I’ve mentioned several times about losing my job, my family and all my material possessions within a 6 month period several years ago.
But I don’t believe I’ve ever written in detail how I got back in the economic wagon to prosperity.
It was the early 1990s and the Iron Curtain had recently fallen. In my neighborhood, we had three Russian families move across the street. There was John’s house and then, going down the street, the next three houses were occupied by Russian immigrants. The two boys, although a few years older than my son, asked to play with us one day when we were outside bouncing on the trampoline. My son and the two Russian boys soon became fast friends.
These neighbors were aware of my being unemployed.
One day, one of the neighbors asked if I would be interested in going into business with him.
I replied, “What do you have in mind?”
“Well,” Jacob replied, “Russians are interested in everything American. American jeans. American wine. American cigarettes and more.”
“OK, so what are you thinking of…”
“Russians can’t get enough of American television. But they have work, they have families and more which are higher priorities than watching the television. So they want video tapes so they can tape the shows and watch them at their leisure.”
“How much money do they have to spend on video tapes?”
Jacob quickly replied, “One million dollars.”
Since most of the jobs I had since leaving college were advanced purchasing jobs, such as for Advanced Technology in aerospace, putting together purchasing deals was second hand to me. Over the next couple of weeks, I sourced European video tapes (they are different than American ones), arranged the shipping from the factory in Hong Kong to Leningrad and turned over the details to Jacob.
Jacob wondered how we would get paid. I replied I had a Letter of Intent drafted which would go to a West German bank along with the million dollars. When the bank received documentation the video tapes had been received in Leningrad, the money would be released to our account to pay the bills and make a gross profit of twenty percent.
Jacob got back to me a couple of weeks later after communicating with our client. He replied they had overstated the amount they had to purchase the videos and I asked what the new number was…
Continued on my blog at https://TedLeithart.com
