“The SodaMan? Do you really think it would work?” I mumbled this to my teammate as we walked out of another gymnastics practice. He responded with a definite yes and said, “Think about it.” Just as he wanted, that was all I could think about on my drive home.

I came into the gym the next day with a sheet of all my scribbles of numbers and half thought out projections of what we could do with this get rich quick scheme. Selling pop and other goods out the back of my car and in the gym. Sounds a little sketchy but we’ll give it a go
“I didn’t think you would take it this seriously.” All I did was laughed and told him to take a look at the things written down on the sheet. With every product sold, we could pay ourselves back and make a profit of over 100%.

That next week I brought in everything just for a test run. In the couple hours at my gym I was there, I sold enough to pay for the pop and put $30 in my pocket. Though everybody laughed at how simple and childish it was, it didn’t matter. It worked. For the next 2 weeks, I did the same thing and got the same results: More money.

That one funny idea, The SodaMan, would still be just a name on a piece of paper in the office of my gym, had I not actually taken a risk and persevered through the doubts of everybody. The innovation, intuition and the ingenuity has given me one employee and a system that has yet to let me down. Still pretty childish, but the money is not.