New Business Failure: The Importance of Retaining Focus When Launching A Business - Online Career...

Jim, you are correct when you say that business ventures can be on a whim, but we know that it is more than that. You have to have the heart and desire to start something different or new that will have a major impact on our society and our future.

I have a one business, with a lot of related revenue streams. Someone reading my profile would assume I was a green weenie, eco-warrior. I'm not. I like listening to old guys and hearing about the way they or their dads and granddads used to farm. Then I try it. Then I get good at it. Then someone wants what I and my wife produce. Then enough people want help or value added product that we start figuring how to get paid.

Here's a not so brief and incomplete example:

I like cheese. The best cheese comes from unpasteurized milk. I don't want a cow, so I get a goat. One goat makes more milk than my wife and I will drink. I make cheese. Still too much milk. I make goat's milk soap. One goat makes a lot of nanny berries (goat manure) and waste hay. I make a bottomless composting bin. I get a lot of worms under the composting bin. Friends come to me for worms when they go fishing. Then other people. So, I sell worms. I get great compost as a soil amendment, more than I need for my garden. I sell worm castings and compost. I get a lot of garden waste. Throws my composting mix off. I get chickens so they can to eat it. Because I bought straight run birds I have some roosters. I get chicks and I then have more chickens and eggs than my wife and I can eat. I start selling eggs and butchered free range chickens. People decide they want chickens too, but don't want to take care of them in winter so I start a "rent a flock" business, where I deliver a small coop chicken tractor and half a dozen birds in the spring and I get them back in the fall....ad infinitum.

So I started out with five acres and a desire for some home made cheese.

18 years later I have:
70 loan free acres, 40 milking goats, 25 brush clearing goats, around 250 chickens, about four dozen turkeys, 15 boarded horses, 18 sheep for city folks to train their herding dogs with, and three part-time employees who work for their horse boarding. I supply six local nurseries with compost and worm castings, I sell worms, crickets, and grubs to a local bait wholesaler, I sell about 7500 lbs. of very expensive gourmet cheese, and about 4000 lbs. of very expensive goat and sheep cured deli-style meats... etc. etc. etc. and at night I carve wood or make leather goods, while I watch TV.

During the spring, summer, and fall months I and my wife "work" 70-80 hours a week. During the winter months we "work" about 50 hours. I still have waste from the cycles that I'm trying to figure out how to convert into revenue streams. I do all my business in a bout a 50 mile radius, never set up a website, and do all my "sales" by word of mouth. I never borrowed a dime to build the business. I look forward to getting up, I sleep well, and the government leaves me enough money that I will refuse social security, medicare and any other government safety net when we can't do it anymore.

Sir,

I really enjoy reading about small business and motivating stories. As I am pursuing my business dream. The issue of LinkedIn, I find it boring and very civilian. There is no real relating.

For example: Here, I feel it is much more like being in Garrison. I have learned, this Garrison is different that the Marine Corp Garrison I understood.

Otherwise, good read. Have a great evening,

M. Morris RVT