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Best Advice Ever

915 views 7 replies 6 participants last post by  NoThankyou 
#1 ·
I had wanted to start my own company. I was going to build a digital dark room timer that was repeatable to the nearest tenth of a second. (If you have printed your own photographs, you understand.) This was between 40 and 50 years ago.

I did all the engineering, lined up suppliers and with market analysis I could sell 40,000 to 50,000. I dug into the advertising costs and figured out that I could net about $750,000.

Then my wife gave me this advice saying, "I will support you in anything that you want to do. Just don't lose the house."

I did not build dark room timers, I did not lose the house, we still live in that house today and after looking at what digital photography has done to the film market, it was the best advice I ever got.
 
#7 ·
I owned my own business for 18 years after I retired from the AF. Bought a small Feed & Seed store. People asked, what is a Nuclear Engineer going to do with a feed store. My answer was have fun.


And my wife and I did enjoy it for 18 years. We had about 4 employees on duty at all times and she or I was also usually there. It was a people contact business. Mostly people, who like us, liked animals. As well as feed we sold a large amount of pet supplies, including some live. We sold exotic birds, parrots, parakeets, conures, cockatoos, etc. And of course the baby chicks and rabbits normal to a feed store. Also had a lot of horse customers for feed and tack. We also had a large lawn and garden supply. Guess that ammonia nitrate would have to be carefully accounted for today.



We made friends with many of the customers. To this day we run into old customers. We will look at somebody and they will look at us and we know we have seen each other before. It usually turns out that we know each other from the feed store.After several years I bought the property next door and we expanded. Sold the business 21 years ago and still miss it. We had a great location right on main street in town and at a main intersection.


Would not trade that experience for anything.


George
 
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