Blind Faith
Ok, back to the main story which is now looking at my attempt to have 2 locations for Highland Cycles. If you read the last post about the shop you know that I had hired a staff and in my mind, things were going to rock and roll and there was no way I could lose. I thought I had it all squared away. I knew how much money I needed to buy equipment, pay the staff and pay all the bills and I would have plenty extra to help keep it rolling until we started making money which wouldn’t take long at all right???
Funny thing about all of that. I had NO FREAKING CLUE about how much it was all going to cost. I honestly just guessed at it. I thought I figured it all up but looking back at my process, I was blindly shooting in the dark if I am honest with myself and all of you. There were so many more costs involved with getting the shop just open than I ever imagined. Fixing up the inside of the building, upgrading the electrical service, a sign and insurance were just a few of the items that cost way more than I expected. I was basing the numbers off of what I had spent opening the other store but that was way off because I did all of the work and it required a lot less to open those doors.
I also had to fill the place with merchandise and I didn’t want to go small because, in my opinion, I wanted the place to look prosperous right off the bat. Well, the space up in Grand Junction was way bigger than the Montrose location and it ended up taking a massive amount more money to buy enough parts and accessories to fill the showroom. Instead of realizing that I should just do what I planned and build slowly, I just hauled off and bought more stuff. Tons of stuff. In my usual style of not paying attention to my bank account because I hate “worrying about money” I didn’t even realize how much money I was spending on all of this.
Let's talk for just a second about how absolutely ridiculous that is. When I used to get worried about money I would ignore my account. I would just not look at it and assume it was all ok. Irrationally, I thought that if I didn’t know how low it was that it would magically stay above zero. I obviously knew that wasn’t true logically but I acted as if that were true. Holy crap was that a dumb way to be!
The place looked great when the doors opened but I was already deep in the hole and didn’t have much room for error. In the business world they call that room margin and I didn’t have any margin. We needed to immediately make money and have no problems if this was going to work but because I am not the brightest bulb I wasn’t even worried. I mean, I was sure that God was guiding this whole thing. Nothing bad was going to happen, no hiccups were going to catch us off guard…
Thanks again for reading my words. This is my way of exercising another part of my brain and I really enjoy the process and I hope you are enjoying too. If you do, share this around, leave a comment or shoot me a message.
Have a great day and make sure you you find something to be grateful for. Today I am thankful for a ton of work at the shop, good food at home and my loving family supporting all that I do!
