A Story About Buying a Flower Shop

Years ago, I had a friend who invested in a flower shop. It wasn’t your typical corner flower shop filled with red carnations and yellow roses. In fact, he didn’t even have a shop. All he had was a van for deliveries.

He hired a floral designer and he sent flower arrangements to all the top law firms, doctor’s offices, ad agencies, and insurance companies in town. This floral designer was also the salesperson. When one of our flower arrangements showed up at an office, our main salesperson got to meet the customer face-to-face. And because they came with flowers, the gatekeeper secretary always let them in!

He would deliver a large arrangement and let them know that we could deliver something similar every week for just $50. They started signing up customers. He would buy the flowers on Saturday from the wholesaler, make the arrangements on Sunday, and make all the deliveries before noon on Monday.

In banking, the secret is eliminating the overhead and utilizing the money instead of letting it sit in the vault. That’s why banks need to stop thinking about expensive branches and start investing in mobile banking.

People are spending hours each day on their phones, doing everything from e-mailing, texting, and checking the weather to finding their way around a city or country. Most of these people, I suspect…