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Bill's Plan
Bill's Life and his Lessons Learned, Part II There are a few
people, very exceptional people, who are so singularly special
that the complimentary joke is made; after they were born, the
mold to make them got broken. In other words, there's no chance
for posterity to make any more of the likes of Michelangelo,
George Washington Carver, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, etc. In my
case, they threw out the "mold," but I fooled 'em and grew back!
Seriously speaking, the first lesson I learned while very young
is that in order to sell successfully you must be relentless.
You have to be downright incredible to be able to keep your
integrity and successfully sell something like, "ice in the
wintertime to Eskimos." However, As John Paul Ghetty, the
oil-marketing billionaire, observed, if you have a high quality
product you know people both need and want, repeatedly, it will
almost sell itself." Like the nursery stock we grow at Highland
Hill Farm.
I have learned these lessons. There are basic concepts that are
important to understand. Starting when I was very young, I've
always had "business." My first business was making and selling
potholders when I was 5-years old. My parents had bought me a
small potholder-making contraption. Rather than just make a few
for the sake of "arts and crafts," developing my fingers and
hands, I made hundreds and hundreds. I got real good at making
real good potholders, you could say. Whenever I met someone I
tried to sell them potholders at 25 cents each. As I earned more
and more money, I started an account at the savings bank in
Lambertville, always carrying with me lots of differently
colored potholders when I walked into town to make my deposits.
On the sidewalk and inside the bank, grownups would inevitably
say, "What a cute little boy," and then, "Why are you carrying
all those pretty potholders?" They sold themselves. The
potholder sold themselves. The customers "sold" themselves.
I sold enough potholders for me to buy 2 shares of General
Electric stock and 2 shares of the Atlas Corporation, upon the
advice of my great-uncle Bill. (See My Uncle Bill's Story, Part
I of my life and my lessons learned). I got these shares of
stock when I was 7-years old. My small beginning business
venture then expanded to include looking for Helgermites, or
Hellgrammites, they're like Redworms, which I'd sell out along
the road (leading to the Delaware River, of course). I picked
wild blackberries and sold them along the road too. I bought
fishing lures and took them to sell along the Delaware River's
east bank, our side of the river. There were "hot spots" where
Shad fishermen would gather during the intense "fish runs." It
seemed like a good idea to bring along some blackberries too.
The fisherman needed a snack. I did too.
I parlayed my growing savings and bought 144 chickens. A
"gross" of chickens came at a discounted unit price. I didn't
quite realize it at the time, but I was "leveraging" my money
and buying in bulk, "wholesale." So, here are two more valuable
lessons for us all. Buy as cheaply as you reasonably can. (Did
you notice I didn't buy a dozen gross of chickens? That's 1,728
chickens. The price per chicken would have been cheaper, but I
would never have been able to handle them all!) Also, make your
money work for you. Make your money work just like a transistor
works, use a little power to control a lot. My father, who
coincidentally worked in electronics engineering, had a
wonderful friend who bought me a book about stock options. John
stuttered so terribly he could barely speak, but I will always
be grateful to him for teaching me about the greatest investment
vehicle of all in the stock market: Options. What a great way to
make money work, investing a small amount of money to "own"
rights to shares worth far more money.
With my 144 chickens, I created an "egg route," using the
experience from my potholder business. I had "saturated" the
market. Just how many potholders can people buy? John Paul
Ghetty was right. It is best to sell something people need
repeatedly, like fuel, and like food. I sold eggs in the two
towns nearest to our little farm, Lambertville and Titusville,
New Jersey.
I joined the 4H club and started to raise bees for their honey.
Again, not realizing it, I was selling food, something people
needed over and over, like John Paul Ghetty said. As I sold
honey along with my eggs, I noticed that unlike some of my
friends, I never got an allowance. Then again, I didn't need one.
As you can see my selling started early and has simply never
stopped. Family and friends of my parents helped me. My small
ventures were very important to me and I learned the valuable
lessons I'm sharing with you.
There was a great lesson in another book my father gave me, The
ABC's of Beekeeping. It mentioned that if you wanted more bees,
just put an advertisement, an "ad," in the newspaper. Just have
the "ad" say "Wanted Bee Swarms," with your phone number below
it. Well stupid me, I believed everything I read and I therefore
I did just what it said in the book. Within a few days a woman
called me from Lambertville and said she had a bee swarm, could
I come and get it? I followed the guidelines my father taught me
and from the book. I captured that first swarm, and many, many
more. Bees at the greatest price discount possible, free, were
available for my to use to make honey and make money.
The above paragraphs contain a number of more unmentioned, as
yet, valuable lessons. First, it's important to find parents who
are supportive of your efforts. I was lucky, but if you're not
as blessed, find "mentors" as so many other successful people
have. Second, it is important to read books. Give books as gifts
too. Don't believe everything in 'em, do believe most of what is
in 'em. Especially when you use at least two sources for your
information. Reporters call
this "corroboration," and
"confirmation." Third, the best way to find things or market
things is through advertising.
With all these money making ventures going on, I was spending a
tremendous amount of time outdoors. I developed a love of
hunting and fishing. I loved the woods and being out in nature
while "harvesting" the wild blackberries, collecting worms,
tending the bees, walking my egg-and-honey delivery route etc.
As I got older, I became an adolescent and then a teenager.
Really, you ask? No fooling? I say this because like practically
every other teenage boy, I got interested in cars. I started to
collect junk cars and trucks. As I began to tinker with one of
them, my mother came outside to talk with me. (There's that
lesson about the importance of finding supportive parents. Boy I
was lucky with both!) My mother said, "Bill you don't want to be
a farmer. They don't make money. You have to study. Go to
college and get a respectable job. If you don't, you will be a
farmer working too many long hours worrying about weather and
crop diseases and such. Or, you'll be a trash collector. I love
you." Then, she walked back into the house. I guess she saw the
junk cars and trucks I had collected as trash.
Listen to your mother. That's a lesson you probably already
knew before reading this. I picked out a college in the
not-too-far from home backwoods of Pennsylvania. I graduated
from Juniata College, near Huntingdon, in 1973 with a B. S. in
Chemistry. My wife, Marjorie, also a Juniata graduate, is a
teacher. We were married in 1977. We settled in Dublin, Pa. I
worked for a small chemical plant. One weekend we had a yard
sale. The first item that sold was the bunch of flowers that I
removed from my wife's window box. Here's another valuable
lesson that I have learned. Be observant. This eye opener was
telling us that there is a market for plants here. If people
will buy them from your window box, plants "will sell
themselves." I always had a desire to raise trees and plants and
own a farm, though not be a farmer like my mother warned me, so
we decided to "go for it." Another valuable lesson: It is good
to have a plan...
We purchased a small farm near Doylestown, in the well-to-do
and growing heart of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. We began our
"tree farm," our nursery. The local newspaper, The Doylestown
Intelligencer, became our "store." Placing small "ads" in the
paper under the classifieds was our method of advertising. A
small, cheap 2 line ad such as, "Pine trees delivered. Planted
and mulched, $8. Guaranteed. Call 215-345-0946," were awfully
economical and phenomenally successful. We tried many ads. We
found that just about anything can be sold or bought using
classified advertising. Would it have been better to place
quarter-page or full-page sales ads? Would it have made sense to
spend money we didn't have yet? I believe the answer is no. "Buy
as cheaply as you can," I said above is an important lesson.
http://seedlingsrus.com/MilanHirst.html Now, besides trees, we
market anything at our consignment store in Milan, Pa.
A few years later, we learned another lesson. Friends, Walter
and Paul, who make Christmas Tree ball kits, had us over for
dinner. They had years of marketing experience and told us that
you have to test your market. Their suggestion was to run ads
for what you want to do or sell and see the response, see if the
market "likes" what you offer. Duh! This seems so obvious. They
were right, though primitive and simple, isn't this similar to
what Marjorie and I had been doing naturally with our flowers
and ads for pine trees? Most people don't test out their markets
before they invest. We were lucky we did. So take this valuable
lesson and "test."
Marjorie and I now began investing in farm properties and
leasing out spaces on the farms to help pay for the mortgages so
we'd have positive cash flow. I decided that I would buy an
option on a property (thank you again, dad's friend John for
your lesson) and if I could, find tenants who would rent the
property. If there was now the positive cash flow, we would
exercise the option to buy. In this manner we would only buy
properties that were "cash cows." We were testing to see if each
of the properties would make money. (Thank you, Walter and
Paul.) Additionally, we'd have all properties rented the day we
took over so we would have no vacancies. Okay, being in an area
with a growing economy helped.
All of this real estate "business," all of this investing we're
doing is not "rocket science." It is the planned application of
simple ideas. Or, to say it differently, it is the
implementation of a plan. As they might say at the Wharton
School of Business, this is "Planning and Control". Okay, enough
of the repetition from Highland Hill Farm's Department of
Redundancy Department. Just consider that we did not invent any
new products or provide any better services. We spend our time,
we "invest" our time "up front," beforehand, whether it's a
tree, a plant, or real estate we're going to market. We followed
our plans and always invested our time before our money. I
always tell people to start at the public library. It's a gift
of many books to all of us. The price of all those books is very
low too. They're free to borrow. Remember that you don't have to
read, for example, "The International Plant Propagators' Society
Volume 54, 2004 edition, 88888,000001 pages," to be up to date.
Do read a wide range of books. Even if only simple, "How-To
books," like the how to select how to plant, how to sell, types
of books.
My final lesson is, always ask questions when you can't find
the answers yourself. I've asked thousands of questions. Then,
listen to the answers. See Bill's web site at
http://www.seedlingsrus.com
About the author:
Author is owner of 23 farms and ranches and raises nursery stock
in Fountainville Pa.
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