Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

Nanz shares the painful lesson that this proverb turned out to be for her.

I first heard this saying when I was a little girl. I heard it many times more as a grown-up, but never understood the wisdom behind it – until now. Indeed, some proverbs are really very wise!

When I started the ONE.99shop business, I had two reliable sources to depend on. I had the savings in my bank account and I had my family. I used my savings as start-up capital and my family as my primary and dependable source of labour. This is not unusual with many other small family-owned businesses. My parents, who had always been my good old working partners, were again actively involved. They took charge of the day-to-day operations and were hands-on in the initial years.

My brother Paul was the Logistics Manager for most of the company’s lifespan of seven years. When the ONE.99shop folded up, my family and I were a walking personification of “All the eggs in one basket.”

By committing myself as personal guarantor to the bank for financing the company’s inventory, I lost everything I had and was made a bankrupt.

My father, a man of principle, felt that as a partner he should be honourable and do his best to meet the debts as well. He withdrew all he had of his CPF nest egg – all of $300,000! He lost all that, not to mention all the salary he had forfeited the months before. My husband, who wanted to help our business out of the trouble it was in, sank $100,000 each week for many weeks into the ONE.99shop before it went under receivership.

Talk about putting all our eggs in one basket!

I had meant well, but unwittingly, I had directed much of my family resources into the running of the business. When the boat eventually sank, it took my family and I, and all our resources down with it.

This is a lesson I learned the hard way. It is a very important lesson I would like to share with all entrepreneurs, so they can be aware of the dangers and avoid the pitfalls of putting everything into one “basket” – only to watch that one basket fall and break, taking everything with it.

This article is taken from Nanz Chong-Komo’s One Business, 99 Lessons.