Checking the days.

I work four days a week. The extra day is pure luxury. But because I have employees coming in the second half of the day, I've also been prone to head home early lately, 4:00 or so.

After taking off for a full week earlier in July (my first full week ever), I decided that I needed to stay at the store all day for a couple of weeks. Partly to find out if I'm missing anything --anything I'm not seeing as to why people aren't buying....

Business picked up. Couldn't see much that either my employees or myself were doing that would affect sales all that much. What the employees miss in ability to make deals or in knowledge, they seem to make up for in enthusiasm and friendliness.

So that aint it.

I did finally find out why Magic sales were down. A customer who's been making noises about opening a game store, bought a quantity online to sell to his friends. Yep. Just like where sports cards went. Sadly, I'd be willing to sell these guys the same boxes for only 15.00 more, if they just committed, but I know that once this sort of thing starts happening it keep happening.

Meanwhile, business really picked up the last two weeks of the month, and even more so in the last 5 days. Those affluent, curious tourists that I've been looking for finally started to appear.

But there was an entire month, from mid-June to mid-July that was 30% slower than it should have been.

Imagine your paycheck randomly and unexpectedly shorted by 30%. Imagine that can happen at any time without explanation. Or it might go up by 30% randomly and without warning.

What ends up happening is that you plan for the 30% drop, in case it happens. You don't plan for the 30% increase -- because if that happens it's a simple matter of increasing orders -- or biting the bullet and setting aside the extra for the next 30% drop. (Easy to say, but you usually are trying to replace inventory and or build on what seems to be working.)

In theory, there is unlimited upside to income in owning your own business. That is the risk of having 30% drops is compensated by the possibility that you could earn way more than your average wage earner. The wage earner gets a steady paycheck, and that's it. In theory.

I'd love to see that theory proved out for once...

Sure, my income has increased over the years -- but then, in theory, a steady paycheck probably would've increased over the years, too.

The real difference is that I'm in charge.

Again, in theory. At the mercy of the wholesalers and the customers and the Downtowners and the government and the...did I say customers? ....and the employees and the manufacturers and the landlords and the publishers and the customers.

Other than that, I'm in charge.