Today, I spent some time thinking back over all of my failures and their lessons. It’s great to fail, in fact with failures in hand we are provided valuable lessons. Every single man, woman and child out there has probably failed at least a few times. I don’t know a single person who went from crawling as an infant to walking on their very first try. I also notice there are very few adults who continue to crawl instead of walk.
For me the failure that to my mind is when I was 15 years old and I decided to go into the sports card business. I was offered a “good deal” from someone that was relocating and wanted to sell the cards at a “deep discount.” Basically, here was a man that was going out of business who was looking for someone to purchase his inventory in bulk. Enter a 15 year old teenager who was bright eyed and bushy tailed. So I purchased tens of thousands of cards of differing values. I was getting a good deal when he showed me how to price out them in the “Beckett” card value guide. Yet, I had no idea that people weren’t really willing to pay the prices in the book nor that demand for sports cards was being replaced.
I ended up selling the majority of cards off in bulk and recovered about half of my money and gave the cards to whoever wanted them. The market for cards was quickly shrinking with the quick growth of the video game industry and Internet. Needless to say, that was my first lesson in business. The lesson I learned was to avoid taking anything at face value and only to buy from those you trust.
The sports card business had been steadily fading out over the last 10 years. It was a fad that had a really great run, but you should always know your market and see what’s coming down the pike in the way of alternatives. I later relearned that in my business classes.
Wishing you Wealth in all its Greatest Forms
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