Timing Is Everything

The Byrds sang that, "There is a season - turn, turn, turn. And a time for every purpose under heaven." The Bible affirms it in Ecclesiastes 3:1, "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens."(although this passage is often misquoted to proclaim a time for even ungodly things.) Leadership experts affirm that even bad timing can ruin the best idea. This week I experienced one of those "timing" events.

But in order to understand the "timing," let me take you back to approximately 1994. I was 17 with an entrepreneurial spirit. I had attended a seminar where some millionaire was selling his instructional books and, yes, cassette tape series teaching greedy suckers like me how to buy stuff at public auctions and re-sell it all for huge profits. So after seeing an advertisement in the newspaper for a US Postal Service surplus auction, I attended. There were tables full of old computers, to which the geeky part of me was instantly drawn. By the end of the auction I had purchased 4 old laptops, each weighing about fifteen pounds, for about $17.50 each. I took them home and was able to get a few of them to boot up. But then I had to sell them. A classified ad in the newspaper would cost as much as the laptops. Plus, they were already very old. Why would anyone buy my laptops when they could buy a smoking-fast 386 processor running Windows 3.1? I found a store that allowed me to sell a couple of them on a consignment basis. But they never sold, the store went out of business, and I never got my laptops back.

I lost interest, moved away to college, and plowed into the future with the remaining laptops sitting in my old bedroom closet.

I went home for Thanksgiving and my mom gently asked me to do something with "those old laptops." I checked ebay for "Grid computer" and found a few over-priced listings, but no completed auctions. I took them home, cleaned them up, booted them up again, and decided to test the waters with a 10 day listing starting at $25. And just for kicks, I set a $100 Buy-It-Now price for some gullible or just plain old impulsive buyer. The next morning I discovered that someone had indeed purchased it during the night! Just today I sold the other 2 for even more!

Seventeen years ago these laptops weren't worth anything. Or maybe it was because ebay was not around yet, bringing a global marketplace of buyers to the stuff in my basement.

Timing. What a huge factor. In business, in life, and even faith.