50 Days of Remembering 50 Years #5

Entrepreneurs

I don't know what made us both have this inner desire to have side businesses. I don't know if this desire is common to most people. I just know we have often tried "side-hustles". We were probably in search of more money and success. Maybe we just needed something else to keep us busy in life. We were good at keeping busy. I will say my parents had this same spirit. Mom and Dad used to enter these puzzle contests and one day they thought it would be more lucrative to run their own. They did that for a while, sadly with not great success. Dad became a real estate salesman for a while, branching out on that side job. My parents also joined us (or maybe we joined them) in Yureka foods and Universe Foods, two different multi-level marketing companies. My Dad was always thinking of possible inventions or games, and I should mention his brother, my Uncle Joe, was a very creative person too. 

Let me go back in our lives' histories. Even before marriage I found opportunities to volunteer--I was a Junior Achievement Advisor, I tutored a woman in math (not my forte, but I was asked). I typed large print books for the visually impaired. Later I was a girl scout leader, helped out at my kids school and different activities (they never asked me to handle refreshments for the talent show again--I got so many people to donate that it had to be turned into an unplanned bake sale!). I arranged for a special mobile unit that had seats the kids could sit in and watch about fire safety at the school. I was in charge of collecting the soup labels. When I was in high school, I founded and published a town newspaper, "Hartland Highlights" for two years with help from a couple of visionary friends. I know over my lifetime that I am forgetting something. 

We were both often involved with our churches, from being Sunday school teachers, Sunday school superintendent, church custodians, Sunday school secretary, Awana leaders, in charge of the meal ministry and other ministries at church. When a friend of us was terminally ill in a nursing home, George went weekly to read to her. I know they read at least two books together. That was the volunteer side.

Our first entrepreneurial dream was when we were married and had the cabin on our property. I enjoyed planning children's parties--always games, activities, prizes and at that time, I made cute cakes and somehow was going to offer photographs too. I thought I could turn it into a business. Why take your kids to Chucky Cheese's when you could take them to the Party Cabin? I was on a roll until the price of insurance derailed our dreams. We would have had to charge too much.

George and a co-worker bought donuts and tried to sell them to the other commuters on their bus, a short-lived attempt to make a little extra money.

I have a little notebook remembering some of our business ventures. We did several multi-level marketing. Raleigh Products (similar to Watkins products) was our best one. We had a good time doing tasting parties. George would give the talk and I would prepare and serve samples of the products. We did quite well until the person above us did us wrong. We were disappointed to leave. 

We joined this company called "Gifttime" where we distributed catalogs and we got a percentage of the sales. We called ourselves "Hometown Products". 

I did a craft fair one year selling earrings that I made out of scrabble and puzzle pieces and also mini dog biscuit Christmas trees. It was fun but I was not really crafty enough to pursue that venue. 

Not necessarily entrepreneurial, but George being a history major has always had a love of politics. He ran for selectmen in Norfolk on his own party, the Federalist Party, and twice on the Barkhamsted Republican party. He didn't get elected but he tried. 

One of our most successful ventures was the Barkhamsted mug and t-shirts. George came up with the concept of the design and we paid an artist friend to actually do the artwork. We sold the items ourselves and also as fundraisers for the Women's club and other groups. It was a win-win situation. We tried a t-shirt design for Winsted designed by a college art student, but it didn't do very well. (We still have a lot of leftover Winsted t-shirts!). Unfortunately, Bowlmaster, where we had our items manufactured went out of business without notifying us and didn't return the templates, so that business was put to an end. There may be a way nowadays to still re-create these items, I'm not sure but I have to tell myself we are retired. 

We also were book distributors. When George discovered a library that he cleaned would put purged books in the dumpster, he asked them to hold them out and he would save them. We have done that for many years, saving perfectly good books from destruction. We sold some on Amazon, but most were relocated to my daughter's school, nursing homes, friends, little libraries, and as a last resort, Goodwill or other thrift stores. 

Of course, all these entrepreneurial genes led George to starting his own businesses. He did window washing, painting, his Minuteman Cleaning business and Minuteman Properties, his landlord business. I prided myself for coming up with the slogan on George's cleaning business cards, "George Washington swept here."

In my retirement, I pursued my dream of having a book published. It was not the book I had planned on publishing, but my grandson led me on a different path, and I ended up with my first book, "A Fish in a Tree". Maybe someday I will pursue other writing projects, but at least I did accomplish that one. 

I probably left out some ventures, but this was to show you we didn't always just dream about things (though we did daydream about a lot of other things--soup and salad bar restaurant comes to mind, but there were many more). We ventured out. We tried. We have no regrets for any of them.

"Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth." Proverbs 10:4