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It was 3pm on a Friday, but instead of being at home binging the Sopranos, Dante was out in a little North Carolina suburb called Eden.
It wasn’t much of a place. It had a couple of shopping centers, an authentic Mexican bakery, and two decent thrift stores. One completely bang up Chinese food bar. And that was about it. If you wanted something fun to do on a Friday afternoon, this was definitely not the place to be.
But there was something perfect about it, too. He had grown up near here, and there was always something about the place that had spoken to him. Now that he was an adult, he was excited to use it to found his very first business.
Ever since he was in middle school, he had had a penchant for seeing undeveloped business potential in practically every situation. If you had a broken shoe, Dante could find a way to monetize it. He was sent to the principal’s office for marking up his holiday candy 50% and selling it during lunchtime to the poor souls who hadn’t gotten any sweets in their lunch that day. By the time he was in high school, he was studying real estate investments and the stock market, learning how they worked, and finding inefficiencies that could be improved on. He drove his friends and teachers nuts, but one thing he could usually be counted on was to have hundreds of dollars in cash on his person at any given time.
No one knew how he made the money, exactly, except that he usually had 3-6 side gigs going at any given time. No matter how hard the school called his behavior inappropriate or tried to shut him down—no matter. Dante was incredibly clever, always 3 steps ahead, and constantly figuring out how he could monetize even their punishments. At one point they discovered him running a betting pool in detention over how long it would be before he was expelled over his behavior. Luckily, it never came to that, so Dante ended up keeping all the money. Which, of course, had been his plan all along.
He got into college, and majored in business. He didn’t do well in his classes. To be honest, he thought it was all stupid, trite, outdated, and clunky. He threw out half of what he learned, and started developing his own rules of business—namely, don’t listen to anyone, take advantage of everyone, and use your charming personality to get you out of all the sticky situations you create from those conditions.
Once Dante began to do that, his outlook on life became a lot better.
He graduated, but he had received more than an education—he felt as though he had stepped into his calling. With the help of a few friends/investors, he felt he began to truly embark upon the adventure of owning a company that he had never truly done before. Back in high school—that was just piddly little kid stuff. Here, though—here in the adult world of business, there was real money to be made—if you were willing to take the risk.
Dante smiled to himself. This time, he had a brilliant and unprecedented idea up his sleeve. He was sure that no one had thought of it before, and that he would be able to corner the market, along with whatever business partners he could bring on board.
The problem was that the concept was distasteful. It would require just the right set of people—brilliant, compliant, and open-minded, willing to take a hit to their ego and reputation up front, in order to potentially win big later on.
He smiled. This was going to be great.
Also, he could afford the rent. So there was that.
He had had his eye on an abandoned storefront in a strip mall for months. It wasn’t the type of place anyone would usually decide to stop or stay a while.
But that’s precisely what made it attractive to him. The type of business he wanted to start, he didn’t want to attract unwanted attention. This nondescript storefront was just what he needed.
He took out his phone, and called the number on the beat up sign in the front window.
“Hello,” he said, charm shining out his ears. “Yes, I’m at 13412 Van Buren Road. Yes, I’d like to rent out this storefront.”
He smiled to himself as the crickets chirped, bees buzzed, and the receptionist on the other end took down his contact info. It was going to be a great day.
ns216.73.216.192da2
