There Are No Truly Wasted Relationships

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February 14, 2008

NOTE: This is another post written in the past - late 2006.

Everything you are in life right now is a culmination of every experience you’ve ever had, every thought you’ve ever had, and of course every relationship you’ve ever had.

I don’t think there is any such thing as a truly “wasted” relationship.

Even the most insignificant amount of time spent with someone can create ripples or even waves of effect for you later on down the line… even if all you got out of it at the time was a little fun with someone hot.

Ticia taught me a lot about how to woo the “unattainable” girl…

Allison gave me fond memories of spending two summers together, one of which involved lots of me sneaking over to keep her company at whatever house she was babysitting for that day.

And I had this very interesting time with Tina, one evening when she left college in her little Geo to pick me up where she sped us over to her empty parents house at about 85 mph to “keep her company while she did her laundry.”

With Becky, there were fun times, very memorable moments in time… and it was she who first introduced me to the pleasant intracacies of St. Louis.

But sometimes, what you might carry away is more than just a set of fond memories and lessons learned…

Courtney was, and likely still is, an infomercial junkie. It was cute how she used to get all worked up over a Ron Popiel pitch for kitchenware or some kind of oven. And it was there on infomercial TV where she learned about the Oreck Air Purifier.

Wanting to keep the dust levels in my place as low as possible (since I was not particularly fond of dusting every few days), I had been using an Ionic Breeze for about a year.

Well, as soon as Courtney found out about this amazing Oreck machine, she nagged (read: cutely begged) at me until I finally sold my Breeze and got one.

I was impressed. It really was a lot better than what I had been using, but that’s not the real purpose of this story. The REAL purpose of this story is what happened because of all this.

See, the guy I had decided to buy my Oreck from was a guy here in St. Louis named Mike. And when I went to go pick it up from him, I saw he had a few more lying around as well. So I asked how much, and he decided to give me a deal.

I quickly went home and sold the extras for a decent little profit, which pretty much paid for the $220 I spent on buying the one for me.

Then… I went back to Mike… and… got some more.

And…. sold those for a decent little profit as well.

“Hmm…” I thought. “I wonder if I could really turn this into something.”

So eventually Mike and I worked out a deal where I could get as many as I wanted for a certain price as often as I wanted. I figured out the average price I could fetch for them and spent awhile perfecting a pitch for them that (I hoped) would set me apart from all the other sellers.

And…it worked! After I worked out all the bugs in the math, found what worked best in the pitch, and settled into a pattern, at least for awhile there for a few months I was pulling down around $20,000 per month. (yes, per month)

It was kindof funny there for awhile. I could’ve swore the people at my bank were wondering if I wasn’t doing something illegal… because I was withdrawing about $4,000 in cash about every week or so. But to their credit, they did treat me really nicely and several of them learned my name.

Then, after awhile of fighting off relentless competition trying to drive the prices down, my margins weren’t what they used to be and so I went out of the Oreck business. It was good while it lasted, but it was some to move on to something else.

But… if it were not for Courtney and her love of infomercials rubbing off on me, probably none of it would’ve ever happened.

That wasn’t the only relationship I’ve ever benefitted from monetarily, either. Something similar happened with Christine, except this time it wasn’t an existing product like the Oreck, but an idea for a product I ended up creating, testing and rolling out on. That one turned into a decent amount of money as well. (***none of this is to say those are the only ways I benefitted from any of these events… there are many ways, but they are the for the talk of another post)

When will it end? I have no idea. But that’s not the point. You’ve just got to ride these sorts of things until they run out of steam. Then… it’s onto whatever’s next. And next after that, etc.

There will be failures in everything but they are only failures if you do not learn from or leave with anything from them.

You really do just have to keep swinging the bat until you knock several out of the park. That’s what it’s really all about.