My father built a mobile home park in the early 1970’s. Seemed like a good idea at the time — the land was cheap, the location was near a lot of blue collar jobs, and construction costs were minimal.
But he had a hard time getting anybody to move into the park.
He found a solution by buying mobile homes from the factory and moving them into the park himself. Then he’d sell the mobile home all ready to go. The buyer didn’t have to deal with permits, utilities, setup, transportation, etc. The park began to fill up this way and it eventually became a sound investment.
It’s a good lesson in persistence. The original business plan (letting people buy their own trailer and having them move it into the park) didn’t work, so it was altered to fit the customers needs. Dad thought out of the box and pursued a solution that wasn’t in the original scope of work. Through hard work and persistence, he made the investment successful.
The sign in front of the mobile home sales lot.
But then my Dad took it one step further. He thought that there was money to be made in selling mobile homes. So he partnered with Mr. Howard (as I knew him). They jointly opened G & H Mobile Home Sales in Concord, California. It seemed like the next logical step in the business plan. It was vertical integration at its best. A customer could buy a mobile home from G&H, and they’d move it to one of the vacant spaces in my Dad’s park. Simple and brilliant.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work. My Dad was horribly suited to be a salesman. The location in Concord was mediocre at best. Mobile homes do not have a high margin. These factors and more contributed to a weak return on investment. It wasn’t long before G & H was closed.
Sometimes we can take a solution too far. Dad figured out a way to get his mobile home park filled up with tenants, but then leveraged that idea into a mobile home dealership that failed. I admire his willingness to experiment and be entrepreneurial. But I also learned that it’s a mistake pushing a practical solution into an idealistic solution.
We can easily become enamored with our own ideas. Especially when those ideas are born of success in something else. I see this happen in both ministry and business. A highly entrepreneurial leader says, “Well this worked…so this should work too and we can achieve even more!” It sometimes does work out well. But often not so well.
So we have to find the right balance between perseverance and stubbornness, between creativity and delusion, between reaching for success and reaching just a bit too far.