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In keeping with the ‘Career Choices’ theme I’ve begun, I want to say a few words about planning. I really need to write a business plan if I want to get a loan and grow wisethrift.com to be financially stable. I’ve put this off for years because I detest the whole notion of planning. To me, getting real detailed about how much money I will make, how many customers I will have… all that is up to fate and I may as well get the information from a fortune teller. I never planned to spend 14 years learning about collectibles, especially glass. When I was younger, I thought colored glass was gaudy. Now, I love it. That was a change I didn’t plan.
Those of you who are over 40 can likely relate to what I am saying. You can plan your whole life to be a June bride. Guess what? You won’t be able to take your vacation until November. Now, do you (and your hormones) wait another 7 or 8 months, or do you let go of that plan and get married around Thanksgiving when everyone is in town anyway? Yep, that’s the kind of planning I’m talking about.
Sometimes, we don’t realize when the concept of a plan is introduced to us because it may come in bits and pieces. What is a plan, at its core but an idea? It could take years and lots of hindsight to realize one small incident started something that has been growing your entire life. Little things happen that can cause the best plans to change. It might be something minor – missing a class, or arriving late to a meeting because you tapped the bumper of the person who would turn out to be your best friend.
I got started in the business of collectibles over 42 years ago. I didn’t know it at the time, didn’t realize it for many years. I love flea markets and my Dad used to take me to the nearest flea market every weekend in the summer. He would give me pocket change to run around and buy strange things a kid would want. I brought home moldy smelling history books, an old white prom dress that was too small for me, and one day when I was about 8 or 9, I bought some dishes to use in the play house my cousins and I had at Grandmothers. I think I gave a dollar for 4 matching plates and one oddball. I know my mother dreaded seeing me drag in some more clutter but that day she relaxed a bit when she saw the plates I brought home. The matching ones had very bright, lime green rims with white centers. My mom looked at the bottom of one plate and smiled. “This is Pyrex” she declared, making it sound like something valuable. She walked to the kitchen cabinet and took down 4 chipped plates from our Courier and Ives set and offered to trade me those chipped plates for the Pyrex. She told me the Pyrex could go in the oven without breaking and I imagined the stack of old aluminum pie pans in our cabinet disappearing. I hated those things but it was the only option if we wanted to heat up leftovers as we didn’t have a microwave. Of course, I agreed to her offer, but with one stipulation, the pie pans had to go. She agreed and from that day forward, we never ate out of aluminum pie pans again. I was directed to keep my eye out for more Pyrex when I was digging around at the flea market. I didn’t know at the time I was ‘picking’ and that was the first time someone else saw value in something I had picked. Tonight, I found a website that told me about the history of those plates. They were part of the Pyrex Dinnerware Line from the 1950’s and the color was called Lime.
We can’t plan all of the events that will shape our lives or our businesses. We just don’t know what opportunities might be waiting for us to find them. I think it’s a good idea to have a general plan about what we want to accomplish but flexibility is key if one wants to catch those bargains, meet wonderful customers in unusual ways, or find that long lost photo. With that said, I still need a business plan but how do I explain all this to a banker who has probably been following a strict ‘plan’ for his entire life and avoiding chance opportunities because they were outside the scope of that plan? He measures success in dollars and cents, not people, history, or feelings. When it comes down to it, those are the only things that have any real value and they can’t be calculated on a spread sheet. After thinking it over, perhaps I don’t need that loan, after all. Maybe I just need to get out and give some new opportunities a chance to find me.
https://youtu.be/1dSzaScsWh4
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