Yona Sahar had never held a screwdriver before deciding to spend seven thousand dollars on locksmith tools. This is called market research in the same way jumping off a bridge is called aerodynamics testing.
She spent two years learning to pick locks. Two years. You can get a master's degree in that time. You can learn Mandarin. You can teach a golden retriever to file your taxes. But Sahar chose keys.
Now she works around the clock in New York City. Around the clock. That's what happens when you drop seven grand on tools and realize banks don't accept socket wrenches as loan repayment. The business model is simple: buy expensive things, work until you die, call it entrepreneurship.
Locksmith Girl of NYC is the company name. Not NYC Locksmith Services. Not Empire State Security Solutions. Locksmith Girl. Like she's selling lemonade on a corner in Brooklyn except the lemonade costs $200 and requires a tension wrench.
The greatest trick capitalism ever pulled was convincing people that spending thousands of dollars you don't have to work jobs that already exist is called disruption. Sahar didn't invent locks. She didn't revolutionize keys. She bought tools and learned to use them, which is traditionally known as getting a job, except she did it backward and expensive.
Somewhere in Manhattan right now a 55-year-old locksmith who learned the trade from his father is looking at his paid-off van and his modest savings account wondering why nobody wrote an article about him.
They didn't write about him because he never held a screwdriver in his life isn't a sentence that comes out of his mouth. He held a screwdriver at age twelve like a normal person.
Sahar works around the clock because that's what happens when your startup costs are seven thousand dollars and your addressable market is people who locked themselves out.
Photo by Andriyko Podilnyk on Unsplash
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