I have talked about never venturing into something that you have no knowledge of. In whatever you decide to venture in, do make an effort to learn first if you are ignorant about certain things. So if there really is a very good opportunity in front of you and you have no experience or whatsoever in that field what would you do? The opportunity is too good to pass. Then it’s time to learn isn’t it?
Learning on the job
If you have managed a business before, it will be a lot easier as you will not have to learn the managing aspect of this new venture. All business are almost managed the same way. Good accounting practise, good human relations, god cost saving practises, all these are the basics that you have learned. The most important part is the technical part of the new venture. You might no nothing about it. So if you really can’t let the opportunity pass, you will have to learn as much as you can in the shortest given time.
I was an electrician by training. During the boom years, lots of young men earned good money and when young people have lots of money. what is the first thing they buy? A car of course. And when a young man buys a car, what do they do? They make up and upgrade their cars. The most popular upgrading they do immediately after taking delivery of their spanking new cars are the rims. They will replace the set of original rims and tyres with set of racing rims and low profile tyres. So Tyre shops did a booming business during that time.
Another area the mufflers. They love loud and sporty mufflers. I took the opportunity to open up a muffler shop, and I knew nothing about mufflers. I knew nothing about installing a muffler. I can’t even do a good weld.
The first thing I did was to learn how to weld. Using the new equipments I bought, I self taught myself on the finer points of welding. I don’t know how many pieces of metal plates I have messed up before getting a grasp of how to do a god and strong weld.
Read and learn from Magazines
Buy a lot of magazines. I bough tons of auto magazines, especially those concerning on car upgrading. There will be pages and pages of information on how to upgrade the exhaust systems and the kind of mufflers that will give the best performances.
In a span of about six months, I knew more about mufflers than anybody else. When a customers walks in I was able to recommend the kind of systems that will match their models. It was not the best six months as I did screw up a few initial modifications, but luckily for me, the customers were even more ignorant than me, so I was able to make them happy.
The boom continued for 8 years and I did some good business between those years.
Be brave to take risk
It was a risk that I took and worked out. Many did not. Few other muffler shops sprouted up but most did not make it. They did not bother to look up for new ideas and products and concentrated on selling and replacing original parts which did not have a good profit margin.
After the boom ended, and car manufacturers decided to make their mufflers to last longer, business took a very drastic drop. Since the spending power has become limited, my business to suffered and there was not much I can do. Eventually, the muffler business folded up, but it was a good 12 years before that happened.