Greedy Goblin

Friday, May 10, 2013

A good example for traders

Sugar Kyle who runs her own blog has a shop in Bosena, Molden Heath lowsec. Her little business is pretty successful, despite obvious mistakes (get a JF already!)

Is it some miracle? No. The lack of formal economics knowledge is irrelevant compared to the proper attitude. She has it, so her fate is to become damn rich. Her example is important exactly to show that being successful in business is not about using the proper tools, having proper item selection, time efficiency or other know-how (though they clearly affect the magnitude of success), but having the proper mindset:
  1. Wants to serve her customers: This is a make it or break it issue. If you are in to rob everyone and run away with huge spoils, you have like 5% chance to make a great heist and 95% chance to leave busted. If you are interested in mutually profitable cooperation, you have 100% chance to make some profit.
  2. Does what she wants: everyone, including corpmates, commenters and JF-obsessed goblins tell her what to do. She ignores them and does what she plans. If these people had a good idea how to run a lowsec hub, they'd done it themselves. So she is completely right to listen to the one who has the most experience in running a lowsec hub in Molden Heath: herself. Listening to people's opinion is a social mistake, most people have great difficulty learning to ignore them.
  3. Doesn't want to market-PvP: people tend to spend great resources to defeat this or that competitor. They usually succeed, at the cost of losing much more money than it would cost to just coexist.
  4. Doesn't want to get rich: another crucial thing, such ambitions just lead to overwork (which leads to exhaustion and multi-billion mistypes) and also leads to risky investments (that end up as a disaster). Working on your own schedule, working for the thing itself is the best way to have a steady income.
  5. Focused on graphs, trends instead of direct income (or opinions): Rome wasn't built in a day. If you can't find joy in the decreasing price of Light Neutron Blasters II, you won't last long here.
So the business tip for today: subscribe her blog and try to absorb the above.

3 comments:

Sugar Kyle said...

Thank you, Gevlon. I am amused that you write thus on a day I write a pensive, broody thought process.

A JF will come after the summer if things stay stable. It is a lot of ISK this early in my store. I haven't even started paying back my investment to myself.

However, I no longer need to stock daily so success!

Anonymous said...

What's the advantage of the bosena low sec store compared to ..... for example hek ?

1 Low sec allows JF sellers to directly jump to your station ?

2. Bosena and its surroundings have a good potion of (low sec) misson runners who sell their loot in bosena ?

3. Bosena has less competition then then the trade hubs ?

4. Bosena is not part of the faction war space. Why not chose metropolis/rens region low sec, which both have faction war systems ?

..... Me ? I am selling (mostly) meta 4 ship modules in hek. Since hek is mainly a buyer market, i have to import those items from amar or jita. For hauling i use MWD-trick tech 1 industrial to avoid the pirates.

Sugar Kyle said...

Bosena is not a trade hub it is a market similar to the grocery store in the US. People come to me to buy ships, fits, and supplies. I spend my time maintaining a broad selection of those. My main clientele are pirates who find going into high sec a pain.

No trade hub gate campers trying to pop red pods.

I live in Bosena. Molden Heath is my home. I am a pirate with a sec status of -9.9 and a reasonably active killboard. The entire reason I started the market is so that my corp.dates who are all -10 do not have to go to high sec to buy their basics. Not everyone is good at stocking stuff and this allows them to buy their needs to undock and kill things.

My store is a project about improving low sec that happens to be reasonably successful. I'm not trying to be Rens or Hek. Bosena happens to be a popular mid point, one jump out side of a republic fleet L4 hub with good mining and an ice belt (on the high sec side).

I am not interested in FW and do not live in a FW area by choice.

For hauling I use an Orca or a freighter and jump them into low sec to dump items at the station. Ships are bulky. You can't get a Domi in an Orca.

Bosena has almost no competition in low sec because low sec is starved of stocked markets at reasonable prices. I was also sick and tired of my corp jumping their flashy red selves into high sec to buy over priced items. I took it upon myself to correct that.