Hello everyone again!
I've hoped you enjoyed my last few posts in this blog for my journey, its been a quick update to roughly where we are today! May have given you a few ideas for some of you looking to make money properly to fund a business idea! It certainly helped me. If you didn't catch these check the links:
https://steemit.com/business/@samuelcole90/my-journey-21-moved-country-and-trying-to-succeed
https://steemit.com/business/@samuelcole90/my-journey-21-moved-country-and-trying-to-succeed-pt2
So previously I had possibly my dreams flash upon me whilst on holiday in France, I was looking on a selling page, kind of like gumtree but for France only. After a few brief searches for parts for my car (I'm a huge car head so always have a look about...) I saw hugely under-priced items such as old body kits and tuning parts for older cars, mainly 80's and 90's German cars. As you may tell I nearly died of excitement, I've always wanted to open a business that was around something I really enjoyed and was interested in! I had flashes of what could be to come, a workshop, t-shirts, art designs, custom parts and show car builds. I wanted to build a whole brand with a very classy outlook and quality put across.
Within the car community (this may seem a little weird to some) but its like a great big family, we all try to help each other out as best we can when someone is in need and little communities form and in many cases become your best friends! Its how I've met many of my acquaintances, the ones that stay around anyway! So with finding such a 'nest' of rare parts and pieces that would meant that some of my friends and people worldwide may be able to finish their cars or have a new addition that wasn't available previously. I found this pretty exciting and really could see the potential with my ideas. Now came the biggest decision of my current life time, do I drop everything I had back in the UK; house, car, jobs, family etc... and chase what had just become my primary target but possibly a failure.
If I'm totally honest there was no choice... I had my girlfriends family there to move in with, the rent was up on our house and I was going to kill someone back at work because of how knackered I was, I fancied a change as I had said and with this opportunity dangling like a carrot, I couldn't refuse. When I returned to the UK after our little break was done I thought I would just double check what I had thought to make sure it was viable. Sure enough looking at UK prices and the main shops, marketplaces people usually buy from tied up, if anything they were going up in prices!
Careful wouldn't be a strong enough word to describe me, I always check my back so about a week further of searching for shipping prices, website pricing, all other costs for the foreseeable future my workings tallied up and there would be a clear profit to be made even selling cheaper than other sellers! Great, now just to announce my plans to the family...
I was going through with it no matter what, but LORDY its difficult! Quitting work was the most fun but so much else was hard, lots of paperwork, issues with the flat, phone contracts, ferry crossings, car mot, selling 2 cars, you name it it was going on. I leave it to a bit of bad planning really. However each day something was getting crossed off the list, but one of the most difficult was my project car I had been working on for 2 years, YES YOU'RE RIGHT, a lot of money did go into this but hey least I wasn't in the clubs at night wasting it! - And on that point I actually managed not to loose hardly any money invested in this project, just down to careful buying and good selling ;)
Our Flat :(
THE WEEKS BEFORE MOVE DAY!
The plan was that my girlfriends parents were to drive over to us with a van to collect our belongings and then I would drive back with my car and them in the van all the way back to Annecy, France (all the way over by Swiss borders about 12hrs drive away). It all getting a bit real as we were rushing round sorting every last detail, even the wifi contracts etc! But it was done, the list was done, now just to pack the van...
LAST FEW BITS
So there we have it! I will miss out all the sloppy family bits as its all the usual, but we set off after breakfast at my parents house and drove towards the ferry-port. Not too far along the way my Bm's throttle cable snapped and got jammed so I ended up fixing it with a shoe lace and had to control the car throttle in the passenger seat for 1000Kms.. Not fun but by the by, we got there in one piece with a stop off at some family in the North of France to break the journey up a little.
NOW to set my master plans into action,
Wish me luck
Samuel Cole