It's All About BUSINESS

Though Crunchy Granola, the book, reads like a back-to-the land memoir, it is really a book about Business, capital B. What we learned about living with animals, growing our own food, building a house, and raising (or being raised by) delightful children were all just day-to-day do-with-what-is. The bigger story is how we learned the basic principles of Commerce and the tremendous impact on our understanding the world around us.

            The book, A Homestead Decade  - How CrunchyGranola Changed My Life, begins with a gigantic bale of broom straw brought to our snowy homestead by an 18-wheeler and dropped off at the top of the hill presenting us with a serious problem-solving issue: how to get the bale down the hill, then how to store it in our tiny workshop.

            Yes, brooms. We became broom makers out of a dire need to feed and clothe our children and it was the next thing in front of us. With unbridled enthusiasm (ignorance notwithstanding) we threw ourselves into the business opportunity. The principles are simple on paper: production, marketing, and distribution. We didn’t need a textbook or degree to figure out the tremendous list under each of those items.

Production – means design, equipment, raw materials, storage, hands and bodies, and lots of coffee. We learned to produce beautiful fireplace brooms and variations on each. We learned to find and manage the raw materials from the best sources across the Midwest. We learned, sometimes grudgingly, to discipline ourselves to the task.

Marketing – required creative thinking about who the market might be and how to reach the various entities (before computers and the elegant electronic tools available to us today). We learned about seasonal timing. We enjoyed the ego boost of sales from all over the country including our grand sister states Alaska and Hawaii. We also learned that The Market, even our little hand crafted product, can be surprisingly vulnerable to the ebb and flow of consumer trends.

And the real surprise Distribution – how to get the hard earned product to the customer (and collect payment) especially when the nearest UPS distribution station was more than 40 miles away and there’s an OPEC oil embargo interfering with us little tiny business people just trying to survive, and your mother is calling wondering what you are doing playing with goats and brooms and when are you going to get a real job.

            The size of the business really didn’t matter in this grand MBA lesson. Trucks and trains and ocean container freight all have new meaning to us. We discern from “good ads” and crappy advertising unlike ever before. We have come to understand BUSINESS. Bet you never thought Crunchy Granola could do that for you.

As always, thanks for stopping by. If you get an e-copy of the book from AmazonKindle (cheap $2.99) let us know what you think.

Loving the fall colors,

Helene