the hundred dollar business

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It was fun to hear how you’d go about solving the problem! I’ve been lagging a few days on finishing up that post, as I wanted to find the notes I’d scribbled the day I was solving the problem– I thought that’d be fun to share.

So here it is. A scanned photo would be better, but hey. Rachelle often makes fun of me for the nonsense things I scribble down on notes, which are usually accompanied by a host of stars. But, at least it gives some insight into how I went about it.

Front of paper

(friend in SLC’s number scribbled at the top)

1-5 p.m. —-> SLC airport

1. * someone in SLC to pick them up.

2. A. Someone in SLC to bring down

2. * B. Someone in UT County to pick them up

3. People in SLC: Carla, Ryan Byrd (check mark), Jason Alba, ?

Someone to watch kiosk N/A

Car to get to SLC

Time constraint

My car fixed?

Best Options

I pick up YES

Rental car NO

Borrow YES

Someone watch kiosk NO

Charge phone YES

Back of paper

1. Not an emergency YES

2. Ok if we don’t get them YES

3.84

another friend’s name

15

Not an emergency

Factors To Attend To, Factors To Ignore
In solving this problem, for me, the most important factors to attend to were:

• The 5 phone numbers
• The need to act quickly
• My vendor is 50 miles away
• They’re closing in ~3.5 hours for five days
• I can’t personally leave for 9.5 hours
• My car has a flat tire
• I will have someone covering the morning shift the next day

And, the factors most important to ignore were:

• Haven’t had time to streamline ordering product
• I will lose 30-40% of my sales
• Because the order is last minute, there isn’t a delivery option available
• My phone was stolen
• I will lose the opportunity
• I lost my address book

The reason I needed to ignore those factors was because in every case, those thoughts could invoke unnecessary panic or stress. I would’ve found the following to be extremely unhelpful when in a problem-solving crunch:

• “I should’ve ordered product last week!”
• “30-40% of sales is $X, I can’t lose that!”
• “I wish my phone hadn’t been stolen so I would have everyone’s numbers. Or, I wish I’d saved the numbers in an address book somewhere. Argh.”

And so, that’s why I focused on the solvable items:

Calling the people I could. Acting quickly. Finding a way to pick up something that was 50 miles away in the next few hours, when I couldn’t personally do it. Figuring out an option where I could do as much as I could, when I was available.

The Solution

And so, of the 5 numbers, only 2 of them were people in Salt Lake. One was a good friend I’ve had for several years, and ironically, her phone number had just been switched.

So then I was down to one number– Ryan Byrd’s. In fact, I hadn’t even met Ryan in person, he’d just been reading the blog & had helped switch the site over a few days earlier.

Gulp! My first thought was, “I can’t call someone I don’t even know about this!” But, it was the resource I had on hand, so I did.

Ryan’s a student at the University of Utah, and finals were over, so I thought he would probably know a freshman college student in SLC who would go pick up the products for $20 and hold them overnight until I could borrow a car/fix my car and drive up the next morning.

So I called. And because he’s such a sweetheart, he actually offered to get the products himself. I’m sure he had better things to do than rescue 11 boxes of nuts in distress, but this is another example of the generous people who stepped in to help The Hundred Dollar Business work out.

The next morning, I borrowed a friend’s car, trekked up to SLC, got the nuts, and happily unpacked them at the kiosk in time to make some excellent weekend sales.

And A Final Word

On the back of the paper, I’d written “Not an emergency” and “Ok if we don’t get them.” As I was trying to figure out some options, I needed to remember that, because otherwise, I’d have focused on the perceived panic or stress of the situation, instead of simply doing what I could do.

There were so many problems that came up that seemed so urgent! I’ve also seen this happen for other entrepreneurs I’ve been associated with, or business owners in general– a situation comes up, and then it becomes The Situation That Takes Over Everything.

If, after making an attempt to solve the problem, it still wasn’t working out, I’d have dropped it, gone back to the kiosk, and simply sold the heck out of whatever we did have for the rest of the weekend.

Ultimately, you can be resourceful in solving problems, but sometimes a part of that resourcefulness is making the most of what you can do or what you do have.