From Sidewalk to Boardroom. My Early Adventures in Entrepreneurship

By Sarnaa Archie

I've always been interested in finance. No. Money. It fascinates me. Who had it, who didn't, and why? How those who had it got it, and those who didn't, well, why they didn’t, and most importantly, how I could become one of the ones who got it instead of the ones who didn’t.

Business seemed like a prominent place to look for money because every time I went into a company with my parents or some other person who was old to me at the time who had money, they gave their money to a business. Then Wall Street seemed like the next prominent place to look because, as the TV reported every night, it was where money was being made—like a factory, I thought.

The more I dug, the more I found out that’s exactly right. It works like a factory designed to create and collect dollars from the top, from the middle, off the bottom, and definitely and always on the side of practically everything.

Wall Street was also a business.

I was in love. I was endlessly fascinated.

But how did it all work? I remember realizing, around the age of 8, probably closer to 5 (so sometime in the late 80s), that the news always said that a particular company’s stock price went up because it had reported more profits than last year or that another company’s stock price went down because its earnings decreased from the previous year.

So, this thing called “profits” had to be the thing.

What, exactly, was a profit? I had to find out.

I discovered it on a trip with my mom to Price Club, where I noticed they sold everything in bulk, and for the first time, I believed I stumbled on a key to the whole “profit” thing.  I thought, “This must be the place where the Koreans who owned the corner mart got their chips, sodas, 40 ounces, and detergent, and just maybe where they also bought, in bulk, at a lower price than they sold to me the Now-and-Later candy I used to buy on the regular.”

I did a quick calculation.

A whole bucket of these candies cost $10—a sum I didn’t have. And there were 100 units of candy in the bucket. That meant that, before tax (which wasn’t my concern), each wrapped flavor of candy (five Now and Laters came in one “sleeve”) was $0.10 each and that I could probably get away with selling one for twenty-five to thirty-five cents and I could keep the difference, about fifteen to twenty-five cents per “sleeve.” This meant that if I sold the whole bucket full, I could make $15 to $25 on a $10 bucket (of someone else’s money) simply because other people were too stupid or too lazy to go to Price Club to buy their own goddamned bucket. (I was a cynical kid. I hadn’t yet understood the concept of “value.”)

But I didn’t have $10.

That’s when I learned about capital structures, though I didn’t know what they were then. Someone would have to give me the money to start this venture.

Would I borrow the money (from Mom) or give her a share of my company? (Yes, these were my actual thoughts. Remember, I’d already learned about stocks and bonds. I thought they were pieces of paper companies used to scam others. And sometimes, that was  true.)

The decision, however, was made for me.

Prudent, she balked at the idea of owning a single piece of my worthless company. (She missed the long-term upside potential of a burgeoning, budding Willy Wonka in the making.)

Instead, she offered to loan me the money when I told her my plan. She then purchased the bucket of candy for me.

On that same day, I took the candy home and, on the sidewalk in front of our house, in a lawn chair, perched intentionally in the middle of the sidewalk but safely away from the curb, opened my first business and made a profit.

I knew then that I was what I most revered: a businessman.

But I never reached my profit potential in that business.

Sitting on the sidewalk waiting for people to buy your Now-And-Laters is more challenging than you think.

On the first day, a typically beautiful day in sunny southern California, kids on bikes in the neighborhood bought up their fave flavors. Then, I ate a packet or two of my own. (A bonus). Then the next day, Compton’s finest in their cop cars, showing community support or sugar fiends or both, stopped to buy some, too. Then, the next day was slow and tedious. My mother suggested I take out a book to read, as usual, something about business or inventions or a government manual lying around the house. Then, Day Light Savings time shortened the hours for my main customers and me. Then, the sun shortened hours for me and the life of my product.

Undeterred, I kept at it, creatively, trying to solve one problem after another, dropping prices and freezing the candy after it would soften. I sampled the product once more. The customers complained, and one dared ask for a refund for hard and porcelain-like Now And Laters and dared to compare my prized taffy delicacies to Peanut Brittle. (Scoff)

Business is hard. That’s what I learned.

But I was hooked on business, finance, economics, law, and everything else business.