Tape #345 - Microenterprise Opportunities

 

Want to let you know, I’m sure you are familiar all the sessions today are being recorded.  And the cassette, the audio cassettes are available, they’ll be at the registration desk for purchase.  We’re trying to get each days sessions available at the end of the day, if not you can check the next day and I’m sure they’ll be available.  Thank you.

 

Oh very good, excellent.  Great.  Thank you.  We’ll turn that off for now, I don’t need it right now.

 

Like to welcome you to this session, which I think is called, it’s called Microenterprise, how to start a small business.  It doesn’t have to be a big business.  That’s an interesting title.  I didn’t do that title.  Because in fact probably most all businesses start as small business. 

 

Let me introduce myself, and then I’d like to find out a little bit about who’s in the room and some of your expectations.  I’d like to make this really very informal, maybe we can get a little dialogue going here.  It’s been a long day I know and this is kind of an arsenic hour for some people, so we want to keep you all awake and engaged.

 

My name is Welthy Soni.  S-O-N-I is my last name.  My first name is W-E-L-T-H-Y, which is quite an unusual name.  People always ask me how I got it, and it’s a family name.  Means “well be with the”, actually.  I’m a well to thee.  I’m here representing the association of Enterprise Opportunity, which is the national association in the United States that’s committed to microenterprise development.  But, I’m only here as a board member of AEO.  Actually, I was also the Chair of our annual conference which was held here in Washington about six weeks ago.

 

But in my real life, I am the Director of a microenterprise program located in rural Appalachia, southwest Virginia.  Basically, we serve about 18 counties in rural part of the state not at all like northern Virginia.  It’s coal mining country, it’s mountainous country, it’s very poor country, and the need for people to start alternative kinds of businesses, particularly women, is very much part of the whole economic strategy that we’re trying to work with people on.  I also am President of the Virginia Microenterprise Network, which is a state-wide network of microenterprise programs throughout the state of Virginia.  So, I’ve sort of got interest at a local level, and a state level, and then some at the national level.  Personally, my own background is that I’ve been involved in the widest variety of businesses probably one person could be involved in.  I’ve been involved with running everything from food service operation to a corrugated box factory which I managed to a 24 hour janitorial service to the remanufacture of alternator/starters to a fishing line customized fishing line business, a job shop doing a lot of electronics kinds of things.  Made mops for the federal government, the United States government.  That was kind of interesting under the federal procurement.  I’ve also collating mailing services.  I mean its been quite wide and varied.  I mean these businesses don’t have a whole lot of relationship one to the other.  Also owned and operated a full-service travel agency.  And had a small consulting business.  So, I’ve had kind of a diverse background in business, which did prepare me fairly well for my present job as Director of the of something called a program called business start which is a microenterprise program operated under the umbrella of a larger organization, a community action agency which is devoted to dedicated to the deviation of poverty in rural Appalachia.  The microenterprise program that I also aid has basically four different arms.  One is training and technical assistance on, we provide lots of training and technical assistance to small entrepreneurs, people who are interested in running home-based businesses or other kinds of small businesses.  And that’s all we do, is just do the training and technical assistance.  We also provide credit.  We have a loan fund.  Right now we have about a million and a half dollars out in loans.  And about another million dollars available for lending at the present time.  We also do marketing for traditional Appalachian, sort of gift items, and we market them to the wholesale gift market.  And we particularly work with women.  We have about 125 women right now scattered throughout the mountains and hollows and valleys of the area, who make items at home that we then take to market.  And we’re marketing good, we go to large wholesale shows, and we market all over the United States and in Japan and in England.  So, we’ve sort of spread the word to countries, to a lot of people outside the region.  And then we have another program that say, basically is an economic literacy program.  One of the problems with low income women in this country, and I suspect the low income women in other countries, is that “A”, they don’t know often a lot about managing money, they don’t have a lot of confidence about managing money.  Some cases, in our part of the country, they don’t even trust banks.  People still do put their money into shoe boxes or hide it under their mattress, in parts of our area.  So, we try to get them to realize that banks actually don’t always have to be bad, and that there is more plus in starting some kind of savings program.  So, economic literacy, financial literacy, is critical to some of the things we’re trying to do to sort of raise peoples consciousness. 

 

So, that is sort of where I come from.  Some of the things I do.  What I would like to do is kind of maybe very very quickly go around the room, since we have a fairly manageable small number here, and, let you introduce yourselves.  We are being taped.  Maybe we can just pass the mike around.  Would that work, do you think?  We’ll just pass the mike around because we want to make sure that everybody gets heard here and we know who’s here.  And just tell us first of all where you’re from and what your particular interest is in this session.  So, I can sort of gage what you would like to get out of the session.  So, we’ll start right over here, with the young lady from New South Wales.

 

PARTICIPANT:  Hello, my name’s Feona Gross from New South Wales.  I work as rural financial counselor.  So, we help farmers in financial difficulty.  So, I came to this session because one of the things people always look at in that situation particularly the women is opportunities to earn some off farming income maybe with a microbusiness.

 

PARTICIPANT: Hello, my name is Elizabeth Harris.  I live down in Maryland where I have, I don’t have a farm, I have a minimal number of goats right now.  But, I’m seriously interested in getting into a cheese making business.  And actually starting up in the UK.  And that’s my interest here.

 

PARTICIPANT: I’m Laura Rogers, I’m from Corbin, Kentucky, so I know a lot about what she’s talking about in the Appalachian Mountains.  I have rios, and I paint their eggs and sell them to tourist shops and at some of the craft shows.  And I have honey from my bees.  So, what I’m interested in is learning how to market these items easier.  Right now, I’m putting in a lot of time and the pay is not as well as it is for someone who works outside of the home.  So, I want to know what I need to do to improve myself, and because I haven’t had any training or anything in this, I’ve had to use common sense and just plain hard work.  So, I want to try to make my job a little bit easier.

 

PARTICIPANT: Hi.  My name is Doris Callavonah, I’m from New South West, Australia.  And, I have a small farm in Australia where I have fine wool Marino sheep, and I’m looking for ideas about how I can market the wool to get some better return.

 

PARTICIPANT: Hi.  Verna Peddle from Newfoundland, Canada.  We run vegetable farming.  I’m mainly interested in just learning some general information on small businesses.

 

PARTICIPANT: Judy Peddle from Newfoundland, Canada.  Verna and I are in the same farm there.  And the situation agriculture is in I’m guess probably in Canada as all, or maybe all the world.  We need to diversify farm and some other forms of business.

 

PARTICIPANT: I’m Larry Flowers.  I’m from the National Renewal of Energy Laboratory in Colorado.  We put in renewable energy systems in developing rural communities, and we find that micro enterprise is the way that they can generate income to improve there quality of life in rural villages.

 

PARTICIPANT: I’m Julia Backman from Durham, Oklahoma.  I was interested in getting a business started and using the network to help with it.

 

PARTICIPANT: My name is             , and I’m a dairy farmer in Australia.  And my stepson is interested in trucks and we started selling free rein gigs by the side of the road.  So, I just chose this session to learn a little bit more about selling our business.  So, thank you.

 

PARTICIPANT: I’m Jody Garby.  I’m a veterinarian here in Washington, D.C., and have worked in developing countries and as a consequence, I’m interested in starting an import craft business working with women’s coops.  So, I want a lot of input from y’all.

 

PARTICIPANT: I’m Arlene Olson, and I’m from North Dakota.  And, with the farming situation the way it is, all great plains of the Untied States, I am looking for some sort of a home-based business.

 

PARTICIPANT: I’m Jennifer Hart, I’m an Agricultural Economist, most of my work has been overseas.  And, I may have some ideas for you.

 

PARTICIPANT: I’m Rose McArth, and I work for the government in Australia, working Department  Parministries.  I’m interested in your stories and ideas to take back with me. 

 

PARTICIPANT: My name is Emily Herbert.  I inherited a program called the Cusic Fund Community Loan Fund.  And we work with small groups in Cusicston with Micro enterprise Development.  Eighty-nine percent of the participants are women and I thought I could soak up some good insights here.  So. --

 

PARTICIPANT: My name is Liz Jacobson, and I live in Australia, in Victoria, Australia, where I have a 40 acre farm.  And, as any farmer will tell you, that’s an economically inviable operation.  So, I’m looking for ways to make it economically viable by doing various things there.  Thank you.

 

PARTICIPANT: My name is Careaire Pastor, I work in USA Guatemala.  I am interested in knowing about Micro enterprise opportunity for rural women in order to increase their participation in our programs.

 

PARTICIPANT: My name is Inderal.  I come from India with an organization called Aware.  We  work for the poorest of the poor.  And, so we have taken a different financial skills for them, skills  like leaflet making, basket making, garment making.  So, I come here to learn more about it so that I can take back information there early as possible and share the information that is possible.

 

PARTICIPANT: Hi, my name is Deb Haleva, and I work for the Women’s Agriculture Network in Vermont, in the US.  And, I’m interested in small scale agriculture and also working with limited resource farmers and just interested in new ideas.

 

PARTICIPANT: My name is Mary Peabody, I also work with the Women’s Agricultural Network, and one of our collaborating partners is a Micro enterprise program for women.  And, as we look towards replication and expanding our program, we’re looking to develop networks with other micro enterprise programs that can sort of help us with the business planning side of things.  And, one of the things that we try to teach women who are interested in starting farm businesses, is that if they have year expenses, they need to have a year round income to match those expenses.  So, I’m just here looking for any information I can get.

 

PARTICIPANT: Hi, there, I’m Ann Lister from the South West of Australia.  I work with a sustainable wool development program in our area.  The farmers have been, some farmers have been hit by low commodity prices.  So, I’m looking at diversification options, and any information I can get.

 

PARTICIPANT: I’m Abby Ola.  I’m from Alaska.  I own, well 55 acres, but was 40 acres, and to the lady who thinks that’s not a viable amount of land, she’s wrong.  I do nitch farming.  And I have three greenhouses, that the greenhouse production overlaps with vegetable production, which overlaps with horse boarding and hay production.

 

PARTICIPANT: My name is Phila Deamar from Madagascar, working for US AID.  And Madagascar is very a very poor country.  We’ve 70 percent of the population which is under the poverty line, especially women.  And US AID is looking for ways to improve you woman’s income and is very interested in Micro enterprise development, so I’m here to learn from the other countries how they have handled this issue.

PARTICIPANT: My name is Mariam Kwanika.  I come from Zambia.  And the Chair of an association of farmers called the Zambia Association for High Value Crops.  We trying to promote the growing of high value crops because of having very small holdings, trying to maximize our yield from the small holdings.   And, we’ve learned that we should not only be producers, maybe we should process our produce as well as market it ourselves.  So, I’m here to look for training, technical training, in how to improve our lots so we are not only farmers, but we are looking at ourselves as business women, agri-business women.  We are not entirely a woman’s group.  But, we a female dominated group.  We have some males as well.

 

PARTICIPANT: My name is Sharon Carchner, I serve on a state committee FSA for USDA, part-time, and I’m always looking for ideas to support my ranching habit.

 

SPEAKER: We have a newcomer here, in the back.  Oh, here she is.  Just tell us your name.  And what you’re interested in this session..

 

PARTICIPANT: My name is Sally Williams.  And, I’m just interested in hearing what everybody got to say.  I though it was a very interesting topic.

 

SPEAKER: Great.  Okay.  All right. 

 

Well, we’ve got some diversity, we’ve already gotten some ideas, because it sounds to me like we can network these two people with their acreage and think of some ways that possibly you can do some nitch marketing.  Of nitch growing and nitch marketing, is what I heard.  And, of course, that’s extremely important.

 

Okay.  Well.

 

When we’re talking about small business, basically we’re talking about business.  Whether it’s big business, whether it’s small business.  Basically, the principles of business are all the same.  So, it doesn’t matter whether you’re one person with just a very part-time kind of thing, or you’re a big corporation.  I mean you’ve still got some considerations that are common to all of you.  (A) You’d like to make some money.  I think.  That’s one thing I heard in here.  (B) You have a product or service that you feel is something you can make money with.  And then you want to get to your customers.  So, when these are these are common elements.  There’s nothing magical about them.  Let’s just kind of take a look at some of the principles though, on the terms of looking at entrepeneurism.  And that’s what we’re really talking about is entrepreneurism. 

 

What I’d like to do is I’m just going to kind of go through some of the basics that are principles of starting a small business.  But, I’d like you to feel very very free to interrupt me.  Come up with some ideas and so forth, because I think that the information that each of you has here, is very important to other people in the room, and certainly sharing of ideas is what basically small business training is all about.  So, let’s just kind of look at some of the basic principles.  You’re thinking about starting a small business.  It’s important that you get, have an idea.  Now, you may have one or two or three ideas.  But have an idea.  You’ve got to know where it is you’re going.  And then, of course, you need to set your goals.  What is it I want to have happen?  I’ve heard several people say, I want a 12 month a year income.  That’s a goal.  You need to really need to sort of write it down.  That needs to become part of some of the things that you’re going to be looking at is how am I going to figure out how I’m going to get this 12 month goal.  It sounds very elementary, but it’s just really important to sort of think through some of these things and set down your principles.

 

Okay.  Now.

 

Let’s look at an entrepreneur.  It’s a, it’s a widely used term, in Micro enterprise we use it a lot.  We say, you know, we’re trying to help entrepreneurs start their own business.  Well, what in the world is an entrepreneur?  An entrepreneur is someone who manages, organizes, and assumes the risk of a business enterprise.  And it’s all three of those things.  Managing, organizing, and assuming the risk.  Because any kind of business, whether it’s just a very small home-based business, or a larger corporation, is going to have risk associated with it.  Whether you’re going to invest $10, $500, $1,000, or just lots and lots and lots of time.  There is risk, because in fact, it may not work out the way you want it to work out.  And you have to be willing to accept that kind of risk from the get go.  So, just kind of a basic sort of a definition.

 

Okay.  I’ve got here sort of a little chart that we’re going to spend quite a bit of time looking at.  Basically, this is sort of a decisions chart for planning a small scale enterprise.  First of all, you’ve gotten, we’re starting over here with you, or the people you work with.  This is where we are starting.  And, very first thing you have to do is to look at the reasons for starting the business.  The pros and cons of doing this.  Why are you doing it?  What do you have, what do want to come out of this, if its, I heard in this room lots of things about income supplements.  You want to make more money.  Well, I mean, you need to understand that that’s been your driving force.  The second thing is extremely important.  Examine your personal characteristics and traits of entrepreneurship and identify your personal strengths and weaknesses.  Each person in this room has got a whole lifetime of experiences and strengths on which to build.  Main thing you need to do is to look at what are those skills.  What do you have to offer?  What can you bring to the workplace.

 

Yeah.

 

PARTICIPANT: Do you have this as a handout?

 

SPEAKER: I have it as a handout, I only have about 12 copies. 

 

PARTICIPANT: I can get it copied.

 

SPEAKER: Goody.  Okay.  Great.  Yeah.  Cause I do have these.

 

PARTICIPANT: Actually, do that at the USDA office just upstairs.

 

SPEAKER: Could we?

 

PARTICIPANT: Xerox machine.

 

SPEAKER: Okay.  I’ll give you -- Okay.  I’ll hear the organizer here will do this for us.

 

Yeah, one packet.

 

Yeah, I’m sorry.  I forgot -- I found out I was this session last Wednesday, and I was leaving my office last Wednesday and I haven’t been back, I’ve been in New York doing, I’ve been in New York presenting on other topics.  And, so, I only brought what I could carry on the airplane with me.  So, I apologize.  But, she’s going to make us some copies, so you don’t need -- this chart is in there.  And it’s kind of a good one, so we’ll have copies of it.

 

Anyway.  Whatever it is that you have, you know, special skills in, special interest in, special background in, I mean you’ve got your 40 acres, that in point of fact become a real strength.  I mean the question is, what to do with those 40 acres to enhance your income.  And, you know, that’s going to go right up in there as personal strengths.  The weakness is that you don’t have a 12 month year crop at the present time.  And I suspect many of you got -- have heard you say that you’ve got agricultural background, but you don’t have something that you can sell for 12 months of the year.  So, the point is to sort of look inward and think what is it that I am producing here.  Now, we’ve got honey over here, that I guess, is that a 12 month a year crop, only during the clover season and the --

 

PARTICIPANT: 

 

SPEAKER: That’s right.  The end of the summer.  Yeah.  We had bees once upon a time in Vermont.  I forgot.  The bears ate them all up. 

 

PARTICIPANT:

 

SPEAKER: Okay.  So you can in fact may be not sell it in bulk but maybe sell it, package it into smaller packages at some kind of a premium product that you’re selling to a different market than you’re presently selling to, possibly.  Okay.  It’s a good idea.

 

PARTICIPANT: I am really a city slicker.  And come up to the country for dairy farmer.  But I bought some honey, with a honey comb in it.  Are you familiar with that?  Yeah.  Because I mean, the country people are probably used to it, but the city slickers, like me, you know, its sort of nice.

 

SPEAKER: Okay.  So we are getting new ideas on packaging your honey, maybe.  That would be a better way of selling, a more, at least more profitable way of selling it.  Now, you’ve got several obstacles.  Which is marketing it and packaging it and all those kind of things and the investment it takes.  Okay.  So, any rate, you know sort of, it’s probably almost good to just put our whole list of things on a piece of paper and figure out what it is, here are my strengths, here are my weaknesses, here are the things that are pros, here are the things that are cons.  You know, maybe there’s a match here somewhere.  And sort of call out three or four things that possibly are going to be money makers for you.  Maybe.

 

Okay.  So, trudging along, you sort of then go on to the next square which is the identification, the feasible plot of services.  And then whatever it is, what, does this have a match with consumer needs.  And that of course, is the critical piece.  Where loads and loads and loads of good ideas out there.  I mean the world is full of wonderful ideas and wonderful products.  Its a question of marrying those products with a need or creating the need.  I don’t know those of you who are our Ramadas over there can tell you about a product that comes from Vermont called Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.  Now, Ben and Jerry, when they developed their ice cream, what was it, 15 years ago, or something like that, I think.  They sent off for a $50 recipe, maybe it wasn’t even that much, $10 recipe from Cornell, I think, on how to make ice cream.  And they decided that they were going to introduce a premium ice cream into the US market, which was already saturated with ice cream.  I mean, we’re a nation of ice cream eaters.  Who in the world would think that you could sell a new ice cream to America, particularly one that came only in pints.  And was priced twice as high as any other ice cream on the market, just about, in that pint size.  Well, they created a market.  And, of course, that can be done also.  They did it through quality.  What else did they do?  How else did Ben and Jerry sell their ice cream.

 

PARTICIPANT: Social responsibility.

 

SPEAKER: Social responsibility.  It was the time they introduced that ice cream, social responsibility was just becoming a buzz word in the United States.  So, they married an expensive, fat-filled ice cream, its the creamiest richest stuff.  I mean, look at the labeling.  Just die.  Its like 45 fat grams, or something, and 360 calories for practically a tablespoon of the stuff.  But, it is socially responsible.  Number one, they used rain forest products and they gave a percentage of money back to the rain forest.  I mean, they didn’t use cut down trees.  They used nuts and so forth.  The fruit of rain forest trees, in their ice cream.  They also give a percentage of all of their company earnings to socially responsible causes.  Their ice cream is made only with milk that of cows that have not been treated with hormones and all that good kind of stuff.  You know, fed pure kind of stuff.  They probably are using recycled paper goods or something for their containers by now, I’m not sure about that.  But, they also had sort of a dictum that nobody in the company would earn like more than five times more than the lowest paid worker.  So, from the highest paid worker to lowest paid worker there was not this very very, you know, you didn’t have an over a chief executive officer who is paid, you know, many many times more than the person that worked on the line.  They actually abandoned that slightly when they did a national search for a new chief executive, which was also done in a very interesting way, because I did like sort of a national job search and invited everybody in the world to apply for the job of the chief executive officer.  So, its a very quirky company.  But, anyhow, the point is that here’s a company that was able to create a niche for itself.  And that’s also an important kind of a thing to think about.  So, the consumer has to need this product, or the consumer has to be made to believe that he’s going to need this product, has to go either way.  Okay.  Then you need to do, and of course in order to find out whether the consumer needs this product, you need to analyze the community that you’re planning to sell to.  You need to sort of select the product of services that you’re going to be doing, and then start looking at your market analysis.  And this is very very very important.  Ben and Jerry, I’m not sure if they’re a great example of this, because I’m not sure how much they examined the market. I think in many cases it was probably a little bit serendipitous that it was just kind of the right product at the right time in the US market.  But, of course, as we know, marketing companies and public relation firms, and so forth spend an awful lot of money figuring out what it is that you the consumer want.  Now, if you’re a little tiny home-based business and you’re selling something locally, of course you can’t do that.

 

PARTICIPANT: One of the women in our local area, Sue Campbell, runs a very successful bed and breakfast.  And, when she’s, before she started the bed and breakfast, she took a business planning course and actually wrote a business plan.  And part of what she also did though was stand around in the street corners of Melbourne and asked people what they wanted in a bed and breakfast.  And that’s what she gave them.  And she’s very successful.

 

SPEAKER: Absolutely.  You stole my friender.  Because the next thing I was going to say is that you’re not a Fortune 500 company, and you don’t have all these resources to pour into a market analysis, and that’s what you need to do, is stand around on street corners and ask people.

 

PARTICIPANT: I think she actually had a survey.

 

SPEAKER: And a little survey form.  Right.  And you think in a variety of ways, you can stand around at the supermarket or wherever people come to, large bodies of people come.  And, ask the question.  You also can do it by looking at the kind of customer you think you want.  You know, your marketing, you’re doing a product for kids, then you might go to places where you might get scout troops, or you might get schools, or, probably not the schools, but maybe other kinds of youth associate groups to kind of give you what you, least send out a questionnaire to them about things that they think are cool.  Or certainly, women.  Then you would sort of hit women’s places, places where women are, including even beauty parlors.  You might be able to get feed back from women, and so forth.  So, you know, just sort of doing that analysis, though, is extremely important.  And the more feedback you can get, as she did with her bed and breakfast, which a bed and breakfast, by the way, is a good idea.  All of you farmers, people, I mean us city slickers, well, I’m not really a city slicker, but, you know, I live in a town of 40,000, so its kind of city.  It’s big.  And its big flower area too, I mean the biggest towns nearby are like 4,000.  So, but, you know, rural bed and breakfast today are a very very hot item with international tourists.  If you can go, when I go abroad, where do I want to stay?  I want to stay in a rural bed and breakfast.  I don’t want to go and stay in a big city.  I really want to get to know the people, I kind of want of to stay in some kind of quite mycolic setting.  So, bed and breakfasts have a real niche.  And you don’t have to have a huge house.  I’ve stayed in some very small bed and breakfasts where people just had three bedrooms in the house.  One that the couple lived in, and the two that they let out.  Shared bathrooms, the whole thing.  So, you know, that’s not a bad little exsupplemental income with a resource that you already have.  Possibly.  So, at any rate, utilizing your resources.

 

Okay.  So, you need to do the market analysis.  You need to think about price.  How much of this item, what do you think you can sell for your service or you can charge for your service, what you can charge for this product.  If you were in fact, take your honey, and put, you know, now have comb honey and small quite little bottles that have a cute little kind of story about how they grew or how the bees found them, or something to make them different, unique, interesting, so forth.  Then you need to look at how much you can charge for it.  And or course, if you’re selling to a wholesaler, then you have to understand that the wholesaler wants to buy cheap so that they can double there price at least, or maybe charge three times as much.  And so it has to be, the price points have got to be small enough to make it a desirable item.  When you get it transferred to a wholesale market..  But, all of these kinds of little little kind of trendy things can be certainly translated very nicely.

 

Promotion.  You know, you’re a little home-based business.  You don’t have any money for promotion.  So how are you going to get your honey out there? 

 

PARTICIPANT: Take it out and tell people.   I’ve the hives sitting right beside the road so people see it when they drive up and down the road.

 

SPEAKER: Okay.  So they’re getting your story directly from you.

 

PARTICIPANT: Yes.

 

PARTICIPANT: I own a rural convenience store at Durham, Oklahoma.  I have two people, I have one already and another one asked me, if they could bring their money -- honey in and sit it on my counter and sell it and I told the second one the other day, sure.  I’ve that experience and I sell honey just coming and going.  If they’ll bring it to me, I can sell it.  ‘Cause people love the rare honey.  It moves real well.

 

SPEAKER: Great.  Okay.  All pro people will buy your story.  If you’ve got a unique product or you come from a place that’s a little bit unique or different, maybe tag that into your product, whatever it is.  And selling the items that we sell from rural Appalachia, we basically tell the story of the crafter.  The woman who lives in the hollow and something about her life.  And, that gets people attention.  Because they in fact sort of feels that they’re developing a personal kind of relationship.  You know, with that particular item.  So, tagging whatever it is you’re making with some kind of little personal by-line, and a little tag that tells something about this, if it’s in fact a product.  You’re  B&B, I’m sure, we’ve got word of mouth now, in terms of people coming to that bed and breakfast that you were talking about.

 

PARTICIPANT: One of the things that we sell are vegetables, and we sell through community supported agriculture, where they buy right into the garden.  And then in the fall for all the people who have supported the farm we have a great big harvest festival, and we make it into a major event.

 

SPEAKER: Great.

 

In our area, one of our dilemmas is that we’re trying to convert people from tobacco farming, which has been a staple in the area.  When they, in rural Appalachia, tobacco has been a large way of supplementing your income, and we’re trying to get people to convert to other crops.  And one of the things we’re looking at is organically grown vegetables for family, you know, harvested and so forth, vegetables.  And what we’re trying to do is tell that story and also educate people in terms of the premium they need to pay for this particular item.  By again, talking about the story.  This is a food item that is not hard chemicals and that the and land is being rotated and so forth, so that, in fact, we’re looking at a sustainable kind of a crop.

 

We’ll slip away from there for just a minute and go back to why our people go into business.  And of course, people go into business for many of the reasons that all of you have already talked about, which is making a living, getting rich, somebody said that.  Preparing for retirement, that’s a really critical one that a lot of people, supplemental income, very definitely.  In Micro enterprise we find  lots of people are interested in looking at supplemental income.  Not maybe making all of the income from this particular endeavor, but certainly supplementing their income.  In the US sometimes, maybe in other countries, as a tax shelter or a business write-off is a possibility, something to occupy your spare time and creating a common cause for the family.  And I think that is in fact something that people hope that they would do for their kids, to create a business for their children.  I don’t know that it necessarily works out that way because the whole story of family owned businesses is in fact kind of interesting.  I am sure those of you who’ve been on the farms with family owned businesses could tell a story or two about that.  They’re also abstract and personal reasons.  Emotional rewards developing a sense of self-worth, particularly for women.  Self-image, for using your creative self.  Escape working for someone else.  Have flexible working hours.  And stop taking orders, of course, that’s one of the big myths.  When you have your own business you take orders from everybody, because in fact, everybody is your boss.