For those that read this blog regularly, you’ll notice that I tend to reflect quite a bit on what has happened since I began my journey as a businessman. Although many may think that this all started with my minicab and airport transfer company, my first foray into business happened long before that.
The very first example I can think of was way back in primary school. I remember going to the local video shop every Friday evening to hire out the latest Indian movie that had been released on VHS (the term “Bollywood” hadn’t been coined yet).
It must have been around 1990 give or take a year as I was in the latter years of my primary schooling. On one of these evening visits to the video shop, I remember there being an upcoming show at Wembley Arena where some big Indian actors and actresses were going to be coming to the UK to perform. It was exciting stuff and the video shop was acting as a promoter so had these A5 size leaflets for the show giving all the show dates, times, and who was going to be performing. I don’t quite know why, but I took a handful home with me that evening.
Come Sunday night and I decided I’d take some of these to school in my little rucksack-style bag and show some friends the following day. So Monday came and during one of the morning breaks, I showed some friends these leaflets. Now we were all kids of barely ten years of age, so glossy leaflets of some extravagant show seemed somewhat exciting. A lot of people were asking if they could have a leaflet to which I replied “Sure, if you’ve got 10p”. Hands went into pockets and bags, and 10p coins were brought out. I ran out of the few I had that same playtime but I told the others that I’d bring some more the next day and reminded those that had pre-ordered to bring their money tomorrow.
In the evening, after dinner, I dragged my Dad back to that video shop and asked if I could have more leaflets. The owner agreed and I took a much larger stack than the Friday before. I sold out completely by the end of the week as it took a little while for some of the kids to convince their parents to give them the money. That week, having one of these leaflets seemed to be the ‘in’ thing and I made a good few week’s worth of pocket money that week!
To this day though, I don’t know why but one particular kid, a friend at the time, wanted more than just the one leaflet and ended up up buying 21 from me! I never did understand that. I’ll have to ask him if I ever meet him again.
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