I’m in the Wrong Line of Work

Since the time the albatross that was my law school loans were paid off (at a decently aggressive rate, but probably not the house-is-on-fire-throw-everything-you-can-at-them rate that a certain mustachioed blogger might have screamed at me), we’ve lived beneath our means and saved money. We could have saved more. A fair amount more. And we could have invested the spread between net revenue and expenses. Alas, we were ignorant, and did not.

But I’m proud that we’ve rarely spent money on wholly foolish things. Maybe we spent money on some suboptimal things. And maybe too much on other things. But our purchases have in almost every instance been mindful.

I mention all this because other people sometimes spend money on things that I consider to be . . . um . . . less than smart, and occasionally so . . . um . . . not smart that even this jaded blogger is surprised.

Present value

A while back, I discussed some of those (what I consider to be) less-than-smart purchases that others made for Thing Two (The Younger). Specifically, he was gifted an $80 electric monkey that he played with once (twice, if we’re being generous in defining “played with”) and a $100 drone that has functioned almost equally well as a dormant object collecting dust.

I could add to this list some other items that people bought for Thing Two and for Thing One (The Elder) that had near-equal poor “return on investment.” But that would have made for a waaaay overly long blog post. And it may have induced in me a fatal aneurysm thinking about those things. That would have been bad. Or possibly, assuming you think this blog sucks — and let’s face it, that’s a reasonable conclusion — good.

But this weekend, I think that I discovered the least smart of all less-than-smart expenditures. But I simultaneously discovered one of the greatest of all great business models.

First the questionableness (it’s a word, trust me).

Dear Reader, Thing Two had a birthday recently. A week or so before his birthday, The Missus got a call from someone (Someone), who wanted to give Thing Two a gift. As The Missus explained it to me after the call, Someone had in mind as said gift having some kind of big yard sign wishing Thing Two a happy birthday put up in our yard.

The Missus asked me what I thought of the idea. I replied that: (1) I thought that Thing Two would consider the sign ostentatious and that be embarrassed by it, and (2) to me, it sounded like a complete waste of money, and that a better gift would be something — anything — else. I suggested that The Missus tell Someone “thanks, but some other gift would be much better.” The Missus nodded, and the conversation left my mind.

Late in the evening on the day before Thing Two’s birthday, I noticed that Thing One and The Missus were all aflutter about something and were darting to and from the front window of our house. Eventually, curiosity got the best of me and I asked what was going on. They told me that the sign had been put up in our yard. I reminded The Missus of our conversation a week earlier, to which she replied, “Oh, it’s fine!” all but totally rolling her eyes at my exasperation.

I threw up my hands and decided to have a look at the sign. There in our yard, in yuuuuge letters, was “Happy Birthday Thing Two [Is that his real name, Dear Reader? A blogger never tells!]” The sign faced the street. So to read it and see the colored letters, I actually had to exit the house and go to the sidewalk in front of it. From our front window, all we saw was a jumble of white, backwards letters. But passers by — 99.9999999999% of whom have no idea who Thing Two is and care not one whit about his birthday — would be able to see it. And do precisely nothing to benefit Thing Two’s life.

The next morning, Thing Two’s actual birthday, I showed Thing Two the sign. Equal parts mortified and unimpressed, he would later describe it as “obnoxious.” I was spot on as to his reaction, and he was spot on as to his assessment of the sign. Thing Two looked at the sign a grand total of, literally, 5–10 seconds over the two days it was on our lawn. And I’m probably being generous. He likely will not remember the sign or Someone’s gesture. Except, perhaps, in a negative light.

I would be hard pressed to think of an equally worthless gift.

Boy, genius

And now the business model.

Curious as to the cost of the gift — or, put another way, how much of a waste of money that the gift was — I went on the interwebs. The price, I quickly discovered, was approximately $100.

The Missus had also told me that we don’t actually get to keep the letters/sign. Rather, it stays up for two days, and then the sign company (Company) picks it up. So we didn’t actually get to keep anything. Except for a memory, which as I mentioned likely won’t be a good one for the “recipient.”

Given that it appeared that the Company’s expenses are likely few, and its ROI is sky-high, I did some research to see if I could find actual numbers. Here’s what I discovered. The Company franchises out its operations in localities. A franchise costs approximately $10K–15K. There’s apparently a few thousand dollars in annual expenses in subsequent years, and a portion of sales revenues go to the mother ship. I (and the Company, too) see little need for the franchisee to have labor other than himself or herself. And assuming the franchisee has a decent amount of space on his or her property, the entire operation can be conducted out of the home and the materials stored there, too.

Put another way, this is a very cheap operation to set up and run. I also found information on the Company’s revenues (which, let’s face it, are mostly profits) and discovered that they’re quite healthy, thank you very much.

Genius. Absolute genius.

I thought the $80 electric monkey and $100 drone were wastes of money. Oh, how naïve I was. What’s more, the monkey and drone took some engineering feats and many parts to put together. The sign took none of that. So it was a cheaper and way more efficient money-spinner.

Like I said in the title of this blog post, I’m in the wrong line of business.

And in the end . . .

Dear Reader, Someone could waaaaay more than well afford the expense for the yard sign. But to me that’s irrelevant. Because some expenses, like this one, are just um . . . so less than smart that there’s little or no justification for them.