3A Entrepreneurship Story

In the spring of my senior year of high school I started a small lawn mowing business. A few people I knew at the time had kept fairly busy doing the same work in the Chicago suburbs that we lived in. I started off by finding a partner who would help me as needed, gave the company a name, and opened a small business checking account at the local bank. The next step involved going to the library to print out several thousand flyers with our services offered as well as contact information. My partner fizzled out before we had our first customer. What does Dave Ramsey say? “The only ship that won’t sail is a partnership.” 

            Flyers in hand, I went door to door in our city of about 100,000 residents. The flyers slowly worked. Over the following weeks phone calls would trickle in with people asking about prices. Most of these leads led to customers. Much of my small base of customers that I grew came from meeting people as I handed them a flyer. This would usually spark up a conversation about my new endeavor then shift to the needs they had (“Could you do x? Could you do y?). This leads me to wonder what the ratio was for leaving a flyer in the door versus handing it to someone, with regard to bringing in a new customer. 

I did little to no marketing and eventually saw my customer base decline. It was a good start, but there was nothing that I did to sustain the business. 

I have a dream of owning and operating a small nature center with my wife where we live in Indiana. Imagine it with me for a moment. Toss out any image you have of a state of city nature center. Done? Good. Ours will focus on taking students out on field trips to study and learn about the local flora and fauna. 75% of our time will be spent outdoors and the rest will be spent in a classroom environment. We can use library conference rooms and the like for indoor learning. I don’t believe that a small business like this would have enough revenue for a building until it after quite a bit of growth. I would like to host weeklong classes that focus on special subjects (entomology, mycology, etc.) These could be taught by local experts and professors looking for a bit of extra income as well as a fun way to share their subject of expertise. I’ve seen weeklong nature classes of this format fill up at the $400-500 price range. Obviously, that type of successful operation takes time and effort. It’s a dream that will be a slow uphill climb.

The above is why I am taking this class. I plan on taking the principles of entrepreneurship I learn here and model them into my goals and plans for the nature center. The photo you see is of a night-flying luna moth (actias luna). It floated down into our backyard last summer. They are native to the northeastern United States.