Dad has been an entrepreneur from the word “go.” A lot of this spirit has been passed on to my brothers and me. From a very early age, I was working at ways to make a few cents here and there. I remember getting a MattelTM Creepy Crawlers maker one Christmas. It was a device that allowed you to pour gobbledygoop into a mold and cook it until it got harder. The result was a rubber bug or worm or other such icky thing. I hid a few in my pocket and took them to school with me to show to my friends.
Imagine my surprise and delight when I found that some of my friends would pay me a nickel or a dime for those bugs! Soon, I was the leading business man in the fourth grade, and my biggest customer was providing me with support for my candy habit. Not surprisingly, the money rarely made it home with me… we passed two convenience stores on the walk home.
Later, in the seventh grade, when I started a new school, I was anxious to make friends and fit in. At this time, monograms were really “in,” whether it was on a sweater, a shirt pocket or your notebook. My parents ran a school supply store as one of their ventures and the store sold stick-on letters. So… I bought a pack and started selling them for 5¢ each. A couple of friends noticed that the whole package of about 200 letters only cost about $1.79 and knew I bought it at wholesale. A little quick math and I was being accused of making 1000%+ profit! I felt terrible.
I went home, almost in tears, feeling so guilty for using my friends. I went to Dad and told him how badly I felt. He smiled, looked at me and said, “Carl, I learned a long time ago that you have to make money off your friends… because your enemies just won’t buy from you.” It made sense at the time and has come to mean even more now.
In preparation for owning my own business, I took courses such as Christian Business Ethics and the Dale Carnegie Course in Human Relations. Both of these and others stress the importance of getting along with others in life and in business. Dad and I later had a computer retail store that I ran. In that business, I learned that making friends with my customers was the best insurance I could have for future business.
I still remember many of my customers, their families, the kind of computer they owned, the software they used, the business they were in, etc. That kind of attention made them feel like my friends who just happened to buy computers and supplies from me rather than customers whom I just happened to know.
As you may be aware, one of the fastest-growing business types in the country is network marketing. It has many faces, but the primary focus for this business is the same: Get your friends to buy from you, then, get their friends to buy from them. It’s a grass-roots process that blossoms rather quickly when it works. Just remember to be friends first, and a salesperson second, or you’ll lose the things that really are important.
