I’m reading a book about con men. Ben Marks was one of them. His specialty was three-card monte, hustling cattlemen and miners and soldiers in the streets of Cheyenne.
Marks was good. He’d regularly make $5, $10, sometimes $25 by fleecing some greedy passerby on the street.
Marks made a living. But it was hardly a business. The streets of Cheyenne were too busy and too crowded and there was too much competition. Saloons offering booze. Hotels offering gambling. Brothels offering love.
So Marks hit upon a novel idea.
Why not open his own establishment? Get people to come to him? Do away with the competition?
It’s a concept that became known as the Big Store.
The Big Store became a key part of the big con. A fancy gambling club, or a brokerage house, or in Marks’s case, The Dollar Store — everything for a dollar, including some very attractive and expensive goods, displayed colorfully in the store windows.
But when a prospect stepped inside The Dollar Store, he’d see several lively monte games already in play, with Marks’s shills and “sticks” in place of real gamblers.
The new prospect forgot about the attractive merchandise.
He left The Dollar Store some time later, not having bought anything for $1. But he did leave behind a wad of cash nonetheless.
I’m not encouraging you to grift, conning, or crime of any sort. But I do tell you the above because:
1. The basic idea is usable in non-criminal ways also. Think, how can I get them to come to me? How do I do away with the competition and other distractions?
2. “Get them to come to you, instead of going to them” might sound like a simple, familiar, or even trivial idea. But it’s not one you should dismiss. Marks’s Big Store was the innovation that created the big-money confidence games that netted $75,000 or $100,000, instead of $25 hustles in back alleys and on train cars and street corners.
Do you wanna see a Big Store in action? Here’s a clip (no spoilers) from The Sting, one of my favorite films: