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118 • The 100 Greatest Ideas for Building the Business of Your Dreams

• You must consider the use of the shelf space. Would it not make more sense to
increase the stock of your main line of business? Granted that costs money,
and they will let you display their toys for free, but that is what you are in
business to do, buy more stock or stock of higher value. Besides, whatever the
deal with your new supplier is bound to cost money in some way, and they will
want their cash immediately you have sold something.

• The likelihood is that the product you are selling on behalf of somebody else is
a simpler, lower-price sale. Might not the time taken to make such sales de-
tract from the time available to speak to potential customers of your main
business? If it does, you have a resource problem. You need more staff in the
shop, and you cannot get them in packages of less than one. If you need only
a half a one, you are paying for an awful lot of magazine-reading time.

• If you solve the staff problem by allowing the new supplier to be in charge
from time to time, you hit the problem already discussed - they cannot sell
your product because you are the product and you are not there.

The message from the front line is clear. Stick with what you know and make your
dream work. Don't get involved in someone else's.

Idea 72 - Tick again

A healthy business has a strong pulse, but you need to be able to count it. It is true
that profitability is an important measure of the health of your dream business. It is
out of profits that you pay yourself and it is out of profits that you fund increases in
stock and the general growth of the business. But profits without cash are like a shop
window with cardboard cakes in it. It looks nice, but there is nothing you can do
with it. Here is a simple example of a shop whose profitability is unquestionable, but
whose cash position does not just threaten its ability to pay dividends, but also its
ability to survive.