One day I read a fascinating newspaper article about a couple of young guys, who developed
an innovative first aid kit.
It had all the contents of a standard kit but with
a couple of unique features.

The first was its design, which was very trendy and looked very different from the existing boring looking models.
It had another advantage: the kit was made of a water resistant material, so even if it got wet, its contents would remain in perfect condition.

And lastly, this kit included a very informative first aid pocket-sized book, which offered guidance on how to apply first aid in common emergency situations.
So even if you knew nothing about how to administer first aid, this kit could really be useful to you.

The article praised these young entrepreneurs and their kit and I thought to myself. If they could do it, why can‘t I do the same?
It didn‘t seem that complicated to develop a similar kit and I thought I could make a lot of money selling it.

I didn‘t have enough capital to start such a business on my own, so I knew that I needed either an investor or a partner, who would help me finance this venture.
Since I had no idea how to find an investor, I chose to try and find a partner.

The first person I turned to was my manager at the water purification company where I worked.
He was the sales manager of the company; he liked me very much and we always got along quite well.

I knew that he had the entrepreneurial bug, just like me.
He fell in love with the idea immediately after I presented the article and my plan to him.
It didn‘t take long till we decided to go ahead with this idea, but we had a crucial problem.

We prepared a short and very basic business plan (which was too rosy and pretty much unrealistic, as we discovered later) and we found out that we still don‘t have enough start up cash.

Our solution was to find another partner.
And we did.

We found another sales person who worked in the company and presented our idea to him; he liked it very much and wished to join us.
Each of us brought an equal share of money with which we started our company.

We were all thrilled and extremely optimistic and had no doubt that in a couple of short months, we‘d all turn millionaires.
Reality, however, had other plans.

We rented a pretty expensive office space, bought office furniture and bought a lot of other unnecessary items (something we eventually regretted).
We manufactured the kit and started our (very short) journey.

Selling our kit was very difficult.

At first, we priced it very high – just as we planned in our initial business plan.
But the response from the market wasn‘t good, because although people liked the product, they were not willing to pay the price that we were asking.

We had to compromise and slash our price over and over again.
Finally, the product did sell well, but at a ridiculous price, which was very far from our initial expectations and plans.

We tried to reduce our manufacturing, marketing and operational costs, but when we didn‘t really succeed and when we understood that all of our initial calculations were completely off the mark and there was no realistic chance to succeed, we closed our business.

This was my first try and my first bitter business failure.
I had to terminate my first business only six months after starting it.
But problems didn‘t end there.

Next Chapter:
How I found out what it’s like to hit rock bottom.

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