THIS IS JUICY.
@Twiggy @Bronze_Palms @Sheli @homeprogreen @anucrown @artizansty curious to see your replies!
Hmmm. Where to begin? I’m going to comply @Lovewell and only list three. But I’m betting I’m going to have to make hard choices about WHICH three! LOL
First — focus. After 12 years of Piper’s existence (actually this weekend is our 12th anniversary!), I’d resist the urges to be everything to everyone, to try to do everything better than everyone, etc. The first concept for Piper’s was ice cream. I unwisely decided I wanted to add food with a focus on local sourcing and house-made everything (including butter, ketchup, mayo, etc). It was too much. Now we only do frozen treats, having exited the insane food business right after the pandemic lockdowns. Our sales are much better than they were when we had the food component, and the profits are amazing. These days when anyone asks “you know what you should do,” I reply with “that’s a great idea that sounds like something you should start an ice cream shop and do.” Be who you are, and do that better than anyone else. Period.
Second — I wouldn’t let my business be so darned all-consuming. It’s a lesson I’m learning from my Gen Z employees. Work is good. But there should be so much more to life. If I could go back, I’d hire good, strong managers to help me, knowing that in the end that cost would yield benefits beyond my business right into my personal life. I wish I’d known twelve years ago that I didn’t need to do everything and be everything to Piper’s, and that it still would have been as successful as it is today, if not more so. I wish I had erected boundaries and honored them.
Third — Be realistic and go into this wide-eyed. If you can’t accept failure and learn from it, don’t start a business. If you can’t walk away from it when it is no longer fun or profitable, don’t start a business. If you can’t afford to hemorrhage money — especially for the first few years, if not longer — don’t start a business. When you think you have a good business plan, put it aside for a while. Then go back and change it and make it better. Do this a few times. Then, if you have any doubts, don’t start a business. Remember that very few people have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, much less to be a successful entrepreneur. Be brutally honest with yourself about whether or not you are or could be that person.
Yup. Those are my top three.
That is a great question and I think one we have all thought about at one time or another.
1. Think big. We never thought we would end up with 5 acres of greenhouses and more to come, so we should have planned out the original location and footprint of the whole complex much differently for retail experience and wholesale efficiency.
2. Think long term. We've moved multiple greenhouse structures over the years because like #1 it made sense at the time but after growing it now didn't. The 2 points are related.
3. very specific to our situation but go back and mortgage everything and beg/borrow so that we didn't sell half our farm in 1988 because of one of the worst droughts. Farming is such a gamble and to put out a quarter million and return effectively none and still have all the expenses and labor and insurance etc is a business killer. So my parents sold 10 of the 23 acres on our home farm to scratch together enough capital to make it through, but going back to #2 it severely limited us into this very narrow and long piece of property that hampers all expansion projects by having to build farther and farther deep into the property. I was only 11 at the time but it is still one of the things I think about that could really impact our business today.
4. Buy Apple or Google or Nvidia stock 🤣
