Great Fortunes Are Made

I had a second - and hopefully last - surgery on my leg yesterday and am a bit zombied out because I refused to take pain medication last nght when it hurt. I'm a little bit afraid I'd become hooked and then next thing you know I'm that nice sweet neighbor that noone every would have guessed who gets hooked on Oxycotin. I'd love to see how that went down on this street of mine that has a ton of young families with little kids. As if not handing out Halloween candy last year hasn't made us enough of a pirahi with our neighbors.

So I'll keep this short with a thought I've had going over and over in my head recently. I apologize if I've written about these before but in that case you can skip over this and go to a more interesting blog.

"Great fortunes are made when there's blood in the streets." Apparently this is an adaptation on the original quote by Baron Rothschild, an 18th century nobleman who was part of the Rothschild banking family, but it works well regardless. In fact just yesterday a friend told me about a conversation she had with a local retailer. This retailer said that they've had a few bad months but in hindsight realizes that those months happened when she was being very conservative with her spending because the media hype had her completely freaked out that people were going to stop spending all together. As such, her shelves were only half full and it obviously impacted her sales since nothing could be bought. After a few months of this she realized she was being too conservative and took a leap of faith to buy up more inventory. Business is still down somewhat from the highs of 2008 but she's doing significantly better. It may not be a fortune right now, but that type of figuring out exactly where the line is that she has to walk may make the difference of her staying in business in the long run and at some point when this financial Humpty Dumpty gets put back together again she may be one of few retailers in her niche left standing which then does open her up for a potential fortune.*

*Keeping in mind that "fortune" varies wides from person to person and business to business. For some, being able to run a small business out of their home while caring for their kids is the fortune they dream of while others dream of making millions and going to live on a their own private island.