Sometimes, it’s Better to be Lucky than Good!

If you’ve followed our story, you know that finding the right investment was a challenge for us. We had a clear vision to purchase a boutique and make it successful just like we’ve done with our other businesses.

After months of stress and, yes, tears, it was finally time to close the deal on Matti D, our boutique, our next business venture.

To say that we were terrified is an understatement. Have you ever been there? Have you ever gone full steam toward a goal only to get to the point-of-no-return and think, “Do we really want to do this?!” That’s precisely where we found ourselves.

Neither of us had ever done retail before and, candidly, we were putting a lot of our money on the line to make this venture successful. On top of the financial stress, neither of us had ever lived outside of Colorado. We had a great support system where we were, so moving to San Diego meant that we would have no one to help us.

Mark Zuckerberg is quoted as saying, “If you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.”

That sounds great and everything, but I like to say, “Do the hard things first and write a blog post about it later!” We made four critical mistakes in the purchase of Matti D that I want to share with you in the hopes that you can learn from them. If you’re like me and are headed into unchartered territory, don’t hesitate to contact me through my website. I would love to be your support system that my wife and I desperately needed.

“Do the hard things first and write a blog post about it later!”

No prior knowledge of the industry

As I said, neither of us knew anything about the retail industry. It was so bad that we never even worked a retail job before. Easy lesson: If you are going into a business, make sure you know something about it. Do your research. And, better yet, spend time immersing yourself in the environment. Hell, what would it hurt to spend time actually working a low-paying job so that you know what you’re getting into?

Too much risk

We took about 70% of the windfall we obtained from the sale of Safe Site and put it towards the Matti D venture. We also took out a sizable loan and used our house as collateral. Are your palms sweating just reading those two sentences? Mine are.

Looking back on this I can’t believe we did what we did. We went all in with our chips: our house, our resources, our happiness. Lesson #2: You should never leverage more than 20% of your entire working capital to a venture until you know it will be a success. Write that down.

No Support

Lesson #3: When you are going into a venture, it is essential that you have a support system very close. If it’s not family, find some trusted friends to help. You will need to lean on trusted, faithful, and honest people who care about you. Why? It’s going to be a long, hard road and you need people to slap you in the face when you start to doze off.

Bad Systems

The truth is we bought a business that could not run without the owner’s hand in every decision. Can you imagine a place like that? How do you get anything done? Lesson #4: Look for red flags like unhealthy systems and processes. Why do I tell you this? Because it took us the better part of 3 years to fix the operation, time that could have been allocated to other parts of the business.

We made more mistakes than these that I’ll tell you about later. The common denominator is that these particular mistakes could have cost us everything. In some ways, they should have cost us everything. Luckily, we ended up doing well and are on our way to opening more locations and launching an e-commerce store. And every morning when I wake up, I give Mark Zuckerberg a metaphorical finger. Just kidding… kind of.

I’m grateful for the success that we’ve had. Things could have gone a completely different way. Sometimes in business, I guess it’s better to be lucky than good.

NGU!