What Does Success Look Like?

That is a harder question to answer than you might think, because there are several possible long-term futures. Those will be the subject of future posts. For today’s essay, let’s make these assumptions:

1. That Curio City Online continues indefinitely as a one-man, home-based, online-only operation;
2. That I solve enough structural financial problems to achieve profitability in 2007;
3. That I can do #2 while still devoting 16.5% of gross sales to payroll, and that I can handle the business while remaining the only employee;
4. That I can achieve the above and also take on some additional expenses (like insurance), and can eventually pay temporary part-time help so that I can take a vacation now and then.

In other words, I’m assuming for the sake of discussion that things go on pretty much as they are now, except with dramatic growth continuing for 2-3 more years.

I said in an early post that riches are not my goal in life. I only need to pull out a salary of $50,000 per year to live quite comfortably. That means Curio City has to gross roughly $300,000 per year. Quite simply, that's my success level.

In Year One (November to November, so not including this all-important Christmas season), I made 515 sales, averaging 1.4 per day. Gross sales were $22,510 with an average ticket of $43.71. To reach $300,000, I’d need 6,865 sales, or 18.8 sales per day.

It sounds like a lot. It is a lot. But it’s attainable. I already make four or five sales on my good days. My busiest day ever hit 18 transactions, and I’ve averaged 10-15 per day for the past few weeks. I've had to run at full speed. It’s hard to imagine processing 20 sales a day on average, but it's not impossible...and I've shown that I can (just barely!) handle the logistics of finding, ordering, receiving, storing, packaging, and shipping that much stock. It would become overwhelming to do it routinely, but that is a problem I’d love to have.

My goal for 2007 is to double my 2006 sales, and end the year with a profit (even just $1). Curio City will pay me in salary about the same amount as I plan to infuse, making the year revenue-neutral from a personal point-of-view.

If I can achieve this realistic goal in 2007, I will feel comfortable taking out a loan for a major expansion in 2008. That’s where my “possible futures” columns come in, so I’ll leave it at that for today.

Other Forthcoming Topics:

• Christmas Wrap-Up
• Credit Card Processing
• Possible Futures
• Planned features