Fast Track Girl is a friend of mine from a business, real estate and investing forum I have been at for years. Although she doesn't have a blog (working on that for her!), she has a very inspirational story. With thoughts about scarcity and abundance this week, I thought it was time to share! It might be long, but it's good!
Fast Track Girl: I read everything in RD series. If I didn't have the money (RK says don't say "I can't afford it", it didn't cost any money to change that habit so I did) to buy the latest RK book I just sat in a book store and read it. I wanted to play Cashflow, didn't have money to buy it, so I found a public game event and played the game, learned a lot and all it cost me was gas. In one of the books RK says "read the business section of the newspaper", so I did. The Wed. issue cost .35 and Sunday $2.50, I could do that. I read the articles and looked at deals in the businesses for sale section.
One day there was an article on retail mall carts. It got my attention, so I looked up a trade publication on the internet that the article quoted from. That trade website had a sample article from their publication that listed numerous mall cart concepts. I looked up each concept and chose 3 or 4 that I got excited about and sent links to friends and family for their feedback. They all agreed that they liked 2 of them, in fact some we're owners/users of one of the products. I contacted that company and requested more information and they sent a promo package. I was still too broke to do it and put it aside. This was in July 2002.
In November 2002, I got an email from that company wanting to know how they could help me get going for the holiday retail season. I emailed back that I was willing but broke and thanked them for their time. They called me immediately and offered to "front" me $7500 worth of opening inventory until the end of the season. Huh?!!! But, they said, you'll have to contact the malls and see if anyone still has a space open. Okay...phone calls are free, so I started calling malls. No spaces available...oh well.
Until one mall calls back saying they loved that concept and wanted to make room for us (my daughter, LilFastTrackGirl, was doing this with me). However, rent was $14,000 for the Nov./Dec. term and they don't prorate (it was already into Nov.)...Gulp! I apologized to the mall manager for wasting her time. She then asked if I could come up with $2000 and they would work with me on paying the rest a little each week. HUH?!!!!! I called my husband and told him not to mail the bills I had just paid! Okay..this probably isn't wise advice, I'm just telling you how it happened.
Then another mall called and made me a similar deal. There was so much to do and I didn't know what any of it was! The mall managers and those who fronted me the inventory were all very helpful and got me started. I had to get licenses, insurance, sign contracts, get a merchant account, phone service...and everyday I wasn't open I was losing money. So...1 1/2 weeks later, I had quit my job, had two carts open with 12 employees.
Now, this wasn't an ideal way to go into business. We were inexperienced, made a lot of mistakes, chased our tail a lot juggling rent, inventory, wages. We pretty much borrowed from Peter to pay Paul but we definately got our feet wet and learned a lot.
One cart performed horribly, the other suffered because it had to support the poor one. But in the end we made money and were able to pay our bills and prevent our house from going into foreclosure, which was about to happen prior to all of this. We closed the bad cart at the end of the holidays. The other we tried to keep going afterwards but it's a tough business during the off season and we closed it in the late Spring 2003. Afterwards, I sold products at an open aire market place on weekends and on ebay. Actually, I became an ebay powerseller during that time. Also, I spent time on the internet learning more about the retail industry...for free. Waste not money or time (can't remember who said that)...I gave up T.V.
In Nov. 2003 we opened another cart, this time with more money in the bank (I saved up for it by not buying DooDads), and in a higher end mall. That cart performed very well but our temporay lease wasn't renewed in late Spring of 2003. Mall managers can be pretty "catty." It's a long story.
In the meantime, we had been to Las Vegas for a trade show and visited some cart owners who had a cart next to us in our last mall. They also had carts in Vegas malls. They convinced us to open a cart up there. Not so easy to do because spaces don't come up often but it didn't hurt to ask and get on a wait list. Lots of naysayers said it couldn't be done...thank you for caring enough to share, I promise to weigh it heavily ; ) Two months later we get a call from a hot mall, the one our friends were in, inviting us to be a tenant.
This was a hot casino mall but, unbeknownst to us, that location busy as it was, it was much slower than the rest of the mall. We did extremely well some days but very poor others and the hours there are long. In the end it wasn't worth supporting the additional household, so we closed up after a short time and went home. We lost our butts on that one and had to go back to a job to catch up. Did another cart at home, lost our butts real bad this time and worked 80 - 100 hours a week at my job for 7 months to recover from those last two deals.
I'll tell you in another post where I am now, it's pretty exciting!
The bottom line is that it doesn't take much to simply take action. One action leads to another and doors open up. I'm not rich "yet" but you'll see in my next post that I've come a long way and the above actions are the reason I am where I am. It was a learning curve that I had to learn "in the field" and that it was the lessons I've learned from the mistakes and failures that have taught me how to be where I am now.
Fast Track Girl Part 1
Fast Track Girl Part 2
Fast Track Girl Part 3
Fast Track Girl Part 4
Fast Track Girl Part 5