Trudging Along

A rather slow week this week. Can't afford too many more of those!

From the field:

I had an interesting thing (not) happen this week. I got a call from a farmer I'd not been in contact with before - he was referred to me from another farmer in the area. He wanted me to spray 20 acres of insecticide on his alfalfa. I initially told him no because I didn't think I'd be able to pull it off without a trailer.

But then about 15 minutes later I got a call from a farmer who I've been working with recently on mapping his fields, and was the one that referred this guy to me. He says something to the effect of, are you sure you can't handle these 20 acres? Well, it comes out that if I don't do it, he feels obligated to take his sprayer over and help the guy out, and he doesn't have much interest in doing that. We had a good laugh about that, but it got me thinking, maybe I could just manually mix 4-6 tanks worth of product and just figure it out.

So then we start brainstorming, and I call one of my resources to see what he thinks. Anyway, the farmer ends up calling back and says that they've talked to a few guys in the area and they all say there's a lot higher rate of liquid per acre, and a lot more downward force required than initially anticipated. As a result, they no longer think the drone is a good idea.

Now this is interesting, because I know multiple operations that have done exactly this type of work, and seem to have received good reviews/results from it. So I don't know how much I buy in to what these other people told my farmers, but regardless, the job was taken off the table, and I'll have to wait a bit longer for my first spraying gig.

From the office:

I received a call yesterday from a finance/accounting recruiter that I hadn't worked with for over 10 years. He wanted to let me know about a CFO opportunity at a small company about 45 minutes from my location. It was an interesting conversation, because it brought to my attention again what I was giving up in order to pursue something of my own.

The parameters of the role were a 15% bump from my last job, probably some stock options with the company, and then all the small things you might take for granted when accepting a role, like 401K match, health insurance, all that stuff.

It sounded really good on the surface, but then I remembered that I'd be away from my wife and kids at least 3 days a week (it was sold as a hybrid role), 12 months out of the year. I'd be driving in rush hour traffic. I'd be listening to someone tell me what to do for 40 hours a week, every week. Anyway, I was quickly reminded why I chose to give that up. Pros and cons to all of this, of course. There's a fair amount of risk with my decision, and working a job would certainly mitigate a lot of that risk.

But the conversation ended with him saying, "I'd love to hear from you at some point after you're done with your spraying, because I'm always interested in hearing experiences from people that take an entrepreneurial path". I do sometimes wonder how many people would prefer to be a business owner if given the choice. Timing, money, ideas, all that stuff tend to be a barrier, and I get that. I finally got myself to a breaking point where even though timing sucked, and money wasn't in a perfect spot, I decided it was still worth it.

What I'm reading:

Still reading about neuroplasticity. It's a meaty book - lots of pages, not enough pictures!

Thanks for hanging in - until next week!