Intuition in small business is so important, and yet so unreliable.

I've often made the comment: My mood is directly proportional to how much money I made that day. Give me three or four good days in a row, and even if the overall trend line is down, I still feel pretty good, and vice versa.

At the same time, I've often had the feeling of things being slow, even with business being good, and vice versa. Mood versus feeling, if you get the distinction. The trend line is probably most important, but I've let feeling trump that more than once.

When business fell, from 1995 to 1997, there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it. I reacted strictly to the numbers, but eventually reached such a low ebb that another six months we would've been out of business. When I had a woman come in and offer to sell me her excess Beanie Babies, it was both intuition and desperation that made me leap at the chance.

That saved us for another year, by the time Beanie Babies started to slide, I looked around me and tried to find something else to push. The only corner of the store that I felt had any chance of coming back were the card games. I took a chance and reinvested.

A few months later, Pokemon hit.

So a combination of looking around and trying to find the one product line that had potential, and pure intuition, led me to making the right decision.

It can't be pure luck when I keep finding the one product line that will bring in income.

Right now I'm trying to decide if it's gotten slower because of the internal dynamics of the store (not ordering lots of extra material has got to impact), or whether it is the comic industry, (getting reports from other stores that have seen the same kind of increases I have over the years who are also slowing down), or whether it is local economy, (there are empty parking spots in front of my store, and regulars are making noises about cutting back), or whether it is the national economy (the possibility of recession.)

Totally made up apportionment of blame would be; 50% store, 20% industry, 20% local economy, 10% national economy.

On the other hand, the downturn is so small so far, it might just be normal variation.

My intuition, though, is to be careful. And I think all the facts back up the intuition.


As I was writing this, I've been watching a gray squirrel, (a very young squirrel, it looks like), a new resident of our backyard, scurrying around. He scratched a hole in the ground, buried something, and ran off. Not 30 seconds later, a blue jay landed at the same spot, dug up whatever the squirrel buried and flew off.

Oh, yes. I know it well. Cut throat competition.