCs to government and large companies. Contracts for thousands of PCs at a time. This was back in the early 90's, when PC use was exploding and there was big money in clones.

My job, no joke, was to sort screws. They would give me a garbage pail sized bin of mixed screws, and I had to sort the big "hard drive" ones from the little "floppy" ones for 8 hrs a day. I had a stool, and a small spot on the end of a workbench. I got amazingly good at it. Somehow I picked up the nick name "the screw kid". Sometimes they would let me fetch coffee or lunch for the real techs who did assembly and repairs. Oh, did I mention this job was for school credit, and they weren't even paying me any salary?

Anyways, due to the volume they did, they got lots of returns on defective monitors, which were repaired in house. Company profits were good enough on their PC sales and customer service was so important for the big clients that any dead monitors were always replaced with brand new ones. Techs would fix up any of the returns, and they'd get used around the company or sold off to staff for use at home, just to recover some of the money. This meant that the tech room was always full of recently repaired 17" monitors, dozens and dozens of them in a constantly growing pile, still in boxes. The better the PC sales business got, the more the pile grew.

These monitors sold new for ~$350 at the time. I overheard one of the techs say he bought one for $175 - half price. So, one day I gathered up all all the courage I had and I walked right into the president of the company's office. I told him who I was (screw kid), and I explained that I worked hard for no pay, but I would really appreciate it if I could get the same price as the real employees on the used monitors. I don't know if it was out of pity or not, but he made the mistake of saying that I could have as many of them as I wanted, because they would be glad to get rid of them.

Big mistake for him, gold mine for me. I had been tinkering selling and building PCs at home, and I knew what stuff was worth. With local taxes, you couldn't get monitors like that for under $400. So, I bought 5 monitors for $175 each, and put a $12 ad in the local paper. "Mint 17" monitor, like new, $250".

The phone rang off the hook, I sold them all in one Sunday. Suckers paid $250, hardballers could get them from me for $225. I made $300 in one day. I had never seen so much money in my life, I couldn't believe it!

Then things went really crazy. I walked back into Mr. Presidents office on Monday and cut a deal with the boss to take more of them, but they'd have to let me have them for $150 each. He must have thought I was crazy, what the hell could I want all those used monitors for? But he didn't ask, and I didn't say. I think he was actually happy to have solved his "problem" of surplus monitors. But now I could make $100 for every monitor sold!

Every day my mom dropped me off and picked me up from work. Now, every night she'd pull up back and wait while I loaded the caravan as full as I could. The techs would talk amongs themselves about what the weird screw kid was up to, hauling monitors out with him after every shift.

From that little ad in the paper, the phone just wouldn't stop ringing. I told everyone that called they could come see them from 6-8pm. Often times, there was no place to park on the street, and I'd have a dozen strangers at the door. There was a parade of people coming to buy used monitors from my livingroom every week night. I made little receipts, and offered a month warranty, but none ever came back bad. Sometimes there would be a bidding war when there was only one monitor left for the day. Losers were encouraged to come back the next day for first shot at the next batch!

I cleared out the entire supply in a few weeks, it must have been over 100 monitors in total, because by the time it was all said and done I had well over $10K in profit. Enough to buy my first car, before I even had a license.

I got the last laugh on those smug techs who thought they were so smart. Any one of them (or the other 50 employees working at the company) could have done the exact same thing that I did. It wasn't rocket science, and I was no genius. I just saw an opportunity in a situation that others saw as a problem.

I learned a lot about business that summer, self taught the old fashion way. You don't have to be a genius to be a successful entrepreneur, you just have to be able to spot a opportunity when it presents itself.

**F360** · 07-15-2006 07:10 PM

The snow shovelling kid:

For me, the decision to be "the man" rather than a worker bee came to me winter of 1990. My family had just moved to NY the prior year and I suffered through shoveling snow for extra money... I was 14 at the time. The next year, I went around and set up "contracts" that were basically agreements to shovel snow for neighbors if it was deeper than 3-4". I got a flat rate of $15 per time... found a couple other kids to do the work for me at $5 ea, and things ran well most of the winter. I made pretty good money and it was without much elbow grease and freezing my a** off and I liked that... they worked as a pair and knocked out more work than I could have on my own. It was a great system until one of my employee's parents showed up at our house mad as hell their kid was getting $5 to do work I billed out at $15.

Hmmmm....:

As is the norm I was working for a small toy company ( toy designer ) and I felt they were doing a lot of things wrong and missing out on some opportunities.

What isnt normal is I happen to be friends with Jenna Jameson. And I thought.. ' I bet people would want an action figure of Jenna ' . I suggested it to the people I worked for ( and hopefully to get a slice of the action) and they shot it down saying you cant make action figures of Porn Stars.. retail wont touch it with a ten foot pole.

Anyway I took most of my savings of $80k and the basic knowledge I had of toy manufacturing and went to China to make this product. ( which was a learning-process nightmare story for another time)

Cut a long story short , the company I was working for is no longer around and the Jenna Jameson action figure was a HUGE hit worldwide, outselling even Star Wars in some areas. I profited well into six figures and took that money ( and another friend on as investor/partner) and started my toy company. We're now considered in the top 5 collectible toy companies in the USA and while we still do the occassional Jenna Jameson product the rest of our stuff is now 'G' rated.

Another bloody huge one...but this guy is really successful and you may learn something...:

My father and I ran our business, he started it some 42 years ago. He promised forever that one day the company would be mine, but the business was his passion and his reason for existence (seemingly)...it defined him and was his life. I recall visiting him in the hospital AS he was having his heart attack...he could only sit there asking me how the jobs went in and if everything was good: how freakin' pathetic, but he survived. Anyways, he did not really want to retire and in trying to inspire me not to push him to retire, he picked away at my self-confidence by making me believe I didn't have what it took to run the company. He finally retired, after SELLING me the company for more then it was worth.

When I took over, I was terrified & scared that I didn't have what it took. It was sink or swim. In what could literally be defined as a "flight or flight" I made an effort to follow-up on every call and do EVERYTHING I could to convert each call into a sale. I developed marketing to inspire our customers to refer us to friends & neighbors, I met and left cards with every contractor I could meet....I worked my ass off and really put in hard work...not just working IN the busines, but ON the business. My dad told me the BEST I could ever do is make as much as he did....in my first year I made DOUBLE what that old bastard did, today, some 5 years later, I'm now 600% more then him.....but this isn't about me (I'm just backing up my story).

Here is the thing: customer after customer told me (and my crew) that they chose me & my company because we were the only company who returned calls, spend a LOT of time explaining stuff over the phone and we did follow-up. My competition hardly returned calls, didn't spend time on the phone and were by many means just plain lame. It wasn't just that I was good, it was also that my competition was bad!!! (this is a key thing)

As the years have passed I've basically paid-off the house, bought the cars & toys, etc, etc. I've also become more relaxed in my business: I only make 1 follow-up call and tend to chase jobs with less enthusiasm...indeed: I now want more free-time to enjoy life then to run scared & hungry after each and every job...heck, I've even lost a few. Soon I will hire someone to run the company and answer phones: will they be able to claim to be the owner when talking to customers? NO. Will they have the answers, experience & salesmanship I have...probably not. Will I lose money in paying both their salary AND lost sales: yes...but I can afford it: I want more LIFE then money right now. There's the key boys: as business's grow, owners become complacent....these companies will become inefficient and there is room for the new & upcoming guy to make his place in the world. Look for these opportunities and exploit them, unleash your fury of dedication, perseverence and intellect: if you are better and more eager then your competition, you WILL emerge successful.

Most people are scared, lack the skills or don't have the leadership ability to be self-employed...scraps go to the meager. You don't have to have an MBA in finance or score huge IQ-test...it's all about determination and always strategizing. ABS = Always Be Strategizing. Listen to the guy who took an action porn-star figure and rode it to a huge company. Maybe it's an action figure, maybe a website, perhaps a pet-rock...it doesn't matter: just find something you do VERY well, something viable and do it better then others.

And don't worry, that odd balance in the world is that once people make their money, the ease-up and thusly leave room for new guys to find their way. Work to live, don't live to work.....you don't want to end up on a table having a heart attack babbling about business.

And in closing....this: think of money like food on a camping trip....you only need so much. A nice home, car, vacation home, double-D jugs on the wife, college money for your kids....don't get carried away. As example, I'm in a 2-million dollar home...I could go out and buy a 10-million dollar home and thusly put myself in a position to feed a huge monster mortgage. That's wrong: work to live, don't live to work.

Going to college is good, beside meeting a sharp wife, you will increase your aptitude, sharpness and intellectual savvy: this will aide you with your business. It won't guarantee wealth, but it will increase your likelyhood of success. Don't look for it over-night....some steps are huge, some are small...as long as they are all well thought-out and in the right direction.

**F360** · 07-15-2006 07:13 PM

There....one of you must have read that and found at least one story interesting/inspiring!! So lets here the stories of the members on this board, what was your turning point? When was it you realised you didn't want to work for the man?

(or if that topic fails, discuss the above peoples experiences