...in different Area Codes

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. I would add to that famed cliche, when things get unpredictable it is not so bad to be unpredictable. Though the financial media has taken to cracking jokes about Dennis Mykytyn, I think his purchase of excess 212 area code phone numbers was a (perhaps inadvertent) stroke of genius.

We all know the old adage about picking up pennies, in front of a moving bulldozer. Perhaps there are ways to pick up more than pennies without having to run from something as deadly as a bulldozer. Sometimes we all get wrapped up in making money the way we know how, that we forget that stretching our comfort zones can often bring back far greater results.

When Mykytyn decided to move his hedge fund Modern Capital Management from Westchester to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in 2007, he purchased 100 of the highly coveted area codes for $30 each. He reportedly uses about 10 of the phone numbers and has no intention of selling the rest. Claiming he could, but doubt that this is a business he would be interested in.

I recently hung out with a guy who runs his own electronics shop and does very well. In today's Best Buy dominated markets it is pretty much impossible for a mom and pop television emporium to compete. Even Circuit City couldn't hack the price wars and outweigh those economies of scale. The gentlemen in question, however, does not sell $400 flat screens and $250 laptops. He sells super high end products. Custom screens, tricked out resolutions and audio adjustments that make watching The Jungle Book seem as if you are in The Sahara.

Though this quick vignette may seem unrelated to Mykytyn it is not altogether so. The ex-hedgie unwittingly purchased a super high end luxury product at a bargain basement price. Though many may consider a 212 phone number an absolutely useless piece of vanity, is it really so different than a Rolls Royce with a diamond crusted grill? Status symbols are a valuable product and their lack of supply always drives up the demand to often unrealistic prices. It doesn't really matter whether Mykytyn ever takes his digits to market, the point is that making money can be startlingly simple when certain (oft ignored) factors are weighed in.

We probably all pass by potentially lucrative entrepreneurial opportunities on a daily basis without realizing them to be such. There are no more golden nuggets lying behind every American corner. But there is still a shit load of opportunity out there for those willing to take off the blinders and gallop to the beat of their own drum. Just a little something for you guys to think about in a time of market turmoil.