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"The Mystery of the Slot"

Last week we left off with:
"And so I prepared for the day. I set up my Koolaid. I raised my price back to the orginal 3 cents. And I waited."

And now continuing:

Soon you could hear the squeals of children running out of their homes, and they were all heading to Tommy's stand. But I KNEW what I had.

I was able to get one of the girls to come over to see me. I offered her some Koolaid and said, "drop your money in the slot." She looked wonderously at the slot and dropped in a penny. It fell with a plunk, the world's most wonderful sound, into the cardboard round quaker oatmeal box I had glued underneath.

And then she dropped in the other two pennies. I poured her Koolaid and she ran off to tell the other children.

Almost instantly I had a line of children waiting to put their money in the slot. Many even ran back to their mommies to get more pennies so they could put them in the slot.

I sold a lot of Koolaid.

Shortly I looked down the street and Tommy was sitting all alone in his fancy castle. The fickle customers had struck once again and now Tommy was feeling the same thing I had felt.

And then as if by a stroke of God a wind came and blew over Tommy's cardboard stand. Tommy tore up his stand and never returned to the Koolaid business again.

What was it about that magical slot? Why did the excitement of putting a penny in the slot exceed the excitement of that fancy store bought Koolaid stand?

I still do not know. But something had told me that was what I needed to do. And it worked.

As the summer went on I continued to earn good profits selling Koolaid. But some days I would get so busy that I hated to shut down the stand while I ran to the store for more Koolaid and sugar.

So I hired the neighbor boy to watch the stand for me so I could keep it supplied. His name was Scott Badly, one year older than me. His father was a well respected lawyer and his mother a much admired artist.

He agreed to take 35 cents for his day's pay. That day we brought in $1.65. I had spent about 60 cents on Koolaid and sugar, which meant I was going to realize a 70 cent profit after paying Scott his 35 cents.

As I got ready to shut down the stand for the day and pay Scott his 35 cents, he being bigger than me pushed me down and said instead he was going to take 65 cents because that was about half and it was only fair.

I tried to explain to him that would only leave me a 40 cent profit which meant he would earn more than me, and that he had agreed to 35 cents. Scott did not care. His sense of decency apparently was off kilter.

And so I learned that the point of view of employees is much different than the point of view of the business owner.

I spent the rest of the summer running the stand by myself, justifying the loss in business for the temporary closings as less than the loss of profits from having an employee robbing you.

And that summer ended my career as a Koolaid stand operator. I felt good from the lessons I had learned and the money I had earned. But the following summers would be pursued with more profitable business ventures.

SIDE NOTE SUMMARY OF PRINCIPAL:
Over and over and over in my life I have learned that when you are trying to create a business you will run into seemingly unsurmountable odds. But if you want to be an entrepreneur you can't stop.

There are many ways you can deal with unsurmountable odds, but one is a great gift from (fill in your blank here)__________, (eg. God, Universe, Goddess, infinite intelligence, or whoever or whatever you believe to be a supreme force in the universe).

This gift almost always works once you yourself have tried to do it on your own in every concievable way. You have to think of every possible solution, but once you have exhausted your resources, put the question you need answered to your subconsious mind and then forget about it.

Edison did this constantly. When he was stumped he would take a cat nap and awake with the answer.

You have heard I am sure many times people saying, "I just woke up and had the answer." Think about it.

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