Stupid choices.

If you had owned and operated a Petrol Station /Mechanics workshop and it went bust. If you had almost lost your mothers house as she went guarantor on a loan for a failed hairdressing business. If you had purchased a beach house property on Phillip Island and over committed yourself. If you had other ventures that had gone badly, would you go back to the well and try again?

I expect most people would say ‘Yes’, it’s in the blood to find that pot of gold, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for giving it another go, but you’d think you’d really investigate the options. You’d do plenty of market research; you’d get plenty of independent advice. Well you’d think so.

So why is it that my second cousins decided to invest in 3, count them, 3, franchises of the Danoz Direct variety? I know that there might be people that buy the Danoz stuff from the TV ads but who would walk into a shop and buy that crap? For the life of me I can not understand why you would think this was going to be a huge money spinner. Not to mention the fact that the locations were inside 3 of Melbourne’s largest shopping centres, so the rent is horrendous. What the hell were they thinking?

I saw them at a funeral last week and they told me that they almost lost their house when the venture went belly up, what a surprise. I just wished they’d sanity check this sort of stuff with others in the family, removed enough so that we can be honest, I hate seeing people in that position. All it would have taken is for me to give them the “You’ve got to be kidding” look and maybe they would have thought twice.

I’ve been thinking about taking the leap out of the comfy desk job and into small business, hopefully I won’t fall into the same trap the cousins found themselves in. Now they have to sue and try to recover from someone for the broken promises, it will only get messy. I wish them well.