[quote=grooviegravy;39194]
Quote:
Originally Posted by GordonJ
When I went to New Mexico and stayed with THE BOZ (Bud Riggs) on his 200 acre desert ranch, replete with rattlesnakes, black widow spiders, rabid dogs and coyotes, mean barn owls, screeching hawks and creatures from the desert...it was a very educational time.
Boz and I became fast friends. After our soiree into selling the HEADLIGHT CLEANING MANUAL (still my best opening day ever, 103 x 97 bux), and he pulled the plug on the project, we did other things.
I'll keep this focused, if I can on mail order.
In the little two bedroom guest house where I slept (barely, and even then with the lights ON) one of the bedrooms was filled to the top with boxes, I think from SMC., although it could have been Mellinger's or Mail Order Associates, all pretty much the same thing. I think it was SMC, those guys with the Tom Bosley of Happy Days ads and infomercials.
Anyhow, he said there was about 12 to 15 thousand dollars of merch, his cost.
In his garage/work area/office he had by my best guess a collection of at leastg $100,000.00 of courses, books and info products. Some of you might remember we offered some for sale. Boz had every Real Estate Course ever made, he bought them all.
All this is just a little background.
So one day we made our rounds, Car Wash for some headling cleaning, brunch at Chinese buffet, then the post office, where he kept two boxes and then to a USPS store (hybrid) where he kept TWO other mail boxes and where he rec'd packages.
We get back to the ranch and I help him haul in the mail and put the headlight cleaning kits away, he always had a habit of refilling everything when he got home, charging the batteries on the drills, and being ready to grab and run the next day.
He gives me a couple of boxes, and when I open them, dozens of USPS priority mail falls out, and as I open them up, twenties, fifties and hundred dollar bills come pouring out. What the HEY?!
Oh no, my knee jerk reaction, who deals what in CASH? Well he did. But this money came from a "few" of his mail order operations.
The boxes came from different locations, the envelopes sent to a re shipping house, and then mailed to him at his location. It was then I discovered why he pulled the plug on our little headlight cleaning manual, just wasn't worth his time to deal with people.
Too much people contact. There was a reason, after all, the guy lived in the desert. He owned several rental properties, mostly mobile homes (trailers he called them) and sold them mostly on land contract basis.
Income was not his real concern, and with all this CASH pouring in, it almost made me want to grab a shovel and start digging, but having gotten to know the man, I probably would have hit one of the booby traps.
Gordon
And, yet...the headlight business was all about dealing with people.
I remember him posting some of his more frustrating encounters.
Gotta wonder why he would have tolerated it, with all that mail order money coming in.
Mystery of mysteries.
Ron
|
0
Not really a mystery, lots of people TOLERATE other people during the course of their business or work day. And, as often introverts are, he would make minimum effort in his approach, something we worked on when I got there, taught him the Go F yourself approach to selling.
But as annoyed as he might get in dealing with people at the car wash, he did much better at car lots and home work, where he would go to their home. Once I rode with him, we kept each other entertained, (remember m sign guy video?).
Those were wee annoyances and escape to the ranch did the trick. He couldn't escape the ONLINE ya hooos. They were there, on the computer, morning noon and night.
I thought he had a 100 k a year business and maybe more if he wanted to license it out, he freaked at that thought.
Cleaning Headlights was something he did to have SOME people interaction, another contradiction often found in introverts. When his wife got sick, he was all alone and so he went to town, and it was as much a people experiment as it was a science one for him. Financially, he just wanted to not have to go to the ATM for cash when they went out.
Headlight Cleaning quickly replaced the trips to the ATM.
I have no idea what his net worth was, other than he had a debt free lifestyle, 200 acre ranch, with landing strip and at one time a couple of airplanes, and an 18" thick brick house he built himself from the dirt on the premises. I guess, both he and his wife who invested heavily in SMC, with the idea to open a couple of times a week in town...
wanted something to do, as much as any money making stuff. I think when he passed, that SMC stuff was maybe tossed out? I know he had no idea what was in all those boxes and no desire to find out.
Yes, an enigma of a guy, private, secretive and why he did that stuff, we'll never know.
It seemed, after a while, he would come mumbling back to the truck with some quips and burns, and at times, I think he got more of a kick coming up with things to say about the jerks, than he got from actually doing a headlight. I did see him raise his price to 75 dollars for one lamp for a guy who he didn't like.
He was one of those oddball characters, once you get to know, is very interesting. I like those kind of people.
Why and what they get themselves into, often situations they create, which go against their personality, it does make one wonder, what the HEY?
PS, Cleaning Headlights could be easily done by a deaf person, cards on the windows, or a little card handed to someone...maybe a sell sheet, and even Larry the Mime could clean headlights.