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Business Lessons from an Immigrant Boyhood
PAGE 2 OF 6
For about five weekends we were making more money than we knew what to do with. Kids swarmed around our tables like flies. It turned out to be too good to last. The other merchants had noticed and started copying us. They also started underselling us. Our profit margin kept getting thinner and thinner until it became just a fond memory. We had turned that swap meet into a popular shopping stop for the local kids, but all we got for our troubles were a lot of competitors. We had become the victims of our own success. That experience taught me that the only way to build a business was to build our own location.
Unfortunately, we had spent almost everything we had made. We had to borrow a thousand from Delong's sister so we could lease a tiny space between a donut shop and a noodle shop. She had just gotten her cosmetologist license and somehow Delong talked her into coming in with us on the shop. She dyed hair and manicured nails while Delong and I sold clothes and trinkets after school. That turned out to be an attractive combination for the local girls, especially the Latinas. Before long, there wasn't even standing room in our little shop. We were clearing seven or eight thousand a month between the three of us. It seemed like a fortune at the time.
Just when I thought I had found the secret to turning cloth into gold, Delong dropped a bombshell: he wanted out. He told me he was tired of being tied to a business and wanted to have more fun with friends. I was devastated. I depended on him to keep our shop stocked with hot items. I didn't think I could find anyone to replace him. I was faced with the choice of closing up and turning the space back over to the landlord or continuing on my own. As it was, my parents were getting worried that I was spending so much time with the store that I would never be able to get into a decent college. "Do you want to be a shopkeeper your whole life?" my mother asked.
I have to admit that question scared me. I had been raised to believe that the only proper life for me was to go to college and become a doctor, lawyer or engineer. Becoming an entrpreneur just wasn't an option that had ever been presented to me. I just didn't want to become a failure.
But the business gods seemed to be looking out for me.
[CONTINUED BELOW]
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I had just about made up my mind to sign a notice terminating the lease and closing up shop when I spotted a middle-aged Chinese woman across the street. She was wearing a dark business suit and expensive sunglasses. She just stood there watching the shop. After a long time she crossed the street and came in. She looked around, studying the merchandise and the customers. I was starting to get nervous when she asked me, in a thick Hong Kong accent, if I were interested in selling the shop. I was shocked by the thought that anyone would want to pay money for the little shop that we had built up after school. But I kept my cool and asked how much she had in mind. She told me that she was a business broker. A client was looking for a fashion business in the area. Would we consider selling?
"If the price is right," I told her, probably because I had heard someone saying it on TV. She looked into my eyes for a long time. Then she took a business card from a small lacquired case, flipped it over and scribbled something on it. "Call me if you're interested," she said and walked out.
It took a while for my eyes to focus on the number on the back of her card. "$150,000." I thought she had put in one too many zeroes. When I showed the card to my father, he laughed and shook his head in amazement. I could tell he was deeply impressed. He told me to get a lawyer to negotiate a deal. I took his advice.
The lawyer more than earned his fees. After the broker's commission and our expenses, Delong and I walked away with $225,000 between us. A quarter of a million bucks! And our shop had been open barely six months.
That first gift from heaven taught Delong and me that it was easier to make money by selling a business than by running one. He hadn't been interested in being tied to the shop day in and day out, but now he was suddenly very excited about coming in with me on another venture that could be flipped quickly for big bucks. We were a couple of eighteen-year-olds drunk with greed and dreams of a luxurious life.
Of course we would soon learn that that's exactly how life sets up cocky young fools to learn the hardest lesson of all. PAGE 3
| "When I showed the card to my father, he laughed and shook his head in amazement. I could tell he was deeply impressed." |