Last week I posted about the magic card selling concept I had. What I didn’t mention is that I had this idea months ago, but I hadn’t taken a look at the economics of it. Then when the opportunity came up I went home and worked on it. It took me some time to put together exactly what I needed to charge. I called a couple other singles shops to figure out what they’re monthly revenue from magic singles sales were and did a Du Pont analysis to figure out whether what I was doing made financial sense.
I also spent some time creating the software that I’d use to set prices remotely. Once I had everything carefully figured out I went into talk to the owner today. He wasn’t in. Someone new was in. I spoke with him a little bit. It turns out he was hired to manage the Magic singles. Apparently my arguments were very convincing. So convincing they hired a guy to do it.
There’s a lesson here. That lesson is that if I had figured out whether or not this was profitable in advance, back when I originally had the idea, rather than after the opportunity presented itself. I would very likely have a new, largely passive, source of income right now.
If I had been prepared and been able to do this, and started my fortune in this fashion people might have said I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. It didn’t happen because I wasn’t prepared. This happens to people all the time, everybody gets “lucky” sometime, most people (like me) just aren’t prepared when an opportunity comes along.
This isn’t all a total loss however, I may still be able to do the same thing at another location and now if it comes up I'm actually prepared.
No comments:
Post a Comment