Iowa County Area Entrepreneurs' Club meeting Wednesday 3/23

I'm going to do the presentation for our monthly Entrepreneurs' Club meeting this Wednesday March 23. Please join us if you're in the area

Our working title is:

How effective startups build business models.

Creating reality based business plans.

Among working entrepreneurs there is shared understanding that almost no business plans survive the first customer.

How can you increase the value of your business plans? What are the key questions you must know for lenders, investors, and most importantly, yourself?

Effective business plans are based on reality not guess work. It is important that business plans include as much actual data as you can develop. This discussion will consider action steps new entrepreneurs can do to create the knowledge base they need to create a strategy that works in the marketplace.

Behind all business plan number crunching are customers. New entrepreneurs need to have answers to the following questions:

• What problems do you fix?
• Why will customers pay you?
• Why will customers return?
• What don’t you know about your actual costs? Where to look?
• How many vendor options do you have?
• How many potential customers do you need on your list before proceeding?

What’s the most valuable way to present your information to investors?


Presenter: Rick Terrien is the Executive Director of the Iowa County Area Economic Development Corp. Rick is a lifelong serial entrepreneur, winning multiple national awards for business innovation and new product development. Rick’s work was recently featured in the Wisconsin State Journal: “Rick Terrien is dedicated to helping people start new businesses” February 27, 2011

Link to the State Journal article.

Join us!

What: Iowa County Area Entrepreneur’s Club

When: Wednesday March. 23 Doors open 5:30 PM. Meeting at 6 PM

Where: Stonefield Apartments 407 E. Madison St. Dodgeville, WI 53533


There will be a social time beginning at 5:30 and the meeting will begin at 6 PM. The location is at the Stonefield Apartments, 851 407 E. Madison St., Dodgeville WI. The event is free to the public.

Networking among attendees will be encouraged in the evening's program. "Our goal is to grow our network of entrepreneurs, small businesses, innovators and those that support them in the Iowa County area", said Rick Terrien, Executive Director of ICAEDC.

The Iowa County Area Entrepreneurs Club is an informational forum where entrepreneurs, inventors, existing businesses, new businesses and people thinking about starting their own businesses can come together to encourage each other and share challenges and opportunities. The group meets on a monthly basis, usually the fourth Wednesday of the month.


The Iowa County Area Economic Development Corporation

Our ICAEDC Entrepreneurs' Club page

Napkin is from Seattle's Best Coffee, who operated a store inside the Borders book store on Madison's west side. This was a great bookstore with wonderful employees that we will miss.

The new year and your new career as a startup

The passing into a new year feels to me like someone opening a curtain. It's a little too bright, and the details out there are fuzzy and indistinct in the glow. But hope and chance are out there, and it feels like a good bet to reach out and grab some of it.

I believe doing your own startups can be a smart alternative to doing nothing. I think it’s wise to be working on ways to increase your personal and financial independence. Building your own small business enterprise can be a good way to do this.

In almost all cases it will take longer than you think. It will likely deliver less clear profit than you want. You will work harder than you supposed. And as you do it, you get faster, smarter, profitable, and more independent. The real message is to get started.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen offers people interested in food entrepreneurship a complete package for testing out their own small food enterprise. This is a model we hope to develop and reproduce in the coming year.

There are growing markets for regional and specialty foods, but without a growing, robust field of food entrepreneurs and artisan food startups, the market will never reach its potential.

The world of local foods needs startups. It needs innovators and creative business models.

The business and economic development opportunities available through local and regional foods are significant. New innovative, specialty food startups are integral to that discussion.

Helping them become sustainable is a worthy goal for all of us in 2011.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen provides a valuable platform for testing food innovations and the wonderful entrepreneurs who create them. I look forward to sharing this story.

Happy New Year!


The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Photo from a visit to the Eliza Furnace, in Vitondale, Pennsylvania. Download a history of Eliza Furnace prepared by the Indiana County PA Parks Department. A business startup story worth knowing.

Food entrepreneurship presentation at 2011 Wisconsin Local Foods Summit

Want to start next year off learning about becoming a food entrepreneur?

I've been offered several good opportunities in January to talk about food entrepreneurship and the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

The first of these is the Wisconsin Local Foods Summit in Elkhart Lake. The conference is January 13 and 14, 2011.

My presentation is on Thursday Jan. 13 at 10:15 AM. An experiment in local foods processing: The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen, Mineral Point, WI.

Another good chance to share this idea will come on with the Midwest Value Added Conference, January 27 and 28, 2011 in Madison. Details to follow.

C'mon you aspiring food entrepreneurs. This is a chance for growers and their food friends to take some positive steps in the new year to build or grow an artisan food enterprise that matches your goals.

Merry Christmas 2010 to one and all!

Download 2011 Wisconsin Local Food Summit brochure. PDF format

Next phone conference 12/15 - starting an artisan food enterprise through the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

We'll be having a phone seminar next week for people interested in starting or growing an artisan food business through the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen. We limit these invitations to keep the conversation effective. There are 5 slots open for next Wednesday Dec. 15 at 2:30 PM CST.

Here are a couple of comments from the first seminar:

"Thank you for the very informative conference call yesterday. I came away from the call with the inspiration I needed to go to the next level. "

"It was really informative taking part in the phone seminar."

If you know someone who might be interested in having the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen be the 'food processing back office', please pass this note along.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is an opportunity to start or grow an artisan food enterprise in a state-inspected commercial kitchen, licensed to legally and lovingly prepare recipes for commercial sale. The Innovation Kitchen can also supply packaging, labeling and shipping support, all of this at a small enough scale that's affordable for most new and emerging food entrepreneurs.

You can live anywhere in the United States and start an artisan food business through the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

For people thinking about this opportunity we have a couple of pricing paths into the process. One path will focus on commercial recipe testing and development. The other path will provide mentorship in business startup and development with a focus on artisan food enterprises, as well as the commercial recipe development services.

Our next phone seminar to discuss this food entrepreneurship opportunity is next Wednesday Dec. 15 at 2:30 PM CST. We have 5 slots open for this seminar.

We also have phone seminars scheduled for Wed. Jan 5, and Wed. Jan. 19

Join us or pass this note along to a friend who may want to become a food entrepreneur ! You can register using the link below.

Request an invitation to an upcoming phone seminar for people interested in having the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen prepare their recipes for commercial sale.

Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Iowa County (WI) Area Economic Development Corporation.

Boomer startups and encore careers

Long time Madison and Wisconsin contributor Nino Amato is currently the President and Executive Director of the Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups.

There was a very good interview with Mr. Amato in the November 2010 Madison Magazine.

The discussion of an aging workforce can be looked at from many ways. Certainly there is a financial risk to individuals and to the system.

However, starting new careers and new businesses may be one way older Americans can meet this challenge.

As Mr. Amato closes out his interview, he cites a movement I'm seeing in many areas of my economic development work, especially in the field of artisan food entrepreneurship through the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

“'Baby boomers don’t think they’ll be ‘old’ until they’re eighty,' Amato says. Citing survey research conducted by Merrill Lynch, Amato says 76 percent of baby boomers intend to continue earning income full- or part-time after they retire from their main line of work. Many plan to begin new professional careers or start their own businesses."

For anyone thinking about starting their own small food enterprise to help carry them into and through their older years, the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen may be a great option right in our own back yard.

Sounds like a plan...


Interview with Nino Amato in Madison Magazine.

Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups. Focusing on issues that impact older adults and people with disabilities.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen. Mineral Point, Iowa County, Wisconsin.

Encore careers: Boomer entrepreneurs and the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Did you know Americans aged 55 to 64 start small businesses at a higher rate than any other age group?

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is an ideal platform for launching an 'encore career'. You can live anywhere you want and start a safe, legal food business without betting your savings. It can even be a lot of fun!

This is the Renaissance age of entrepreneurship, and it's just beginning. If you are a boomer thinking about starting your own artisan food business, you need to contact the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.


SBA site for 50+ entrepreneurs

"Encore careers combine purpose, passion and a paycheck"

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Photo is of a fall crocus, a late bloomer and great contributor to the landscape, just like boomer entrepreneurs.

'Kitchen incubators' make the New York Times food issue

Before it gets too far along, try to find a hard copy of the Food Issue of the NY Times, 10/10/10. The title of the magazine section was 'Eating Together. How the food revolution – from farm to table – is really a story about seeding and savoring communities.'

Most people assume they know enough about ‘incubator kitchens’. They are typically seen as facilities that low-income people can use to create food businesses without having to invest funds they don’t have.

But the story of shared use kitchens is certainly not stopping there.

I’ve just watched our Innovation Kitchen seed and grow valuable, loving and profitable communities before my eyes. I watched this beautiful facility create a ‘bloom’ of great jobs for people who have significant employment needs that deserve our support.

Within this NY Times food issue was an article by Rob Walker titled, “Shared Tastes. The ‘kitchen incubator’ and how it really works.” The piece is about the most common ways people are deploying these incubator kitchen facilities to give low-income entrepreneurs access to commercial kitchens and technical support so they can grow new businesses. This is truly great, world-changing work. It’s wonderful to have a bright light shined on this work.

But there are other models emerging, like our Innovation Kitchen. I think our ‘artisan food career’ experiment at the Innovation Kitchen is another new way to think about the subject of utilizing shared use kitchens for creating jobs and economic development.

What if we invite food entrepreneurs of ALL income ranges to participate in food entrepreneurship? Why limit it to entrepreneurship programs for low-income people? The Innovation Kitchen is working on a model that creates a platform for all food entrepreneurs to live anywhere they want and have their recipes prepared by an excellent, fully certified food processing staff in a world class, state-inspected commercial kitchen. This is our ‘artisan food career’ program for aspiring food entrepreneurs nationwide.

At the same time, our Innovation Kitchen model also creates important and much-needed jobs that support adults with disabilities. It is indeed ‘seeding and savoring communities’ as the NY Times says, and represents a valuable addition to this discussion of how to deploy shared use kitchens.

At the Innovation Kitchen, my friends with disabilities are helping package and label and ship a wide variety of foods processed for local farms, food lovers and food entrepreneurs nationwide.

And it’s not just jobs for my friends with disabilities.

In addition, our Innovation Kitchen is focused on helping existing food businesses in our region grow their own enterprises to the next level. This model nurtures our existing economy, gives our existing food entrepreneurs the opportunity to create jobs in their businesses while making their own businesses more stable and profitable.

We just added up the local produce that was processed through the Innovation Kitchen in the last 3 months and it was over 25,000 pounds. In 3 months! This was accomplished while Annette and her great staff were just starting up the facility, plus catching up with their own loss of 3 months of production during their move to the new facility. The Innovation Kitchen processed over 25,000 pounds of LOCAL produce from LOCAL farms, in 3 months to rave reviews. Plus the work supported trucking jobs, plus jobs in labeling and packaging and marketing.

This experiment is making good jobs across a wide spectrum of the food chain (pun intended).

People from anywhere the country can start their own enterprises utilizing the Innovation Kitchen as their safe, legal, commercial food preparation ‘back office’. People can create new businesses from wherever they live while creating jobs for adults with disabilities in Wisconsin. This is the basis for our 'artisan food career' program.

Ours is a different plank in the ‘incubator kitchen’ platform. My friends at the Innovation Kitchen look forward to sharing the idea and their facility in service of this experiment.

I hope to be as transparent as I can in reporting those results here.

Let’s dig in!


The Innovation Kitchen

Our 'artisan food career' program

New York Times. Shared Tastes. The 'kitchen incubator' and how it really works. By Rob Walker. (great date!) 10/10/10

An outline of an ‘artisan food career’ package.

We're designing our 'artisan food career' package this year as a test. We are looking for a maximum of 100 partners that can help us refine this program as early-adopters, with all that entails.

That said, the Innovation Kitchen can become a valuable platform for growing and launching innovative food enterprises.

The overview:

All of us know someone who has a wonderful signature recipe that everyone thinks should be taken to market. This ‘artisan food career’ package lets people test that idea utilizing a licensed, insured, commercial food processing plant to prepare and help market their recipes for commercial sale.

The Innovation Kitchen lets people take their best recipes to the next level.

The Innovation Kitchen can help people start and grow their own artisan food enterprises. They can do this from wherever they live and utilize the Innovation Kitchen as their processing facility and support partner.

The offer consists of 12 training and consulting sessions, leading to the launch their own commercial food product line using the Innovation Kitchen as their preparation source.

The training and consulting sessions also lead to a certification in artisan foods management.

The training and consulting sessions are ongoing and can be largely self-paced. We anticipate it may be typical for individual entrepreneurs to complete the twelve training and consulting modules and launch their food enterprises within six to eighteen months.

The Innovation Kitchen is a state-inspected, licensed, fully insured commercial food processing plant. Foods prepared here can be shipped for commercial sale nationwide.

Food possibilities:
People can utilize the Innovation Kitchen to create artisan food careers based around everything from treasured family recipes to their exciting new food innovations that fall within our processing capacity.


Why this is important:
The Innovation Kitchen can fully manage the preparation, packaging, labeling, storage and shipping requirements for the food entrepreneur.

What need does this fill:
This package allows people to develop and test their recipes at commercial scale in a professional, licensed, and insured commercial kitchen. Once the recipe plan is fully developed, the Innovation Kitchen can act as their preparation partner for processing their recipes in a safe, insured environment, with a full compliment of business, sales and distribution services available.

Artisan food entrepreneurs can utilize the Innovation Kitchen to start and grow innovative new food enterprises from wherever they live.

How can I run a food enterprise from where I live using the Innovation Kitchen?

The Innovation Kitchen can act as the ‘virtual processing facility’ for artisan food companies operating from anywhere in the U.S.

A food entrepreneur from Seattle or Vermont or Tucson or Texas could run an artisan food business from their homes with all the preparation and ‘back office’ documentation and logistics supplied by the Innovation Kitchen.

The innovation Kitchen can provide these services to an artisan food entrepreneur:
- purchase and store ingredients to your specifications
- prepare
- package
- label
- store product
- sell at our retail store
- sell on Innovation Kitchen web site
- fulfill (ship) orders taken on your website
- ship nationwide


So, with that in mind, what’s the Artisan Food Career package look like?

For those who receive this package as a gift, or those investing in themselves, people can expect training and support in two key areas:

- business planning support for starting and growing an artisan food career.
(six modules)

- food processing support for preparing and packaging your recipes.
(six modules)

These lead to a certification in artisan foods management. Each entrepreneur can decide in which order they want to utilize each training component.

We recommend you complete the business planning components while you develop your recipe plan. The business planning modules are designed to guide people into homework at their local level that needs to be addressed if you will be opening a new business, or growing an existing one.

Business training is done live online and on the phone. We have small group sessions where people gather on the phone and online for a subject-specific presentation as well as plenty of time for Q&A.

The six business planning modules include the following topics:

• Introduction to small food enterprises

• Planning your enterprises

• Organizing your enterprise

• Managing your enterprise

• Marketing your enterprise

• Capturing enterprise data


The six artisan food processing modules include these consultation and training steps: (These modules can be done through whatever combination of phone, internet and kitchen visits is most convenient for the entrepreneur.)

• Recipe development and consultation

• Purchasing information and support
(ingredient sourcing, plus packaging, labeling support)

• Recipe testing

• Required documentation

• Approved recipe plan

• Graduation and commercial recipe launch!

Graduation and commercial recipe launch will be a celebration! The Innovation kitchen will make the first artisan commercial batches of your recipe according to your recipe plan. For our food entrepreneurs that can visit, we will present them with their Graduation Certificates in Artisan Foods Management and their personalized chef coat. During the inaugural processing batch, we will be able to take many photos for the entrepreneur's web page at the Innovation Kitchen web site and their own web sites. Photos can include the entrepreneur helping process their first commercial batch, applying the first commercial labels, etc.

Completion of all modules qualifies the entrepreneur for a Certificate of Artisan Foods Management from the Innovation Kitchen.

The artisan food career package is a work in progress. If you know of anyone that might enjoy being an early adopter in this great adventure, this may be the best gift you could ever give them. Or don't wait for the gift to come your way. Invest in yourself. Either way we'll limit the first round to 100 food entrepreneurs and innovators.

If you know of someone who would benefit by having this gift presented to them please let me know. Also if you want to invest in yourself get in contact. This will be a great story and a great platform for launching new food enterprises.

Do you know someone with a signature recipe everyone says they should market? Perhaps your own recipe. Help launch an artisan food career for yourself or a loved one.

This year, give the gift of an artisan food career. Give it to a loved one. Give it to yourself.


Link to the Innovation Kitchen's Artisan Food Career page.

Tom Peters. 'The Little BIG Things', and local entrepreneurship

I've set down the new Tom Peters book all over my home and office, fully impailed with post-it notes.

'The Little BIG Things' is Mr. Peters' most recent contribution. It's a great series of short essays about organizing our business lives wisely in the 21st century. I've been a huge fan of Mr. Peters for many years, starting with the publication of the seminal, 'In Search of Excellence'.

The people that can hire Tom would be larger organizations not typically startups and emerging enterprises, but he writes in a way that will benefit any small business, especially those wanting to be sustainable through chaotic economic times.

Here's a piece from Mr. Peter' bio (linked below):

"'Excellence in Execution'... was, is, wherever, and forever will be Sustainable Competitive Advantage #1."

At the end I'm going to focus this advice on local foods entrepreneurship and our new Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Check out these pieces from a guy I believe has changed capitalism in the last few decades:

"I sometimes, and not in jest, call 'it' the only thing I've learned 'for sure' in the last 44 years.

She or he who tries the most stuff… wins!

44 years.
One idea.
Not bad."

And this, in part, immediately followed:

"ACTION WORDS:

'Experiment fearlessly' - Business Week on the #1 tactic of innovation stars.

'Ready. Fire. Aim.' - Ross Perot and others [Editor's note - Please note that 'Ready' is the first step in the sequence].

'Intelligent people can always come up with intelligent reasons to do nothing.' - NPR host Scott Simon

'Blame no one. Expect nothing. Do something.' Football coach Bill Parcells.

'You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.' - Wayne Gretzky."


This is real life business advice for any entrepreneur, startup or small business.

I especially think there are specific lessons for food entrepreneurs considering starting or growing a food business through our new Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

We are setting it up as a platform capable of running many kinds of experiments in artisan and commercial-scale local foods processing.

If local foods are to be made available year round they need processing of all kinds. The Innovation Kitchen will be a platform for testing and growing food businesses to meet this demand.

All of Mr. Peters' books are valuable. This new one "The Little BIG Things" is a great addition.

So, fellow food entrepreneurs, please pay heed to Mr. Peter's one 'sure thing' idea when considering the possibilities of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen: "She or he who tries the most stuff… wins!"

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen opens July 11. Join us that day in Mineral Point.



Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen Grand Opening July 11. 11AM to 4 PM.

Tom Peters' site. It's been my greatest writing honor to be included on Mr. Peters' recommended blog roll for the past 4 years.

Tom Peters' bio.

News from the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

Oh my gosh. Kitchen equipment gets moved in next week. I get to move in the week after. I can't tell you how exciting this is.

Very few people know the full story of how hard the Hodan Center family and their supporters worked to open this facility. Centers for adults with disabilities are facing increasing challenges. Including Innovation Kitchens in the mix of their services to our communities allows us all better, easier access to food innovation and entrepreneurship.

Innovation Kitchens can help our disabled friends enjoy a meaningful work life. They can also enable small food enterprises as well as new food entrepreneurs to grow new businesses and create new jobs. Innovation Kitchens can create platforms for profitably processing and marketing local foods within regional foods systems. My kind of win-win-win…

So, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen news from last week…

Processing Partner news: (Processing Partners prepare their own recipes utilizing the Innovation Kitchen on a rental basis).

Initial rental rates have been set.

Let me set the stage. This is a state-inspected commercial kitchen. All new equipment. (initial list linked below). Walk-in freezer and fridge. Shipping docks. Total facility cost is well over $1 million dollars.

Rental rates have been set at $15 per hour for available slots.

That's not a misprint. With the appropriate certifications, you can rent a million dollar+ commercial kitchen for $15 per hour. It made me glad I passed my certification courses. The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen/Hodan Center is making this facility available for rental to local food entrepreneurs during available time slots. If you would like to prepare your own recipes for commercial sale, this is a significant opportunity. (certification requirements linked below)

Preparation Partner news: (Preparation Partners utilize the Innovation Kitchen staff to process and package their recipes on a contract basis).

This is an opportunity to have your recipes prepared for commercial sale in artisan, commercial batches in a state-inspected kitchen by a community of food-certified workers who love their jobs.

For farmers, local food lovers, and food entrepreneurs, this is a significant opportunity to start or grow a virtual food business without having to invest in infrastructure or employees.

This virtual food business idea - using the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen as your Preparation Partner - will allow food innovators and entrepreneurs from around the world to launch and run exciting new food businesses from Iowa County, Wisconsin. The kitchen can prepare, package, store and ship your food innovation. What an opportunity.

There are limited slots for this. Send me an eMail if you are interested. (work email linked below).

Event Partner news: OK, this is why I started this post. Chef Joel and I had a great meeting this weekend. Everyone at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is excited about the local foods courses Chef Joel will be starting this summer. The courses will weave through the theme of 'Everyday Cooking with Wisconsin Local Foods'.

Chef Joel's local foods courses will be scheduled for one Saturday every month at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen in Mineral Point. Details to follow. Here also, due to space limitations, enrollment will be limited to something like 15 to 20 local food lovers per class.

For these courses, Chef Joel will have an education/ demonstration presentation in the morning. The afternoon will be hands-on, focusing on local foods preparation (and celebration!).

All the details need to be worked out, but Chef Joel will be on hand to do demonstrations and answer questions about Wisconsin local foods preparation at the Innovation Kitchen Grand Opening. July 11 from 11 AM to 4 PM. If you're in the area come on over, meet Chef Joel and let us give you an introduction to our wonderful new Innovation Kitchen.

What's next…
The renaissance in local foods is opening up many new opportunities in food entrepreneurship. Everyone from farmers to those who love food can benefit by improved food processing infrastructure, wisely deployed at scales that makes economic sense.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is just one shining star in this movement. What fun it will be. There are so many experiments in food entrepreneurship that can be run, refined and replicated in a facility like this.

Are you a farmer that would like to experiment with your own value added product lines? Are you a food entrepreneur with a unique food innovation looking for a home?

Perhaps you should grow or start your own food business. Have I got a kitchen for you…


Save the date. The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen Grand Opening. July 11, 2010. 11 AM to 4 PM. Ribbon cutting at 3 PM

Food safety certifications at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Innovation Kitchen partial equipment list

Work email: rickt (at) iowacountyedc.org

Ten Rules

I've been carrying a link around with me for a long while. This piece was written about web startups in 2005, but I knew immediately there was universal advice for all startups in it.

Now that the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen is about to open, I've found a great place to utilize this wonderful writing. I would suggest that these ten rules have significant meaning for local foods entrepreneurs (and most other startups).

I'm reposting this writing (edited-down-to-my-favorite-parts) by Evan Williams.

These ten rules are from a blog post that was written in 2005.

The author is the current CEO of Twitter. He has a very interesting bio (linked below) and the whole Twitter-startup thing looks like its working out pretty well for him (Yikes!).

These (edited) ten rules are among the first things I'd tell people to think about as any kind of new entrepreneur, specifically new food entrepreneurs working in the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Every time I reread these I find myself nodding in agreement or laughing at myself for screwing a few up. All of these things need your attention.

"#1: Be Narrow. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do.

#2: Be Different. See #1—the specialist will almost always kick the generalist's ass.

#3: Be Casual. If you want to hit the really big home runs, create services that fit in with—and, indeed, help—people's everyday lives without requiring lots of commitment….

#4: Be Picky. Startups are often too eager to accept people or ideas into their world. You can almost always afford to wait if something doesn't feel just right, and false negatives are usually better than false positives. [Editor's note: Amen]

#5: Be User-Centric. Always focus on the user and all will be well.

#6: Be Self-Centered. Great products almost always come from someone scratching their own itch. Create something you want to exist in the world.

#7: Be Greedy. It's always good to have options. One of the best ways to do that is to have income.

#8: Be Tiny. … and the willingness of the big guys to shell out for small teams doing innovative stuff, the most likely end game if you're successful is acquisition.

#9: Be Agile. Ebay was going to sell auction software. Initial assumptions are almost always wrong. The same philosophy should be applied to building a company.

#10: Be Balanced. Nature requires balance for health—as do the bodies and minds who work for you and, without which, your company will be worthless.

#11 (bonus!): Be Wary. Overgeneralized lists of business "rules" are not to be taken too literally. There are exceptions to everything."

Thanks to Evan Williams for some really beautiful work (with apologies for my edits). There is serious startup knowledge in every one of these points. Pay attention.

I would also include that startups need a robust data capture and storage capacity, but that's for other posts.

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen can become a platform for all kinds of food entrepreneurs to test their skills and grow smart, creative new food enterprises.

This list is a great place to start.

My thanks to Evan Williams for the great advice!



Original 2005 EVHEAD post: Ten Rules for Web Startups

EVHEAD A blog by Evan Williams

Evan Williams is an American entrepreneur who has co-founded several Internet companies, including Pyra Labs (creator of weblog-authoring software Blogger) and Twitter, of which he is currently CEO. He was born March 31, 1972 and raised on a farm in central Nebraska. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and son.

Wikipedia Evan Williams

The Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

The 'Eight Courtesies' of effective enterprise.

These posts have consistently tried to advocate for sustainable, repeatable business practices.

This brings me back often to Tom Peters. I am thrilled to see Tom has a new book coming out in early 2010. Tom Peters is at the top of my list of transformative business thinkers.

His new book is called "The Little BIG Things". Sounds like Tom at his best. He is building his current presentations around what he calls "The Eight Courtesies". I'll highlight them below. Buy the book.

Yes, the economy is awful and people are getting hurt badly, but it doesn't mean that we can't explore options for finding a way forward. There are opportunities for 'the rest of us' to start and grow new and emerging enterprises. I have a powerful sense that new kinds of local and regional trade will continue to emerge worldwide for the foreseeable future. It's happening from Australia to the West Bank, to Avoca, WI, and to China (hello Yongchao!).

There are deep and fruitful opportunities here. I am increasingly seeing my immediate contribution to the subject being enterprise creation through local foods.

Individually, these new enterprises may not seem Wall Street worthy, but in aggregate they represent a lot of positive, sustainable, long-term value for economic development on Main Streets and across regions.

So how do you participate? Think you've got to be some kind of uber-trained CEO type to run a new enterprise effectively? Think again.

It's nothing of the sort. You can do it. You DO do it now in other areas of your life. After 35+ years of entrepreneurship I couldn't have described effective entrepreneurship any better than Tom Peters is doing right now.

Here are the eight most important management tools Tom prescribes in The Little BIG Things.

"Epigraph:

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.—Henry Clay

The 'Eight Courtesies'

1. Stay in touch. (MBWA: Management By Wandering Around)

2. Invest in relationships. (Make friends. Obsess.)

3. Listen. (Respect. Learn. Student. PROFESSIONAL. Sustainable Competitive Advantage #1)

4. Ask. (Engage. Inspire. Consult. React.)

5. Thank. (Appreciate. Acknowledge.)

6. Network......

7. Apologize. (Unequivocal. Rectify. Over-react. Forgive.)

8. Practice thoughtfulness. (Kindness is free. This is ... STRATEGIC.)"


You heard it here: The Renaissance age of entrepreneurship is just beginning. Remember Tom's 'Eight Courtesies' as you journey.

You can do this friend. Start. Engage. Be courteous. Enjoy.


Eight Courtesies: From TP blog 11/24/09

I'm going to buy this book: The Little BIG Things. New book by Tom Peters out February 2010

Slow Startups. What to do first.

The economy is rebuilding, but I don't know anyone who feels relaxed about their future economic security.

People want to put some stability and meaning back into their economic lives. There are certainly many paths to get there.

I've been writing about slow startups as a viable path for creating smart new enterprises that can make significant financial and cultural improvements in people's lives.

We've got slow food, and now slow money. Why not slow startups? Everyone wants viable new solutions and the emerging model is competence and sustainability, not speed.

Just as there is great honor in slow foods and what that idea brings to commerce, there is also great honor and long-term value in creating slow enterprise models.

We need to make entrepreneurship simpler and more accessible. We need to nurture entrepreneurship that builds and sustains our communities and our regions. We need to help people create and build their own enterprises in ways that fit into their lives appropriately.

Slow startups take into account whatever your personal and financial status is. This model allows you to build and test your own enterprise at your own pace, so that in the end you will have a service or a product that you're passionate about and a sustainable business model supporting it.

Slow startups certainly match up well with my own boomer demographic. I also think these kind of slow launches will fit in well with the wonderful artisinal young people doing so many cool things out there. And if you're in the middle, what's wrong with trying to create a long-term job for yourself by slowly starting your own business now?

So, here's my news: Most startups take far longer than the people think. This is especially true for small, self-funded startups. That's not a bad thing, it just is. What this should be saying to you is to start creating your own small business ASAP. It will take longer than you think to get underway. Start one while you have a day job. Start one in your spare time. I know, this is not easy, but the time is there. Find what time you can and put it to work.

By taking the process slowly, you will learn far more than by rushing through it. You will learn to enjoy the journey.

If you REALLY love this process after trying it out, you can circle back and do startups over and over - a perfectly viable and compelling career path in the 21st century.

In trying to help some new enterprises through our economic development office, I've been re-using the Micro-Enterprise courses I wrote and taught through the Small Business Center at WCTC in Waukesha. It's my slow startup manual.

Slow startups perfectly suit micro-enterprise and vice versa.

What do I really mean? I mean you can invest a few hundred dollars and a year or two of part time effort and come out the other end with a viable enterprise that's making money and building greater security and independence into your life. From there you can nurture and grow it in any direction you want.

If you have more time and money to invest, you can shorten your timeline to launch. This also makes it possible to make expensive mistakes. Careful.

So, start now. Start slow. Take some time to think about this and explore the possibilities. Here is my outline:

Slow startups. What to do first.

There are six fairly simple, but critically important steps to launching a slow startup. These make slow startups sustainable:

- Get a realistic understanding of what it takes to wake up an idea, as well as the risks and rewards of entrepreneurship and how to plan for both.

- Learn what information you'll need, how to find it, and how to use that information once you find it.

- Learn how become a professional at what you do, and where to turn for help.

- Create a management structure that builds your own confidence, deals with the details, and creates peace of mind for all involved.

- Learn how to market and sell in your niche.

- Learn to capture your data and turn it into commerce.

These six approaches to slow startups were the core of the six courses I wrote and taught through the Small Business Center.

They are my roadmap for creating slow startup enterprises. Each one of these topics unfolded into a 90+ minute discussion in my Micro-Enterprise courses when we dug into all the how-to stuff. There are multiple, discreet steps behind each of these major categories. I really loved sharing these ideas in depth.

I want you to know that it's not complicated. It just takes time. Take informed, measured steps. Develop mastery in small valuable steps. Make as many inexpensive mistakes as you can as quickly as you can. Execute. Innovate. Repeat.

It is not hard, but it does take time. Slow startups. Start one now and you'll thank yourself down the road.

As Tom Peters says, "Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills. Everyone has a chance to be a brand worthy of remark."

This is the Renaissance Age of entrepreneurship, and its just beginning.

Welcome friend. Now get going.


Tom Peters site

Plumbing for Joy? Be Your Own Boss

The title of this post comes from a Wall Street Journal article this week which I'll link to at the end. I'll also highlight some really important points this article make about sustainable entrepreneurship.

First some news from Iowa County Economic Development. The Driftless Foods project was awarded a $24,400 grant to help organize and launch. The train is leaving the station. Big, serious steps are ahead, but I have high hopes this wonderful project will power through them and emerge as an effective, reproducible model for doing local-foods entrepreneurship.

Speaking of local-foods entrepreneurship, the contractor is moving dirt at the new Innovation Kitchen that our Hodan Center will be opening next year in Mineral Point. Here again, I would like to help create a reproducible model for opening a state certified, community shared-use kitchen. Done right, a platform like this, operating at a regional scale can create literally hundreds of new jobs and help dozens of existing small food enterprises (SFEs) grow and prosper.

It is just a flat-out challenging and wonderful experience to be able help design these economic development experiments.

The Wall Street Journal article about entrepreneurship was written by Sue Shellenbarger. It opens with a great introduction the perils and motivations of entrepreneurship: "By economic yardsticks, Roger the Plumber should be feeling pretty low. Roger Peugeot, owner of the 14-employee Overland Park, Kan., plumbing company that bears his name, is part of a sector hit hard by shrunken credit and slumping sales. He has been forced to reduce staff and is battling new competition from other plumbers fleeing the construction industry."

"So why is Mr. Peugeot so happy? He genuinely likes fixing plumbing messes, for one thing, and despite the worst recession he has seen, "I'm still excited to get up and go to work every day," he says. He relishes running into people at the local hardware store whom he has helped in the past. And in hard times, he says, his fate is in his own hands, rather than those of a manager. "Even when things get tough, I'm still in control," he says."

(me) Whew… what that guy said.

Now, let's bring up your entrepreneurship possibilities under this scenario. I want you to get to that state of mind. Do you have to start with employees like Roger the Plumber? Do you have to quit your day job?

I would posit that starting a small business while you are still working for managers creates hope and an empowering taste of personal independence and control in people's lives.

"The WSJ continues: "As a business owner, Mr. Peugeot says, "even when things are out of your control, as they are with this economy, you're still in control of your relationships" with customers. Corporate managers and executives may "sit and wonder if they're going to be laid off, or get frustrated with the inabilities of management," he says. "If yo're the owner, you may have to say 'I screwed up,' but it's a lot better than saying, 'I didn't deserve that.'"

As an entrepreneur, you control your outcomes.

Entrepreneurship is also a path to more control over your time. The example the WSJ cites below is about a young mother, but there are seriously great life-improvements for people of every age group when you can take some control over your time.

" The freedom business owners have to control their schedules enables them to adhere more closely to their personal priorities, says Amy Neftzger, an organizational psychologist for Healthways. They have the flexibility to "make it to a child's play, or spend time with family," she says."

In Iowa County I'm doing my darndest to design and build some new platforms that will make this kind of entrepreneurship possible. I'm getting more confident in successful outcomes by the day. This is exactly the style of entrepreneur mentorship that the Small Business Center at WCTC let me create and teach.

Yes, entrepreneurship is a (not the) way to more self-control and personal fulfillment. It's also a ton of work (a fact I've been writing about since these posts started) so go in with your eyes wide open or don't go in.

From the WSJ:

"(Business owners) are more likely to work extremely long hours than people in any other occupation group, other Gallup research shows."

So how to deal with that? Start small. Start now. Make as many mistakes as you can as inexpensively as you can. Continue moving forward even in the midst of adversity. Then you can grow your business as your life allows.

What's totally, eccentrically fun about that process is that you can end up working prodigious percents of every day doing enjoyable, challenging, rewarding work, whose time-flow you control.

You can do it.



WSJ article, ' Plumbing for Joy? Be Your Own Boss', by Sue Shellenbarger. Wall St. Journal Sept 16, 2009

WCTC Small Business Center

I located this WSJ article through Tom Peters' great site

It's not a kitchen incubator.It's an Innovation Kitchen.

Here in Wisconsin there is great interest in creating publicly available kitchen space to help small, local food enterprises come to life and grow. The short hand term for these efforts is 'kitchen incubators'. The model is that you can rent a state certified (expensive!) kitchen for a modest hourly rate and grow your own food business.

In our area, safety requires that foods produced for public sale need to be processed and packaged in a state inspected facility. Frankly this is a critical marketing benefit to be state certified. These inspections are probably required in most states, but I have not had the time to research.

The idea is to utilize public and private funds as available to create public shared-use kitchens as tools to enable local farmers, food enthusiasts, and food lovers of all kinds to become entrepreneurs.

I believe this idea will work for all kinds of locations. I see a very special place for this work in rural economic development where I spend my time.

I'm wrapped up in this subject at the moment. We have a public shared-use kitchen (kitchen incubator) opening in Iowa County early next year. It will be owned and operated by The Hodan Center, a wonderful enterprise celebrating and enriching the lives of people with disabilities. I am working with the Hodan Center on creating a public shared-use kitchen platform, available to the public when not used by Hodan activities.

I grew up with entrepreneurs, and I've been a working entrepreneur for 35 years. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a bigger, better or easier opportunity to explore entrepreneurship than in what I'm seeing now.

The Slow Money folks refer to these businesses as Small Food Enterprises (SFEs).

I dearly love this idea, but I don't think the phrase 'kitchen incubator' does this movement justice. The possibilities are much bigger and much more profound.

'Innovation Kitchen' is my term of art that embraces the new entrepreneurship possibilities of food. I am fully enchanted with what can happen from these kinds of platforms.

Creating a kitchen is not enough. Creating a network is what is needed. We are calling our new platform 'The Wisconsin Food Innovation Network', or, the Innovation Kitchen' for short.

In our area, we are all indebted to Mary Pat Carlson of the Farm Market Kitchen in Algoma, WI (linked below). Mary Pat pioneered this concept in Wisconsin and is making it work. Mary Pat is generously helping those of us with new kitchens in the planning and building stages understand what's required for these to succeed.

What excites me so much about this idea is that is speaks so clearly to the almost endless possibilities for entrepreneurship these certified kitchen platforms provide.

I've been saying for a long time that this is the Renaissance Age of entrepreneurship and that it's just beginning. I believe our Innovation Kitchen can become a model for enabling all kinds of economies, but the economic development benefits can be especially transformational for rural and agricultural regions.

Our new Wisconsin Food Innovation Network will focus on creating a sustainable platform for creating and growing food-based enterprises. I see the network aspect of this as creating, in advance, relationships for the kitchen with buyers, vendors, professional advisers, and entrepreneurship assets.

The Wisconsin Food Innovation Network will open its Innovation Kitchen in Mineral Point, WI in early 2010. We are planning the public-use protocols with the idea of learning what is most sustainable and reproducible over time and in other locations.

I'll be dedicating our first Iowa County Entrepreneur and Inventor Club meeting to a wide ranging discussion of the kitchen with Hodan staff available for questions. That meeting will be Wednesday, Sept. 23 in Dodgeville, WI at the Stonefield Apartments. Doors open at 5:30 PM. Meeting starts at 6.

I have focused these posts recently on our work to help create our Iowa County Initiative, Driftless Foods. This is designed to create a planned system for a local-foods processing cluster in a discreet region. The Innovation Kitchen fits this project hand in glove. It is my belief that over time, some entrepreneurs working from the Innovation Kitchen will 'graduate' into bigger revenue roles and need bigger processing and support capabilities. We will have that infrastructure waiting for them with Driftless Foods.

The time has come to roll this out big time. I am SO looking forward to working with and supporting the Hodan Center and the Wisconsin Food Innovation Network.

I will use this space to report back on what worked, what didn't, and (oh my!) all those possibilities….


The Hodan Center

The Farm Market Kitchen

Local Food Processing. Small is Beautiful

When Woody Tasch from Slow Money came to town last week I was startled to hear him respectfully and with gratitude reference the book Small is Beautiful.

I'd read Slow Money and was struck by the possibilities but hadn't connected the work to E. F. Schumacher and his great book, "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered."

But this is a natural 21st century marriage. Efficient, market-driven financial discipline, with sustainable goals and methods, (Slow Money) meets smart, appropriate-scale technologies, in this case taking the form of local foods and sustainable agriculture.

What a magic time for this combination to occur. Demand is off the chart for local foods. Production and processing techniques are faster, smarter, cheaper. Tools for design, organizing, marketing, sales and distribution have never been better or less expensive. I'm back to the fact that this is indeed the Renaissance age of entrepreneurship, and it's just beginning.

Food is an issue whose time has come. There is a wonderful quote from Wisconsin's own Aldo Leopold in his Sand County Almanac that ties in here. Think about the following Leopold quote in terms of sustainable agriculture, local processing, local foods and healthy, more compelling communities; "By and large our present problem is one of attitudes and implements. We are remodeling the Alhambra with a steam-shovel, and are proud of our yardage. We shall hardly relinquish the shovel, which after all has many good points, but we are in need of gentler and more objective criteria for its successful use."

Free markets have nurtured the greatest freedoms in human history, but we need to apply those tools in less destructive, more successful ways especially in the way we feed and nurture ourselves and the place we live.

As a group of us works to design an efficient, reproducible local foods processing system with our Driftless Foods, Iowa County initiative, none of us are taking anything as gospel. Small is beautiful not because it sounds good as a theory on paper but because technology has evolved small, smart, nimble processing equipment that makes better use of resources and produces higher, more sustainable profits. That's why small is beautiful. Schumacher was [is!] right.

Small is a matter of perspective certainly. The multiple local foods processing plants we are designing to work in a self-supportive coalition, are not garden sheds. They will take a lot of money by anyone's standards. They will be technologically and environmentally brilliant. Small? No, compared to farmyard vegetable stands. Yes, compared to the Wall Street backed food system now falling apart.

One of my favorite Schumacher quotes sums up what a new local foods processing system might look like: "The aim ought to be to obtain the maximum amount of well being with the minimum amount of consumption." That is, an ultra lean, wise production system that creates great multi-generational jobs for a community, passing the bulk of the profits into a pool that all contributors are compensated from equitably.

I'm going to post the first Driftless Foods Cooperative white paper that we produced by separate headline following this. It's a short overview of the project.

Small is beautiful because it is smart, sustainable and profitable. Above all else small is valuable because it is reproducible .

In economic terms, that's a beautiful thing.



The E.F. Schumacher Society

Small is Beautiful. Wikipedia

The Aldo Leopold Foundation

Aldo Leopold. Wikipedia

The Aldo Leopold quote in this post is from the dedications page of the 25th Anniversary edition of Small is Beautiful.

Local food processing - the missing link

A great week for local food processing.

What a week of positive steps. Entrepreneurship is flowering in the world of local foods in ways that I have never seen. This is the renaissance age of entrepreneurship and it's happening extensively in local foods.

Several great highlights to report.

Wood Tasch was in Madison last Monday for their 5th Slow Money Institute. Woody and Slow Money are linked below.

My friend Bartlett Durand is from Otter Creek Organics in Iowa County, home farm of Gary Zimmer, a new friend I greatly admire and United States 2008 US Organic Farmer of the Year. Bartlett summed up the positive emotion in the room on the day of the Slow Money presentation when he fists-up challenged the room and the world with, "It starts here. It's starts now." That was not rhetoric. It was 'run toward the sounds of the guns' stuff (listen to the interview with Woody linked below to get an idea of the buzz in the room all day). The time for local foods is now. And it is erupting in Wisconsin in many amazing ways. Local food development and local food processing models will emerge from our region that will empower people worldwide.

I was privileged to be able to make a presentation about our Iowa County initiative, the Driftless Foods Co-Op, at the Slow Money Institute (SMI), along with my great partner in this adventure, Mark Olson from Renaissance Farm. Margaret Bau, legendary cooperative developer from USDA Rural Development and a member of our Driftless Foods organizing committee, also presented to the SMI.

The next day a few of us had an amazing two hour meeting with Mr. Rod Nilsestuen, our Secretary of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection in Wisconsin.

Mr. Nilsestuen was over-the-top helpful. Mark Olson and Lois Federman, both good friends I've written about, were at this gathering. When I think about all the meetings I've been to in my life, I count this among the few that I would call the most productive. We got to discuss the Iowa County initiative that we outlined at Slow Money the day before. Because we are proposing to organize as a cooperative, Secretary Nilsestuen's background and bias-for-action were transformative. What he was able to bring to our discussion was immeasurably helpful. Mark and I were executing valuable action steps before we hit the parking lot based on what we learned from the previous couple of hours.

Mr. Nilsestuen was the leader of the Wisconsin Federation of Cooperatives for 24 years, which represented about 860 co-ops with 1.8 million members in endeavors ranging from finance and insurance to rural development and agriculture. In 2003, Mr. Nilsestuen was inducted into the National Cooperative Hall of Fame at the National Federation of Cooperatives.

Driftless Foods will be organized as a cooperative because it makes sense for this specific application. I have not been a co-op guy in the past, but there are some inherently beautiful ways to design systems of interdependent, self-supporting enterprises that are perfect for a cooperative structure.

And as for the bigger picture of creating those enterprises and nurturing entrepreneurship...

As a working entrepreneur, the only secret I can reliably pass on about what kind of businesses are best to start is that you should look for what's broken and create opportunities from that. I can't ever remember a moment where entrepreneurship was on such a verge to flourish and succeed.

In the world of local foods, local food processing is the missing link. We have created enormous demand for local foods with consumers, food stores, and restaurants. The production, or supply side, is not being developed in ways that are sufficient to meet this demand.

My immersion into Slow Money early in the week followed by clear, valuable, tactical support for action from key stakeholders in government, academia, and the investor community was invigorating. This is a moment for local foods and for economies of all shapes and sizes to, as Bartlett said above, recognize that the time to change is 'right here, right now'.

I am personally enchanted with the work of Slow Money, and I am empowered by the vision of Mr. Nilsestuen.

I've been a working entrepreneur for more than 35 years. I have never in my life seen this level of commitment to entrepreneurship and creating new enterprises. Watching it happen in the world of local foods is breathtakingly cool.

I can't wait for next week!



Woody Tasch interview with Bill Lubing

Secretary Nilsestuen's CV at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection.

Otter Creek Organics


Lubing Creative

Slow Money new friend Odessa Piper: "Local is the distance the heart can travel." Odessa is the founder of the world renown L'Etoile Restaurant in Madison. She has promised to share her essay behind this quote in a future post.

Day job report - a Spanish co-op model for Iowa County, WI

I usually use these posts to share something enlightening that works in support of my premise that we need to create economic security for ourselves and for our communities by making jobs through new enterprises.

For folks who have tagged along on these essays, some of what I do for my day jobs has come through. This post will be one of those essays, following up on a couple of recent ones about developing new smarter, faster, cheaper startups.

I currently am privileged to work in rural economic development in a very special place, Iowa County, Wisconsin. It's immediately west of Madison and just up the road from Dubuque, where IBM has just transformed the economic landscape by moving a huge data support center there. The landscape of where I work is spectacular. It's called the 'Driftless region' because the landscape has never been flattened by glaciers. It is a land of ancient mountains and pristine valleys, now softened by time into a scale that is so pleasant I can't do it justice.

This beautiful upper Midwest landscape is surrounded by 35 million people within a few hours drive. The rise of regional economics, especially in foods is compelling. In service to this economic and geographic landscape I'm working with wonderful new friends to launch a new job creation platform we hope to make transparent and reproducible in other counties, and other states. If we do it well enough it will work in other continents. That would be a good gift from the upper Midwest Driftless region I love so much.

So, here's a first report from the field.

We held a kickoff meeting for interested stakeholders in a wonderful one room schoolhouse built in 1875. Just down the hill from Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesen, it now serves as the Town hall for the Town of Wyoming in Iowa County. When we first assembled our mailing list 12 days before the meeting, we only had 15 people on the list. As word spread during those first days, over 200 people had asked to be included. When the day came, I sat in the empty schoolhouse whistling past the graveyard as they say. When the time came however, the building came alive.

More than 50 people from all over Wisconsin attended. We had a wonderful group of farmers, food buyers, ag specialists, investors, community bankers, people from every place on the political spectrum, University folks, people from USDA Rural Development, and on and on. This is a topic people really want to delve into.

And we did.

The gist of what we are proposing is the creation of a leadership co-op based on a model developed in Mondregon, in the Basque region of Spain. They start and launch new interrelated enterprises based on a proven system of training, research, financing and mentorship. [See links at the end]. Rather than gush about the good stuff, let me highlight one number. When new enterprises are created under this model the success rate for those new businesses after 5 years is 97%. You read that right. In doing so they have created about 200,000 good paying sustainable jobs.

What this means is that investors, who typically have to wrench huge returns out of startup investments because so many fail, can now approach this model with a sense that their risks are largely mitigated, and they can participate in the economics of these emerging enterprises with longer term, more secure return expectations.

What this would mean to my beautiful county is that we can create a leadership co-op of a few key visionaries who are not afraid to fail and who hold a new vision for creating jobs and building economic independence in a real and lasting way.

In a post I put up earlier this month I talked about smarter, faster, cheaper economic development models for rural economic development.

Our new effort in support of this plan is what we are doing about it. We are calling the effort the Driftless Foods Co-Op. The people that are coming to join this new effort are amazing. I've done many startups before and I have never ever seen talent and ethics like this emerge.

We are working to develop the financing and the infrastructure to begin processing foods that we refer to produced and marketed under 'regional fair trade' standards.

We are forming the leadership co-op now. It is my hope to begin build the first food plant so that it can start processing this year. I would like to build 2 more plants the following year under the umbrella of the Driftless Foods Co-Op. The following year I hope to add 3 more plants.

We are promising our stakeholders and anyone who cares to listen that we are doing this as an experiment. We want our work to be used to create case studies and documentation such that our efforts and policies can be reproduced elsewhere, with different ag assets, probably even non-ag assets. I posit that it's the process that needs to be honed to a reproducible model. Given all that entails - financing, production, mentor relations, community relations, worker participation, buyer transparency, and on and on - this little experiment can be used to make the economics of business creation and job growth far more sustainable and valuable than the policies responsible for what we're experiencing now.

This is my kind of economic development. Work that drives revenue and security to the producers and the communities they live in. It's an energetic, well-grounded launch with wonderful people and noble, sustainable goals.

If we do it right, we just may be able to change the world in small but important ways that last for generations.

Happy Independence Day!


Mondragon in the Basque region of northern Spain is the shining example of an entrepreneurial economy shaped by over 100 co-ops owned by 200,000 people. Thanks to the Mondragon co-ops, the people of the Basque region enjoy one of the highest standards of living in all of Europe while being phenomenally entrepreneurial. Mondragon is proof that co-op ownership can work on a grand scale and compete globally.

Article about our Driftless Foods Co-Op kickoff meeting in the Wisconsin State Journal

Download our working definition of regional fair trade, in PDF

The Mondragon model comes to the inner city Mid West.

Boomer Biz

80,000 Americans turn 60 every single day*

I look at the financial mayhem that just befell the world, and I know that it is hitting all parts of society hard.

I think the style of entrepreneurship that I've written about here is especially suited to boomers. I think that there is a clear need for information about slow paced startups that offer not only a realistic return but importantly, a path for the new entrepreneur to make a contribution to their communities. There is a real potential for creating millions of new small businesses from within this demographic. Scaled right and planned appropriately, this path could offer many of my boomer peers additional financial security and a chance to make a difference.

This is not the only demographic that needs help, but I think the tools and approach of sustainable work fit this bunch the best.

Plus, as a fellow traveler well into boomer-hood, I don't have to be polite to my peers. I get to tell it like it is.

Taking the time to research what you love is the first step. Let the research take you into challenging directions, not the same-old, same-old. Learn from the wonderful young people and all the things that we're inclined to run from. Embrace it. Take the opportunity to slow down and make changes that utilize the new digital and cultural tools that are appearing. Then hurry up and try them out.

Are you going to get rich with your boomer startup? It happens, but the strongest likelihood is that if you plan it right, you'll be able to make a sustainable job for yourself going forward. One that won't be dependent on distant corporate managers or the vagaries of the specific geography you live in.

If you team up to market yourself with like-minded peers of all ages, you can bolster the chances of success for all of you.

It does not take a lot of money to start most new enterprises. It takes the kind of skills and knowledge that most boomers have, but often don't value: time, patience, deep understanding of a specific subject, the ability to see beyond the immediate crisis.

Is Boomer Biz for everyone? Surely not. Is it a viable option that many of us should be exploring? You bet. Boomers and self enterprise are a perfect match!

I was just at a meeting of the Inventor and Entrepreneur Club in Vernon County, WI. This club is run by one of the best economic development pros I am privileged to know, Sue Noble. There were about 50 people attending. All were looking for new ideas to help them launch or improve their new enterprises. As they went around the room telling their own stories, the new ideas flowed and the inspiration just kept getting more compelling. Certainly there were young people in the group, but the vast majority were boomers starting new businesses or boomers just beginning to explore a way to put a toe into that water.

It was so cool to see peers my age just flat out excited about learning new skills and trying new things. They were challenging themselves. They were alive. It was just a really fun room to be in.

If you are a boomer take the time to start acquiring the skills to create your own small enterprise. Done right, it may be the best security you can create for yourself in this economy. More importantly, we can help create a new, better and more secure economy that benefits everyone in society.

It's not hard. It's just new. Deep breath. You can do it.



Vernon County, WI Economic Development

*Fast Company June 2009 p. 103 .

Smaller. Cheaper. Faster. How about for rural economic development?

Inc. Magazine has just given their June cover story over to Paul Graham and his wonderful Y Combinator startup machine.

I've written about Paul Graham a number of times in the past and linked to his sites, which I'll do again at the end of this post. You should know about Mr. Graham and his model for doing - not talking about - actually doing, economic development.

The cover story is titled "The Start-Up Guru. Paul Graham has launched 145 companies. His formula? Smaller. Cheaper. Faster."

In a great story written by Max Chalkin, he opens with the this position: "Graham's system generates scores of bold ideas, churns out dozens of new companies, and creates hundreds of jobs - for a lot less money than you might think."

At its core, Y Combinator is a venture capital fund, operating with small ball investments of $10K or so. More importantly, Paul Graham trains his startups to make things people want and change rapidly as they learn from their mistakes. He doesn't have any high finance back-office structure to accomplish all this. Y Combinator runs out of Graham's home office. Yet he has generated more than 500 jobs with his startups over the last couple of years and this job creation pace is accelerating as his startups mature and are acquired.

The Inc. Magazine piece is too short to do justice to what Mr. Graham is pulling off. It also doesn't give much background about his philosophy, which you can learn more about through his essays (below). Suffice it to say that he builds his entrepreneurs into realistic enterprises ready to face the world. A quote I really loved from the piece sums it up: "Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly. But working for a large company is like being waterboarded."

OK. All of the startups Graham and Y Combinator do are software related. Logical. Graham is a Silicon Valley guy. However, here is where I would introduce my question. Why can't this model be adapted for all kinds of industries and geographies? I would posit that all that would need changing is the exit strategies for investors/stakeholders.

In fact I'm proposing just this kind of model in my day job doing rural economic development. I will say very specifically that the move toward rural small business development highly favors boomers and knowledge workers, typically people wearing both hats.

Why can't we launch many small, fast, fun, smart new farms and ag processing enterprises? Why can't we make training and tools and small ball investments available that will allow people in rural and urban areas to tie into each others economic and cultural self interests in ways that benefit both?

Certainly there is a vast structure of entrepreneurship talk therapy out there. What's needed even more is strategic and financial participation, as well as launch help for farmers in transition, new farmers, and cool new processing facilities emerging to meet the rapidly evolving new world of regional food economics.

My new friends at U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development have shown me a powerful organizational structure that can be used to accomplish these kind of goals. Adapting that structure to Y Combinator like 21st century speed, nimbleness, and adapt-as-you-go enterprise training seem like a perfect marriage for doing effective rural economic development.

With my new friends, especially Mark Olson of Renaissance Farm, we hope to make Iowa County Wisconsin a 763 square mile business incubator for progressive, effective rural economic development. We will be having a roll-out meeting for regional stakeholders to discuss this proposal on June 15 from 3 to 5 PM. eMail me for details if you have an interest.

It's high time we put the coolest startup smarts (Y Combinator) into projects that build our rural communities, grow more farmers and create a growing network of sustainable food infrastructure.

Smaller. Faster. Cheaper. Yum!


Y Combinator

Paul Graham essays

Renaissance Farm