To succeed in business, one must often look to other well-established CEO’s and entrepreneurs to gain helpful insights into the world of success. So, I thought I would start a series on “Success Stories,” highlighting men and women throughout history who made a name for themselves in the corporate world. Some stories you may find helpful, others you may find simply amusing; still others are just plain odd. The following story is of the latter. It comes from the humorous book Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.
Born in Malden, Massachusetts on January 22, 1747, Timothy Dexter worked first as a farmer, and then, in Boston, became an apprentice leather tanner. At age 20, with his lfe savings in his pocket, all of nine dollars, he moved on to the thriving town of Newburyport, where he met and married a wealthy widow.
Dexter fancied himself a shrewd businessman. Using his wife’s money, he copied what other businessmen were doing - he bought stocks. With no understanding of which stocks to buy, he simply bought the cheap ones. Somehow, their values rose and Dexter was able to sell at a profit.
Competitors laughed at the semi-illiterate Dexter and amused themselves by giving him lunatic business tips. One merchant told Dexter that the West Indies was sorely in need of warming pans, mittens, and Bibles. Having no idea of the extremely hot weather in the West Indies, Dexter took the tip and proceeded to buy more than 40,000 warming pans, 40,000 pairs of mittens, and 40,000 Bibles and shipped them out.
One day he began to wonder what people would say about him after he died. He proceeded to announce his death and to prepare for a burial. About 3,000 people appeared for the wake. However, Dexter’s wife refused to cry for his passing and so he decided not to appear to his guests at all. Timothy Dexter died for real in 1806.
By incredible luck, when Dexter’s shipments arrived, there was a religious movement beginning and his Bibles were purchased at 100% profit. More luck: a fleet of Russian trading ships visiting ports in the West Indies had their agents immediately buy up the mittens. And a planter used the warming pans as a ladle for storing molasses into vats. These sales brought Dexter an estimated $150,000, making him enormously wealthy.
Jealous of his dumb luck, merchants in Dexter’s town purposely sought to ruin him by urging him to invest every dime he possessed in shipping coal to Newcastle, England. The unschooled Dexter, not knowing that Newcastle was the center of England’s coal mining industry, hired scores of sailing ships, filled their holds with soft Virginia coal and sent the cargoes to England.
But instead of becoming an international laughingstock, Dexter’s amazing good fortune held; a massive strike in Newcastle had left mines empty and there was a shortage of coal in the area. When Dexter’s ships arrived, his coal was purchased at enormous profits, making him twice as rich as he had been.
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