My First "Successful" Business and the Power of Saying No.

This week, I discuss my first successful business I started when I was a kid, the lessons I learned from adding too many employees and the advice I would give myself back then - something I use daily today. 

Sponsor I Wish I Had:
Blenders Eyewear - premium polarized sunglasses at an affordable price.
blenderseyewear.com
@blenders on IG

Just the Tip:
Adding salt at the end when you're cooking mushrooms

Whisper In:
Cambridge Wines - Wine store in Summit, New Jersey
@cambridgewines on IG

Music by purple-planet.com
music by Wondershare Filmora 12

SIDMEDIA.net
@saturdayisdadurdaymedia on IG
@Saturdayisdadurdaymedia on YouTube

Transcript

For all you little entrepreneurs out there, today's the story of courtside cards
welcome everyone to another episode of The Story lesson advice podcast part of Saturday is Saturday, medium. Thanks for listening. In a couple of weeks, we are going to have a second podcast coming out. I hate reading, which is going to be a book review podcast where I'm going to casually review some of my favorite books. And I'm also going to be making food along with it because I hate reading but I love cooking and eating. So why not combine the two and kind of cancel each other out? So here we go. I said for all you little entrepreneurs out there. Today is the story of courtside cards. And if you're wondering what that is, well, I'm offended because I have no idea why a small business I created when I was 10 years old, isn't something that you're aware of, and is public knowledge to the world. So here we go. About when I was 10, maybe nine, I was really, really into basketball cards, and loved basketball. Everything about it, Michael Jordan was my hero, the bulls, all that sort of stuff. And I really got into basketball cards. And that was really popular back then baseball cards were popular a little bit earlier. And basketball really picked up steam in the mid early 90s, mid 90s. And I was really into that. So I started getting basketball cards. Anytime we would go to the store, I'd beg my mom or dad to have to buy a pack of cards, whether it was tops or upper deck or ultra or whatever else I can't remember. And I would also buy a pricing Pricing guide, I think was Beckett was the name of the pricing guide that I would use most frequently. And I would buy them and collect them. And I would I can't believe I'm going to say this, I would put them on the wall with like little sticky putty, just probably ruining all these cards that could have been worth a decent amount of money. But I really had fun with it. And in my room for anybody that knows me from from long ago. Ryan, I'm talking you will have a I used to have a wall and I call it the wall of fame. And I would hang up those these little cards of all of my favorite players, which is mostly just Michael Jordan and everybody else on the bowls. But reason I'm telling you this is because at about nine or 10, I had the idea of hey, what if I could write a little article in the newspaper. And we had a tiny newspaper called The Norway current. And I think it came out like once a month or twice a month. And it was a very small newspaper, because at the time I lived in a one or two stoplight town. But it was something I wrote. And I can't even remember what I called the name of the article. But I basically would talk about the cards that were popular, and the cards that were selling well and cards that weren't selling well. And I would use Beckett as sort of sort of the Becket pricing guide is like the, my resource, my research center, my Wikipedia, if you will. And if I look back, I think it was probably just straight plagiarism. But I had that entrepreneurial spirit. And I started writing an article in the paper. And it was fun, and I had fun doing it. My mom, dad would help me. But it kind of got me into doing something on my own, which I think was really cool that my parents encouraged me that and I had sort of some responsibility, that was a really big deal to me. And then I decided to parlay that into doing what I could to buy and sell and trade the cards that I had. So once in a while I would go to card events, I can't remember what they were called, but you could go and buy and sell cards, card shows. There you go. And I would bring a little packet that I had on my good cards and and I would go to these people that were usually middle aged, bearded men. Weird. You're looking at it, if you're watching YouTube that had these cases full of cards, and they had were in little plastic sleeves, and they had prices on them and and then they would sell packs of cards sometimes and I would go there and my dad would help me and we would kind of haggle back and forth and negotiate a little bit. And I would think most of the time, I probably wasn't coming out ahead. But a few times I remember making a couple of good deals and getting a couple of cards that I wanted and getting rid of cards that I didn't. And I sort of started started to do that a little bit. And I thought, hey, this is kind of fun. So what's the next evolution of this that I could do it by this time I was probably maybe 10 or 11. So my dad had a building small building where he had his law office and and it was a two storey building. And on the first floor, it was kind of it was occupied by some people. And then there were some spaces that were unoccupied and kind of like some some basement rooms, if you will that just sort of stored file cabinets or whatever. So kind of fixed up one of those areas. And I decided to have a little card shop that I would open up on Saturdays because my dad was there doing work. So he would go in and work for a couple of hours and I would open up this little card shop up from about nine to 11, nine to 12 every Saturday and I would call it courtside cards. And I bought a couple of wooden cases that had like the plexiglass. So I could store my cards in and display them nicely. They were just on the table also helped with theft. And I would take flyers that I would make, not on Canva, because that didn't exist. So this was me drawing, drawing them in and making a bunch of copies at my dad's office. And then he or my mom would drive me around our town in our neighboring towns. And I would ask all the local places of business, if I could display it in their window or on their counter or whatever to let people know. And I would do this all the time. And it got to a point where I would be really religious about it. And it was every Saturday from nine to 12. And I was open and I would get traffic from people from a couple of towns over that were driving 1520 minutes. And even sometimes a little bit further. And I made this payment, this sign that would go up front and I would nail it in the grass right by the road when I was open and it was a bright red sign and it said courtside cards and to show you my artistic creativity, which knows no bounds. The Oh was actually a basketball. So chew on that everybody if you want to talk about being an artiste like I am, so did that. And then I started paying to attend and be a vendor at these different card shows. And normally I stuck kind of close to town. But sometimes I would go 40 5060 miles outside of town with my parents out my dad would usually take me and it was a couple hours and pay $200 And, and usually I would make my money back and then some but it turned out to be a pretty profitable business for me as a 1011 1213 year old kid. I did it for a couple of years. And I was making sometimes on a Saturday like I would clear $200 in cash. And then the stuff that I paid for which was cards or whatever. And then I probably net out well over $5,200 In most Saturday. So for a kid trade basketball cards, making 50 bucks minimum every Saturday at 1011 12 years old. Not bad. So that's the story But boy oh boy, do I have a lesson.
All right, it's time for this week's sponsor I wish I had and for the YouTube audience. You can see what this sponsor is, is I am wearing these amazing sunglasses. The sponsor this week that I wish I had is blenders eyewear. They are premium polarized lenses, sunglasses, and they are at a very, very affordable cost. Now the story behind why this is a sponsor I wish I had is for years, I had paid a ton of money 150 200 bucks, sometimes even more to buy sunglasses like Oakleys or parasol or Maui Jims or whatever the case was. And they were they were good glasses but I just kept feeling like man this is so expensive for a pair of sunglasses and I always took care of my sunglasses, I kept them clean, kept them safe, I didn't lose them. But I was just not willing to pay $100 or more for a pair of sunglasses in any longer. So I was doing a bunch of research online and I stumbled across this company called blenders eyewear. And I started looking and they have some really cool sunglasses that are pretty casual. But really nice looking like nice enough to wear with most work clothes or business casual kind of stuff even though they're a little bit more on the casual side but super nice looking super sharp looking. And I ended up trying one pair that was in like a blue kind of a blue clear frame and a bright blue lens a really nice reflective lens so no one can see your eyes. Not being a creep just no one can see your eyes and really really awesome sunglasses so I bought those and I said I'm going to wait to save them. And the first day I'm going to wear them is going to be the day that I can swim in our pool for the very first time this was when I live back in Texas so I bought them I think I got them for my birthday in March. And we were supposed to have the pool ready to go by I think Mother's Day and I talked about this on a previous episode long story short it ended up being the middle of August before I could we could go swimming and these initial pair that I had just sat on my nightstand right there in the box for like five months and I was just at this point I was just adamant and defiant I'm like nope, not gonna wear him until the pools done. And like I'll never wear him ever if the pool doesn't get done that's how I'm going to be but I finally did and man I'm kicking myself because I wish I would have worn them the day I bought them. They are amazing glasses so much so that I bought two more pair. So I keep one in the house then that's my that I wear for a walk or aware of the pool. I have one pair in my car and I have one pair in my wife's car. So I always have a pair of sunglasses. My wife also has two pair of these. So we are huge fans of blenders eyewear. They're polarized. They are super affordable. I think I bought two pair for $50 And then the other pair that I bought the very first pair I think it was like 45 or $50. But definitely worth the price. I have beat the living hell out of all three pairs of these sunglasses. And they still look great. All you got to do to watch the lenses and frames is just a little soapy warm water and dry him off with a little sleeve that they give him and Bob's your uncle. So that's it. So this week's sponsor, I wish I had blenders eyewear, the best sunglasses I have ever worn at the best price that I have ever spent blenders eyewear, check them out.
Okay, as we continue my entrepreneurial journey as a pre team, with my card shop courtside cards, world famous the story was that I went from starting to write a little book or a little newspaper article every couple of weeks to opening up my own card shop and buying selling and trading cards and clearing 50 to $100 take home every single Saturday. So it was really a fun experience. But after a while, I wasn't growing that much. And I was I kind of flatlined. And I had a couple of friends that were quote unquote, regular customers. And they would come in, you know, every Saturday hang out for a while. We'd listen to music and you know, trade cards a little bit, maybe buy yourself something from each other. But they pretty much had the same cards. And when I was kind of slower, I kind of had the same cards as well. So it was really about getting traffic. And like I said it was in the basement of my dad's little office building. And it was in a very small town and the neighboring towns were also pretty small. So you know, my pool of eligible customers that were interested in buying, selling and trading basketball cards, was was small to begin with. So a couple of my friends had asked me, Hey, could we go in business with you. And they liked the idea of it. And they kind of said, like, hey, you know, we could pool our resources. And, you know, you'd have three of us kind of hitting the streets, putting up flyers and trying to advertise and all of that. And in my heart of hearts, I knew like that wasn't the right thing. And it's not that I didn't want to share what I was doing with anybody. And I wasn't trying to be selfish, but I knew like, I was taking it seriously, even though it was a silly little thing that you know, I was gonna stop when I got into high school. But it was something that I took seriously. And I wanted to put the effort into it. And for all of my friends that would show up and asked to be a part of it, it was just kind of something for them to do for a couple of hours on a Saturday kind of hang out. And they would just kind of sit there. And it was like they just sort of had someone else in the room with them or whatever, they had another spot to ride their bike to that kind of thing. So the lesson here is where I made the mistake, which was I said yes. Which taking on a business partner isn't inherently bad. Although, if you have a clear vision for your business, I think it's probably a better idea that you that you are the one in charge doesn't mean you can't hire support staff and you can't delegate. And you can't automate parts of your business now, but but back then if I could tell myself, say, hey, you know, you can hire them, pay them a flat fee to go do some of the aspects of the of the process of the job for you like the advertising one person goes up puts flyers, I'll pay you 20 bucks, one person makes the flyer, I'll pay 10 bucks, I should have done something like that. And then I could have focus more on how can I actually grow the business because the internet really wasn't a thing back then or was just on the very beginning of it. So I had to probably spend more time or talk to my parents or maybe some other parents or talk to other people at the card shops or card shows about how they grew their business. So I should have been doing more of that. But instead what I did was, I asked my friends are my friends asked me and I said yes. So now I took away a couple of my customers. And I made them part of my business. And now I had a table in my dad's office. One friend had a table in next to me and then another friend had a table next to me and there might have even been a third one. So I essentially took three of three of my customers and made them business partners, but they didn't have any skin in the game. I was the one that was still doing all of the work. And I was the one that was still responsible for most of most of the stuff most of the time. So the lesson is, for me, I think I was reluctant to say no, because at being a younger person, I thought that if I said no that that would mean to them that we weren't going to be friends or I didn't want to be friends with them or I didn't trust them or whatever and you know being young and not being able to kind of have the wherewithal or the vocabulary or you know, the ability to kind of communicate like hey, you know, I appreciate the offer but so the lesson for me in that was is that was I was afraid to say no to My friends, and I was afraid that that would lead to them being upset with me. And because of that, I said, Yes, and let them be a part of the business, I lost a couple of customers, I took on, you know, essentially dead weight. Because they really didn't have much to bring to the table other than just a few extra cards, but they weren't really doing anything to going out to go out and promote, or help increase this business or bring in any money, they didn't have any new ideas, or they didn't talk about, you know, trying to pull money to do something, to buy something else, or attend to cart show together or whatever. So because of that saying, saying yes, and letting them be part of the business was something I did, because I was afraid to, to say no, and just kind of go about that myself. And I also think that one of the things that I was struggling with was, I was putting I was saying yes to people that didn't actually really want to put in the work to be successful. They were interested in just being sort of success adjacent. And it's like, hey, if I stand next to someone who's successful, then I'll be successful. It's like, no, that's not how it works. And again, putting all this in context, I was a 12 year old selling basketball cards and making 50 bucks. It's not like the definition of success. But I think that that speaks volumes about certain people about the kind of effort that they're willing to put in. And at the time, it said a lot about me that I didn't understand maybe how to run a business. Again, I was 12. But that's a really good lesson that I think you can parlay that a relay that into today being adults is the when we do things that maybe we know we shouldn't, but we're doing it because we're trying to be a team player, or we're doing it to try to fit in or appease someone, or whatever the case is, when kind of deep down, we know that probably we should be going a different route. Or we should be passing on that opportunity or that collaboration or that project that's gotten a lot of people or whatever the case is. So for me, the lesson is not willing, not being willing to sacrifice, what I've built, or what any of us have built at work or any kind of side projects or anything like that. Don't be willing to sacrifice that because you don't want to have a tough conversation with with your friends, or people that are customers or co workers or whatever the case is.
All right, in this week's just the tip segment, it's another cooking tip. And this has to deal with mushrooms. So I love mushrooms. A lot of people don't like mushrooms because it's a weird texture thing because they're kind of they can be kind of slimy and gummy or fibrous or weird or kind of all these weird different textures at different stages if you eat them raw or you cook them or whatever. So I've got a tip to help you make good sauteed mushrooms. And they're kind of a couple of mini tips combined into one. First of all, and this applies to basically anything that you're cooking, you want to make sure that whatever pieces that you have cooking that they're all the same size. So whether that's sweet potatoes, or whether that's mushrooms or if you're cooking any other kind of vegetables, broccoli or whatever, you don't want some pieces to be giant some pieces to be super tiny, some pieces to be medium size, you want to pick a size that's going to work and have them all be as similar to that size as possible. And the reason why most importantly, for at home is that helps with even cooking. Now if you're in a restaurant, then you're also talking about presentation. And you're also talking about if someone puts their fork or their spoon into that piece of food. This is sounds funny, but seriously, can you fit it in your mouth ale? Is it appropriate I'm sure we've all been there where you're trying to eat a piece of lettuce somewhere at a at a restaurant or something and it's like it's like a leaf from Jurassic Park or whatever like How the hell am I supposed to take a bite of this but so number one is all the same size or as close to the same size as you can. For mushrooms if you're gonna sell at tam what I use is a hot pan oil is what I usually go in with olive oil and then I throw it away to the pan gets hot add your oil weight to the oil gets hot, add your mushrooms and then I cook them and notice you know there's one thing I omitted right now and that is adding salt. So mushrooms can can release a lot of liquid and you can have a lot going on in the pan that is not have anything to do with with being dry or being high heat or whatever so it's easy to it's easy to get these kinds of steaming or whatever so I wait to salt the mushrooms until towards the very end of the cooking process. So what I'll do is sauteed these mushrooms let any moisture get out of there moving around in the pan a lot to make sure nothing is burning. And I'm getting even color on the mushrooms as I'm cooking them in the pan. That is the saute part. sakeI is French it means to jump in the pan. So if you see shots on TV, and they're scooping the pan like that, and foods flying up and circling back into the pan and all that, yes, that's for show sometimes on TV, but the reason that you're doing that, when you're actually cooking is you're moving the food around without having to use a utensil, and you're adjusting what part of the food is touching the pan, the hot pan with the oil or whatever. So moving around quite a bit, you're going to have some moisture that leach out of there, it's going to evaporate off as long as your heats high enough. And then at the end, what I would do is hit him with some fresh herbs, fresh thyme is my absolute favorite with mushrooms. It's just, they're just a match made in heaven, I'd hit with a nice little scoop of butter. And let that swirl around, Continue to saute and move them around towards the very end and then just read when you're ready to pull them off the heat when they're nice and crispy and they got a good crunch on them. And there's some really nice texture, then hit it with a bunch of salt, give it some more saute. And then away you go. If you want to add pepper, go ahead and add it right before you go to serve it or right at the very end. But as I've said previously, I'm not a huge fan of salt and pepper in a lot of things because salt is a seasoning and pepper is a spice and pepper can burn, especially if you add it too early on. So I prefer to add it at the very end. I do love pepper, especially fresh crack black pepper. But I always added at the end. And the one thing I forgot at the end as well is I would hit it with some acid, usually lemon juice, and salt and some acid in there some lemon juice mixed around without butter at the very end is just awesome. So my recommendation, make sure the food is all the same size. Make sure you have a hot pan, then add your fat which is like oil or butter. Wait for that to get hot. Then add your food, in this case, mushrooms. Let them cook off, let any moisture that's going anything like that, move them around in the pan, make sure they get even coating. And then when you're getting close to the very end, hit it with some butter, hit it with some lemon juice or other acid. And then at the very, very end some fresh herbs. And at the very, very end, hit it with your salt. Make sure everything is evenly coated. And away you go. That is this week's long winded just the tip. All right, so now it's time for the advice portion of the story lesson advice podcast, the story of my car chop, the lesson that I learned was I said yes to hiring all of my or many of my customers and friends and basically had a lot of dead weight. And not a lot of collaboration or effort from other people. A lot of people wanted to be quote unquote, success adjacent. But they didn't want to actually put in the work to continue to grow it. The advice that I would go back and give myself and the advice that I give myself now and tell everybody that I can think of including whoever's listening to this the same thing. When it comes to most things, and this is going to be weirder than it sounds, your answer to almost everything should be No. and No, is a complete sentence. And it's a full answer. So when I say almost everything should be no, think about it work. Think about how many times that you're asked to do a little of this a little of that help with this extra thing, do this one extra thing. Add this in whatever. And we say yes. And people that are good workers and can work quickly. They often can say yes, because they can do it correctly, quickly. So it's like fine, yeah, just give it to me, I'll do it, I'll be done in five minutes. And there's going to be some of that, that we can't avoid. I can't avoid it in my job either. But we have I think built in over time so much of this, this acceptance or this understanding that if someone asks you, the answer has to be yes. Unless there is some major reason preventing you so unless you're sick, or you're stuck in traffic, or, you know you have another meeting or something like that, than the kind of understanding or the assumption is that the answer should be yes. And I think that is absolute bullshit. I think the answer should be almost no, unless there is a value added reason for you or me to do that thing. And I am talking about being selfish with our time because that is one of the few resources that is not renewable. And if you say yes to 10 different things every day or every week that just take a few minutes here or a quick 20 minute call there or, Hey, can you draft this up or whatever, you are overextending yourself and you're spending time on things that is taking you away from what you should be doing. And this goes again to other aspects of life. One of the things that I tried to convince my mom about and she's fine with it now but at first she wasn't is especially with like ring doorbells and everything if someone rings Is the doorbell at your house, that doesn't mean that you have to go answer the door, it just means that someone is ringing the doorbell. And if anybody has had solicitations from, you know, solar panel, people or roof people after a storm or something like that, you get a ton of people showing up at your door knocking and ringing your doorbell. And if you open up, you're automatically engaging in something. So unless you're expecting something or unless you think it's one of your neighbors or something like that, that you want to talk to them, there's no expectation that you have to do that. Same with the phone call, the understanding and assumption has been over the course of time that if someone calls you that you need to answer the phone. And now we're a lot better about you know, sending people to voicemail or just not answering or whatever. But you don't have to say yes to almost anything, there's very few things. So what I would try to tell myself go back in time tell my daughter when she's older. And now is that you can say no. And you should say no to almost everything. And once you get comfortable saying no. Then you will see a huge amount of time and energy and just sort of a weight lifted off your shoulders, all of that will just open up. So my advice is say no to almost everything.
Okay, on this week's Westberg it is an Instagram account that I have been following for about six months. And if anybody knows me, you know that I love red wine. I love Prosecco. And I love bourbon. And these guys are called Cambridge wines. They are a wine and liquor store on the East Coast. And they have an awesome Instagram account, where they have one or two people that post almost every day, or at least once a day about different wines in different regions of the country. Different bourbons, different other spirits, all sorts of stuff. And their goal is to educate and inform. And they always provide an idea of a budget friendly object that has great value and an extravagant option. Or, hey, if you're spending $50 on this bottle of wine, you should be drinking this bottle of wine. That's $19. And here's why. So they're excellent at educating in very small bite sized pieces. And they are very realistic with understanding that people have budgets when it comes to alcohol. So Cambridge wines on Instagram, I highly recommend you give them a follow. You will find so many great piece of information. The next time you need to go shopping for wine, or beer or bourbon or spirits. So check them out Cambridge wines. This week's whisperer
All right, let's wrap this puppy up. So today, the story courtside cards. My young entrepreneurial spirit can't believe I said that entrepreneurial word correct every time today creating a little card shop but started out as me reading an article in the paper a couple of times a month, which I think was actually just me plagiarizing an article in a pricing guide. But you know who's to say no one knows. Taking it all the way to me doing a little card shop every week in the basement of my dad's office, attending card shows putting up flyers all around town, and kind of building something for a 1011 12 year old that was pretty cool. And was making 50 to $100 Most weeks that I would get after all my expenses that I would get to put in my pocket. So that was pretty neat. The lesson from that is eventually my business sort of kind of flatlined, and I wasn't really sure how to grow it. So I had friends that were customers of mine that asked me to join the business. So they did that. And once they did that, I noticed that I lost them as a customer. And then I also added some dead weight to because they were interested in being success adjacent. But they weren't necessarily interested in putting in the work and helping me actually build this thing out to make it bigger, better, more, whatever the advice that I would give to anybody listening and it was a really good piece of advice that looking back I learned on now is your answer to almost everything should be known. And that might sound controversial. But when you are getting pulled in a million different directions from coworkers and friends and your boss and other things. Your answer should be no if there isn't truly value being added to you. Or if you are not going to be able to add a true value to what's being asked of you. Then your answer should be NO and NO is a complete sentence. For the sponsor. I wish I had put Put them on again. Boom blenders eyewear polarized eyewear that you can see on if you're watching on YouTube right now, I have three pair of these my wife have as to, we've had them for a couple of years, they are awesome wearing in the pool where I'm outside, running or walking in the yard, doing yard work, whatever were driving, they're really nice enough to wear with business casual, they look great at the pool, so highly recommend checking them out blenders eyewear, very affordable. The just the tip segment was all about sauteed mushrooms, and how basically at the end of the day, I wait to the end of the process before I add myself to the mushrooms because they can give off a lot of moisture. So I prefer to wait to the end until they're crispy or, and hit them with salt when I'm finishing them in the pan with some butter and some fresh herbs and some lemon juice. And the whisper in was Cambridge wines, their Instagram account I've been following for about six months. And they are I believe a liquor store on the East Coast, I think New Jersey area, they have a couple locations. And they have a great Instagram account where they have a couple of guys that are on every single day. And they're educating you on different price points of wine, spirits, beer, bourbon, all that kind of stuff. And they're also telling you, hey, if you're drinking this one that's a premium cost. Take a look at this one where there's really great value, and it's a lower price point. They kind of walk you through the differences between champagne and sparkling wine and all that kind of stuff. And they're showing you different wines from different regions around the world, not just Napa Valley. So it's really good. It's been really educational for me and really fun. And I have written down or screenshotted a lot of the things that they point out, and I've gone to the liquor store locally where I live and picked up the bottle of wine multiple times and my wife and I have really enjoyed it. So Cambridge whines is this week's whispering? That about does it. If you are enjoying this, thank you very much for listening, consider sharing this episode with somebody else checking out our YouTube channel at Saturday is Saturday media. Same with my Instagram account at Saturday is Saturday media, new podcasts coming new videos coming on YouTube that are going to be more than just clips of the podcast. I'm going to be doing some cooking videos with a new podcast and then other cooking videos that are just independent just me doing my thing showing you some tricks and tips that I've learned over the years and trying to pay it forward to anybody that's interested in learning how to cook a little bit more. So thank you very much for listening. We'll see you next week with another episode of The Story lesson advice podcast. Have a good one.