My first business

I rarely think about the business experience I have. With my good friend the impostor syndrome at my side, I find it tough to think about. So I’m going to post here, some of the businesses I have been involved in. This isn’t “day job” but entrepreneurial adventures.

I started out of college with Wombat Enterprises. This was a small partnership that focused on selling games and comics. This was in Oneonta NY. My dad made the shelves and we had a small space “across the moat” on south main street. I learned a lot starting and running this business. The biggest thing I learned was that other businesses do not offer reliable guidance. I took the advice of the best industry experts I could find. They all gave me the same answer, which was to base the size of my operation on the number of X-men comics I ordered. As I began the business, the “x”comics fad was dying and they became some of the most overproduced comics ever and the market corrected itself.

I had great sales days, and tough sale days, and people throwing rocks at the window of my store, and I learned the value of paying sales tax first. I also learned double entry bookkeeping, sales tracking, order management and special orders, and everything else a business has to do to survive.

This lasted for a year and a half. Ultimately it was done in by my vast over-ordering of comics, not managing my cash flow, and becoming emotionally vested in every single day. If I had a good sale day, I was happy and cheerful, but bad sale days got me down. I learned a lot about myself that year.

Some of my memories of the store include being so tired that on a slow day I would lay down on the floor and sleep, with one foot on the door so if someone came in I would wake up. The week that we figured out the air conditioner, which was in another part of the building and had No controls in my part. Having a box of Arabian Knights magic cards sit on my shelf for 3 months. Selling a box of Arabian Knights – at a discount no less – because it was not moving. Finding out 2 days later that the same box was selling for 10 times market price elsewhere. Participating in the live action role playing community. Making the lifelong friends.

I also remember the day my father died. I desperately needed the income of having the store open, but my father was in the hospital after his heart attack. I took my keys to a good friend of mine, yelled up the stairs that I have to go to the hospital because dad, and flinging the keys up at him at the top of his long stairwell. Like I said, lifelong friends. Thanks, IBD.