I’ve always had a little entrepreneurial spirit. When I was really little, living in Seiad Valley, I helped my brother and sister collect night crawlers(worms) at night with flashlights. Shine the light on them, grab ‘em and rub their belly until they come out of the ground. Then sell them for bait!
In high school I joined a Young Entrepreneurs group and we built and sold birdhouses - that actually was a little too structured for me and I had more fun setting out on my own with a plan to sell little vials of crude oil out of the back of my mustang hatchback to tourists that stopped along the freeway to look at the Alaskan Pipeline (we lived in Fairbanks then).
And finally I had an Itty Bitty Ice Cream Truck in Medford - that was super fun!!
But now I’m grown up (sort of:) and a couple years ago I signed up for Jefferson Economic Development Institute’s ‘It’s Your Business‘ class. The homework for the first night of class was to write down what things were most important to you in your life. It was a powerful exercise and I determined that the business idea I had then really wasn’t very important to me and I didn’t go to any more of the classes. Oh well….
But I gave myself a second chance and signed up again last September. I set my mind to fighting through those first few ‘touchy feely’ classes and holding out for the more nuts and bolts info and I was not disappointed. Last Tuesday I graduated! Yea!! Joy Vanskepsgard was the instructor and did a great job facilitating the class and was very encouraging! She is teaching the next ‘It’s Your Business Class‘ in January so sign up!
My classmates all had pretty cool business plans and the funnest part of the class was the last night when we got to hear everyone’s presentation of their business plan. I just love small businesses and creative people!!
In these tough economic times this is the perfect time to hone in on the great resource that the Jefferson Economic Development Institute offers. Whether you are selling worms or crude oil there is always room to do it better, right? 100% all natural, organic, worms (nice!) …. 100% all natural, organic, crude oil???? (maybe not)
