Christina
Mehlhorn
August 15
Sometimes Fables Are Truthful
Going into today's market, Maura and I both had the same mindset. We both had the idea in our heads that it was going to be a really successful day. The week prior, we had almost sold out of every variety of microgreen we had brought to the market. Despite the temperature on the prior Monday, we had a steady flow of both interested passers-bye and customers, leading to the ultimate success of that day. Because today's weather was so beautiful, sunny and not too hot, we believed that it would lead to even more success than the hotter day from the week before. We assumed there would be more foot traffic and therefore more interest would be generated in the product. This, however, turned out to be the complete opposite of how the day actually played out. We had fewer people stop to speak to us about the product than we did on the first day. Our sales consisted of the handful of regulars we collected over the course of the summer. Each person bought one, maybe two, products. Other than that, we had no other sales. Both Maura and I were completely baffled by this. We didn't understand
how we could have made the completely wrong assumption about the way the market would play out. At first, I didn't really know what to make of this. The day was so beautiful and we had seen an increase in our sales recently. What happened to make today any different? After reflecting a bit more on the day, I realized the takeaway shouldn't be focused on what happened or didn't happen, but rather how this day fits into the planning scheme of a business. This thought brought me to reminisce on a fable that I remember from my childhood: don't count your chickens before they hatch. If the market was an important extra source of income for the company, it would be easy to look at a specific day and the previous sale trends and make the assumption that there would be a solid amount of money to come out of this day. Furthermore, it would be easy to take that fictional money and say it will be coming in so then we can use it for the purchase of x, y or z before it has even come in. Because the day then didn't play out that way, a company could find itself in a tough situation where they bought something or invested in something that they now cannot pay for because the money didn't materialize in the way that it was assumed to. I think
the day really emphasized in my mind how important it is to experience a day that is supposed to bring in money, see how much money is actually made and then plan accordingly based on how much monetary success actually came out of the day rather than the projected success. Patience is a virtue, but being patient enough to actually have the money in one's hands before applying it to something else for one's business is not a virtue but rather an important skill to master.