Talking about maniac, my brother is maniac right now. Working with him side by side on is next business venture in his life has been very interesting, I'm looking at it from a different perspective than I did in the past. I see so much of my prior self in him. Many of the moves, decisions and thought patterns he has are definitely bipolar. I've often wondered if he's bipolar. I'm not a doctor, I can't be certain, I just see a lot of parallel extreme intense thinking that I used to have and he is showing.
For example, after yesterday I was pretty high on the potential of this Kids Cuts franchise. It started consuming my thoughts and got my enthusiasm up. It's always so romantic when you're dreaming about the future and everything comes up roses. Thinking about this opportunity has been somewhat all consuming in the last 24 hours and a false sense of urgency comes over me that I need to do something or I may lose the opportunity to someone else.
I'm working on getting over caring about losing an opportunity. I've often felt my problem in the past has been lack of patience. I tend to sell myself on a deal and will discount the pimples and warts. Since moving to Ontario and seeing that if you miss one opportunity today, there is others coming around the corner later. Just like a bus. With that said, it is not an easy transition. I have a lot of respect for people that have patience when it comes to making decisions about spending their money.
I spoke to Al this morning, filled him in on the Oakville location. His concern was the same as mine, why did the previous owners leave and if it's only a little marketing that's required why doesn't the guys that took over put the money into marketing and keep it. This is the number one question / red flag. Al also mentioned that as a kids franchise it's best to have a women as the owner face, aka, Alice. I agree with that, me just standing on the floor looking at it while the women cut the kids hair and the mom's waited I felt awkwardly out of place, a little like a pedophile.
I then had a 2 hour conversation with my brother, he's completely drank the kool-aid, he's in for the franchise in Winnipeg no questions asked. At that time I was still thinking seriously about Oakville. I even emailed the guys to thank them for their time yesterday and let them know I'm interested in Oakville.
At 1 pm I headed over to Jamie's place to talk about it. Al and him are very similar, they are patient and think things through to the extreme, especially when it comes to money. I brought Jamie up to speed and it was over a 2 hour discussion with all sorts of twists and turns. It went from discussing the Oakville opportunity to discussing all potential options, like storage condo's, physiotherapy opportunities and in general what would be best for me to do in the future. He did say many enlightening things, one thing that resonated deeply with me, "what ever I do, if it's going to be successful I need to treat it as a full time job". In my heart of heart I know that, the problem is I have such a great lifestyle right now I don't want to have to give it up.
I think my biggest fear is that history will repeat itself to a certain extent. Twenty years ago, I quit triathlons to dedicate 100% of my efforts to founding and growing Embassy. In that time I worked night and day on the business for years and years and got out of shape and unhealthy and lost my perspective of what was important to me. My family, my fitness, my everything took a back seat to growing my business. I know I have it in me to dedicate 100% of my efforts to growing a business successfully, I'm concerned that in doing so I'll go backward as a person. My personality is all or nothing.
The other concern is the amount of money that can be made. Many people that get into a business or buy a franchise come from mid level pay and are prepared to work their asses off for $80,000 to $100,000 per year. To me, that's not much money based on my reality and what I'm used to making. I don't want to get into an opportunity that I am working my ass off and not making big money. I've done that in the past, it gets you no where. I guess in some respects my perspective is healthy when evaluating opportunities, if I can't make at least in the $100,000 range per location and not be able to manage multiple locations I'm not interested. At least I have some hard no's.
Jamie liked and didn't like the hair business. He though a men's sports cutting place if done right could have potential. He thought the kids one had some potential holes, he didn't like the party room idea and the fact I wasn't a women. He felt you needed a women to be the face and run the place, similar to Al's comment. I agree with that too. I was wondering how I'd even evaluate the staff if I wasn't there at least sitting behind the counter watching what's going on for 3 - 4 hours a day and learning the business. I have no idea of hair care products to buy or merchandise for the kids. It would be something that would need a women involved to be successful. It would have to essentially become a partnership with Alice and I and she'd have to be the person involved inside the shop. I'm not sure if that is something she's wanting to do. Jamie did like the idea of me owning a dollar store, retail is something he knows about.
From a marketing perspective I did a little research today and looked into the cost to advertise in the local community papers in Oakville, it's expensive. Much more expensive than Burlington. It's over $300 per week for a small black and white ad for a 52 week commitment. Burlington is $171 per week. Even at $171 per week that's a lot of money, I'm not sure if it would pay itself back. The margins are so slim that the only cost effective marketing is grassroots marketing, putting coupons on cars, door to door mail delivery and co-marketing with local stops. In addition, I found out that unlike anywhere else in Ontario, Oakville has a law / ban against outdoor advertising billboards. Turns out that Oakville is an expensive place to advertise in. Makes sense, it's the highest average income City in Canada.
By the end of the day my bubble on the kids haircutting place burst and I was back on the ground. I'm still interested in pursuing and asking the questions, sans passion to make a deal with any urgency. I highly doubt I'm going to do anything moving forward, unless I got the franchise for free and with limitations of loses. For example, if they gave it to me for free to take over and I could get the lease on a month to month or bi-monthly, try it out, market, see if it works and if not, close it down or give it back to the master franchisee, I'm not interested. They were wanting to sell me the franchise with a 10 years lease agreement that would probably require personal guarantees. I'm going to go down the path, I'm going to talk to the former owners and other franchise owners and research and discuss this thing so much that if I do make a move on it, it won't be much of a risk.
I still like the concept of a hair salon. Most of the big franchises like Regis (Super Clips, Magic Cuts, etc) sell them to non-sylists and within a few years the average owner owns 5 -7 salons and they say many of the owners still keep their day jobs. That appeals to me about the hair business. If you can get a franchise that makes $100,000 per year and you can own 3 - 5 of them, you can make a really good living. The one problem is I don't yet know the business. What is not yet in Canada is the Sport Cuts, guy cuts theme'd salons. They are very popular in the United States and the big guys like Regus that are franchising Sports Clips in the U.S., or the more riske Knockouts, have no plans to come to Canada with the concept for at least a couple of years. Jamie preferred the Sports Guys cuts and was suggesting I do my research, visit shops and talk to owners in the U.S. and if it makes sense launch my own non franchise operation. I like that approach. At least in a man's haircutting place that had sports on TV's, you could buy a beer, attractive women that cut hair, peanuts / popcorn to eat, head massages, etc, I would feel like I belonged and not stand out like a sore thumb.
I'm also going to look more into a physio/massage clinic and if I did something on myself what would be involved and how much money could I make. I'm going to model it and put pen to paper in terms of profitability potential. Same with the storage condo idea, which is basically the concept of building a strip mall sort of operation with 1500 square foot units, with 24 foot ceilings, a large overhead door, a side door, a bathroom and inside it's wide open. They are starting to become popular in the U.S. where people can buy their own space, ideal for a small business that doesn't want to pay rent and own or someone that wants to have a place to put their own personal stuff.
It all comes back to lifestyle. Right now I'm blessed, I'm semi-retired. I do what I want, I have decent money coming in and if the company wasn't losing money on the book side I'd be set for then next few years. The only thing I'm fairly certain on is that I have about 6 months. My ideal situation is to find a business that I could focus on for 4 - 5 hours of a day and have flexibility in my day where I can train. It may come down to at some point that I have to go back to becoming an exercise 1 hour a day sort of guy and weekend warrior, making training my third priority after family and work. I really don't want to have to do that, who would. I'm thinking there has to be a way I can have my cake and eat it too. Hopefully.
The other option, which I'm working on is to develop my online businesses, I understand online businesses and what's involved to promote them. Poochie and Abbey are doing a great job. I'm finally making progress. I can't beat myself up, I wished I'd done this two years ago, I potentially would be making some good money right now. The real test to see if the site is going to start making money is in the next 30 days. I'm setting up a generic site called Caricature Toons and marketing it to the world, not just the thin triathlon community. Sixty days from now I'll know how well it's going to work. I'd be happy if the site could make $2000 per month. Hell, who am I kidding, it would be successful if it made $1000 per month and gave me some pocket change.
Right now my greatest fear is losing myself like I did 20 years ago. I feel like I'm on the fringe. I've got anxiety about my future and I feel I've lost my discipline. I can't control my eating. Even tonight I had to go for a car ride with Alice to decompress and boom, I stopped for ice cream, twice. The one thing, and this is completely true, that's keeping pressure on me not to go to the dark side is my Ironman logo'd nice fitting close, AND my Ironman tattoos. I can't go to the dark side and wear Ironman close or show Ironman tattoos.
I do have some things I'm proud of, I'm not drinking. Had I been, I'd be near 200 lbs right now, I can feel that would have happened. This is one of those moments in time when I at the crossroads and can more forward or move backward. I thought that having the pressure of training for the World Championships was going to make being disciplined easy, that it was going to be a cake walk for exercise and diet, it hasn't.
I'm also finding for the first time that the blogging is a little defocusing. I enjoy it, it brings joy, it helps me clarify my thoughts, it just takes up lots of time and when I'm done a hour or two is gone and I need to figure out my game plan for the day. I'm not wanting to quit blogging, I am entertaining the idea of maybe blogging less often, maybe one or twice a week, as an update of what's going on. I'm not sure, it's just options I'm running through my head. On the other side I like the therapy I get from blogging. I must say right now it's hard to blog the grinding in my mind and lack of self control I have. Normally the blog helps with peer pressure and I get on track quickly, now it's not doing that. Again, it's probably the time of year. Who knows. I'm not going to any extremes like I did in the past and close down the blog, it's just that it's on my horizon as something I may need to focus less time on. Often I'll think after writing the blog, I could have finished a swim in that time, or now I need to go to work and make an appearance rather than training and then making an appearance. As you can tell, my heads a little messed up right now. Lots going on and I haven't got the clarity, certainty and focus I'd like to have. I'm looking options that could kick me back into gear before I get way out of gear.
I did call my brother back tonight and told him I'm getting cold feet on the Oakville location and am going to take my time on it. My hope was that it may concern him as well and cool him down too. It didn't, he's still 1000% committed to moving forward and is now serious about taking over Oakville if I don't take it over. He's got the blinders on, right, wrong or indifferent. With my brother everything needs to be his idea, he works on instinct. By me telling him I have concerns, in two or three days he may come back to me and say he has concerns too, as if it was his idea. I'm cool with that, I don't want to see him lose whatever money he has left.
I am quite worried about him, he looks like he's on deaths doorstep. He drinks heavily at night, sleeps in and seems to know every TV show that is on TV. Reid said when he was at Bob's place that my brother drank at night, slept in and spent most of his days lying in his lazy boy chair with a blanket on him watching TV. I think I'm going to talk to my brother about how bad he looks and that he needs to start taking care of himself, I'm just not sure when. Alice and I were talking that the guys from Sharkey's must have been blown away when they saw Bob, people in Ontario don't look that beat up. He definitely represented himself as a bull in a china shop from the prairies. Not a lot of smoothness or healthful looking.
Alice and I got home around 9:30 pm from our car ride. I got on the computer and killed time for the next 2 plus hours googling people's names. I started with the guys from Sharkey's, didn't find much. Then each of our family members, then friends I haven't seen in years, even high school troublemakers. Some of the names I entered, I included the word jail or prison in the google description. I ended up finding out some cool stuff. The best man at our wedding, Phil Vrsnik, who I haven't spoken to in close to 10 years, is partner in his dad's electrical company and the book keeper stole $450,000 over a 8 year period. The bookkeeper just got 18 months in jail and they are now suing the bank for allowing forged cheques to get passed.
It's kind of fun searching the names of the people you know or even googling yourself to see what others would find. I must have looked up 20 or 30 people from my high school and childhood years. Then it was 12:30 am and I shuffled off to bed.
One last positive. On the money side, we just saved some money. The Pocono's 70.3 sold out the other day before I could register. It was on Oct 2nd and I was thinking of doing it as part of my ITU race training. It selling out just saved me $1000. Alice is happy.
No Training
3627 Calories
2 comments:
wow. reading the first part about you and your researching investments is identical to me. I find myself OBSESSED with an idea and I HAVE to make it happen. I believe that I can NEVER FAIL.
I tried buying another property last year and it had acreage. I planned on starting a tree farm out there and in 5 years or so I could sell my stock to nurseries or the big box stores around us. I had everything planned out, I had drawn up the property and marked out where I wanted storage barns, the tree aisles, where the power would be brought in, detention pond for water... etc. I have a whole folder with all this crap I put days and days of thought and planning into. When it came down to it, I bailed. A 3rd house was too much for us at the time. I couldn't handle managing everything, landscaping and working full time.
So I get the obsessiveness you were describing. Be patient. Research it and research it BOTH ways. Research it as you are, as an investor. Then research it in the way as how it CAN fail. That research will help you be successful.
One other item I meant to tell you about when we were up there last month was that along with the rehab centers, they have Aquatic rehab facilities now. A lot of the older people have issues walking and joint pain. So in the water they weigh less and can do the treadmills in the water, etc. Something else to at least look at.
As for your brother, I wasn't going to say anything but he looks like shit in the pic you posted the other day. Like he got hit by a train, I just assumed stress was beating him up over the whole failed business episode.
If you don't write 10 page long blogs you won't be wasting 2hrs a day!!!
Whatever you end up doing, you will be successful at it. Just make sure its what you want to do and make sure that it fits your time allotment.
As for eating... you are a yo yo. These posts sound familiar to me again haha... like 1 year ago familiar. Go somewhere sunny and warm.
M, good investment advice. Interesting about the aquatic model. And yes, I'm a yo yo. haha.
B
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