Sitting at a Crossroads
“What is your annual projection of sales?” The insurance agent asks as I fumble for an answer.
“Uh.. that’s hard to say. We really have no idea at this point. Maybe $12,000 per year to start?”
“That doesn’t seem like a lot,” he says, “I think the minimum policy would be $50,000 per year.”
“Ok, put the minimum then.”
“I’m not really understanding what you are doing here. It sounds like this is just a hobby. Why are you even bothering to get insurance?” He asks in a critical tone.
“Well, we are simply trying to cover all of our bases. Since we will be selling product to the public, we feel it’s smart to be insured. However, my biggest concern is if we decide to close our doors, what happens if we cancel our insurance policy and we get sued two years later?”
“Well then you wouldn’t be covered. Most people would keep their insurance policy for years after they close a business.”
“That sounds expensive,” I say as my heart drops into my stomach.
After hanging up with the inquisitive insurance agent, I began to ask myself these same questions.
Is this swimwear line just a hobby?
Ideally, I would love for any of my business endeavors to be profitable and pay the bills, but that doesn’t mean our sales need to be one million per year. My goal with any business is to find a happy medium where I make enough to live, but I don’t have to spend my life slaving away at it.
My goal is not to be rich. Mo money mo problems, so I like to keep it simple.
It seems the system doesn’t agree with people who believe in this approach to a business. They scoff at people who don’t have a delusions of grandeur or lofty sales projections (as if these things two things are the only way to create a successful business).
I look at my father when I think of how I want to approach business. I’ve seen this man break his back working 80 hour weeks to build a business that now has him chained just like any other job. Actually, he is probably even more stressed than if he were working for someone else.
Between the exorbitant insurance costs, rent, taxes, lawyer fees and employee costs – before you know it, you are just struggling to pay all the bills and are extremely lucky if there is any money left over to pay yourself.
That’s not what I want for myself.
So what do I want? I want to sell some bikinis in addition to running a travel blog and building my photography portfolio. But is that possible?
Just as I thought we were at the final stretch and my sleepless nights would end… I was mistaken. It seems if it’s not one thing, then it’s another. Production is a nightmare and so far we have not been able to find anybody who is capable of sewing the swimwear correctly.
So I sit here at a crossroads. Do I just call our investment in this project a loss and quit while we still have some sanity and savings left? Or do I listen to my gut and forge forward through all the muck and pave new ways of thinking as we go?
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