Nothing ventured.

I started this store on a shoestring, and was cash challenged all the way through the first three or four years. I finally borrowed money from the bank, after going up to the small business program at C.O.C.C. and creating a business plan.

By then the growth of sports cards was so spectacular that I could never quite catch up.

Then it all crashed, and I spent the next 10 or 15 years just trying to stabilize into a living wage.

(Boy does that reduce the first two/thirds of my career to a few sentences....but you've all heard it before...)

Anyway, about 10 years ago, I sat down and did the math and arrived at a daily sales total, and a margin, that I thought if I could just achieve it, would do everything I needed.

1.) Pay the overhead.

2.) Pay myself a living wage.

3.) Fully stock the store.

At the time, I was only about 60% of the way there.

It's tough on the little guy.

10 years later, I'm pretty much hovering at that figure, and I still think it's about right. However, if I was paying full wholesale for all my product, which is how I computed my plans back then, I'd need more than the original estimates because of the increases in costs.

What's happened is, as I reached and exceeded and then slid back down to my target figure, is that my store has become so full of inventory of so many different types, that I can be very selective in my buying. I can buy the best. I can buy some of the rest. And best of all, I can sit back and pick off bargains as they are offered.

Almost every week, there is a batch of good stuff that I can scoop up. I can do this because my cash-flow is finally able to accommodate this. I have enough in savings to stretch the budget when the opportunity arises. I can even, occasionally for very big offers, use credit.

It's a prime example of the concept that it takes money to make money. I have a funny feeling that much bigger stores than mine, who can buy direct from publishers, probably do even better.

But I'm finally big enough that it works for me, too. I save with volume discounts. I save with minimum free shipping. Because I sell 8 or 10 product lines, I have that many more chances of finding a deal in at least one of them.

My point?

I've always wondered if this would've happened years ago if I'd just been sufficiently capitalized.

But you know what?

I hate to say it.

I'm pretty sure, I would've made so many mistakes, the money wouldn't have helped. I would've pissed it away.

Some of this may come across as self-congratulatory, but it's not meant to be. It's offered as a lesson learned. The hard way. By doing.

If I was a venture capitalist, I think what I'd be looking for is a smart guy, who made tons of mistakes early, recovered from them, and has at least gotten back to square one. That's the guy who both needs the money and can probably do something useful with it.

(I want to make it clear, I'm not looking for investment. I'm not that ambitious. Saw a documentary about Colonel Sanders last night; he was broke at 65, and started his franchise around then. He sold the company for Two Million Dollars!!! --the company then sold to another company a few years later for 218 million, and is now worth billions.....)