Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Welcome, or welcome back to Success with Srini. Today the January 29, 2022, 29 days gone in this year already, I hope you are on track with your goals. I hope you are. It’s a bright Saturday morning. And as I’m recording the podcast today, this weekend, I was updating some stuff on my website. And I came across an incredible post that I made sometime in 2009, to be precise, April 23rd 2009, on my blog. And I was reading this post, it has some views because this has been around for a long time, but only got like one vote on this post. I was a little sad because, you know, this is a post that’s old on my site on my blog, and hasn’t gotten that many comments on it. So I thought I’m gonna revive this post. So I took a printout, I’m holding the paper in my hands, you can hear the sound. And I thought I’m going to read it, literally and record it as a podcast and publish it hopefully, at least whoever is listening, you’re listening to this. I think this post will get a life.
So this is about an Austrian immigrant who came to America and started a multimillion dollar business with two days of market research. That’s it. So if you are considering starting a business this year, maybe you already have a business then this podcast episode is for you. And this story is for you. This is about Steven Klein, who was 31 years old when he arrived in New York from Austria in 1938. At that time, Austria, it was a Nazi occupied country. So upon arrival, within two days, within two days in New York, he started researching the chocolate buying habits of New Yorkers. And his research showed that Americans bought a lot of chocolate and bought a lot of sweet chocolates.
Now, instead of selling sweet chocolates, he decided to sell bitter sweet chocolates Viennese type chocolates. The launch model for his business was very simple. He made a batch of chocolates himself. And he started selling door to door in a very specific area of New York, which was called the Garment district back in the day. Now the Garment District was filled with immigrants and clients candy was continental candy. So it was an instant hit right away.
Let’s talk about his progress in the first year. He partnered with a local attorney to create the business. In 1940, the Barton’s Inc started with one store. Within one year, they scaled up to four stores. By 1951, the business was generating $7 million, and they had 53 stores. Now, when I made this post on my blog, the story by that time, this was 2009. By that time, Barton’s was already in business for 111 years. It’s amazing 111 years. Now, you can go to bartonscandy.com, you can read all the story. At that time back in the day when I did go to bartonscandy.com, there was not much about Steven playing. I mean all his incredible entrepreneurial heroics they were not mentioned on the site. Last night when I went to their site bartonscandy.com It was under construction.
Do the opposite.
Hopefully the new site will have Steven Klein’s incredible story mentioned hopefully. There are a few lessons in Steven Klein story. I want to drive those lessons here for a second. If you really want to start a business, all you have to do is validate an idea a lot of entrepreneurs what they do is they chase money. Why sell the same thing that others are selling? Why not sell some variety? According to Steven, do the opposite. At least that’s what he did. So he saw that people are buying sweet candy. So he introduced bitter sweet candy. Now, you know when you start changing the habits of people, you better be careful because it’s risky. Right? Do the opposite. That is, that’s the message here. If you’re not sure about the product, start with small quantities and sell it yourself. You don’t need a huge sales staff, sales force. And what Stephen did was he did door to door selling.
If you are not sure about your target market, always sell in an area, which you are comfortable with. So Stephen’s plan was a lot of immigrants, immigrant’s candy, immigrant consumers, just a small area. And finally, one last thing, if you are new to the area, or you are new to the idea, find a good partner. Steven was probably lucky when you found an attorney who understood the candy business, entity structuring taxation, all that. But you need to find a partner who understands, you know, things that you lack.
That’s it. Those are two pages that I wrote, I printed this out. I wanted to give a new life to the story. Hopefully, you like today’s podcast episode. If you do, then please write a review. Please rate the podcast, share it with your friends and family. And I’ll be back here again tomorrow with another empowering message or story. We’ll see. But maybe I should do one. One incredible entrepreneurial story every Saturday. Let’s see. Let’s see how this goes. That’s all for now. Wherever you are, be safe. And I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Bye now.