Dr. Randy Cole of the Boozman-Hof Eye Clinic was kind enough to share about his career as an ophthalmologist.  You can find his clinic and services here.

What do you do for a living?

I’m an ophthalmologist or an eye surgeon.

How would you describe what you do?

I’m generally working as a cataract and refractive surgeon.  So I do cataract surgery.  I do refractive surgery.  I see patients too, but the majority of what I do is related to providing cataract and refractive surgical services.

What does your work entail?

It entails being in the operating room during cataract surgery, doing refractive laser surgery, and seeing patients in the examining room.  And taking general ophthalmology call covering the emergency rooms of a couple of area hospitals.

It really is quite remarkable in terms of what we can do to improve people’s quality of life, ability to function, and restoring the precious sense of sight to a level better than they’ve ever experienced.

What’s a typical workweek look like for you?

We’re busy.  We work hard.  I’m taking call every second to third weekend and I operate all day Monday.  I’m in the clinic seeing patients all day Tuesday, Wednesday morning, and all day Friday.  I’m off Wednesday afternoon but in a typical week I’ll have about a 170 patient encounters.  Of those, about 40 are surgery encounters.

How did you get started as an ophthalmologist?

In medical school I just started thinking about what I wanted to do, what I like to do.  I knew some ophthalmologists who had been in practice while I was in high school and college in particular.  They seemed to like what they did and so really early on in medical school it became apparent to me that that’s the specialty that I wanted to go and try to get a residency position in.

In fact, I applied and got the position in the middle of my junior year while in school.  I had a position already nailed down at Little Rock so I didn’t even bother to apply to any other programs or residencies.

What do you like about what you do?

It’s challenging and extremely demanding.  I’m dealing in terms of microsurgery, millimeters, and having to be extremely precise.  There’s a lot of challenges and stress but it is very gratifying. I tell the people I work with over here it’s difficult but we need be realizing that really we’re in the business of miracles.  Doctors and nurses treat, only God heals, but at the same time I feel that we provide a valuable service in helping people in the precious sense of sight.

And modern cataract surgery and modern refractive surgery are truly remarkable in restoring vision to a level that’s better than people have ever had in their lives.  Younger people are having refractive surgery and they are not needing glasses anymore.

We’ve been using implants for older people, lens implants now that you can correct for astigmatism and can help them read so they’re seeing like 20 year olds and don’t need glasses.  It really is quite remarkable in terms of what we can do to improve people’s quality of life, ability to function, and restoring the precious sense of sight to a level better than they’ve ever experienced.

So that’s very gratifying.  At the end of the week you can be tired and be stressed and have some worries but you don’t ever get to the end of the week and wonder, “Did I really accomplish anything or do anything worthwhile?”

What do you dislike about this job?

Well, honestly there’s not any other job that I would rather do.  There’s not any other profession that I would say I wish I had not missed.  The only thing—like any work, the only thing that’s sometimes unpleasant is there’s stress. You’ve got to try to make people happy.  You’ve got to satisfy needs and expectations.  You’ve got to deal with insurance companies, medicare.  There’s rare lawsuits, so like with any work there’s just stress involved.

How do you make money or how are you compensated in this career?

Well, I’m an owner of the businesses that I’m involved in and I have partners as well.  But being an owner in this entity means I have ownership in the clinic and within the clinic I’m paid based on productivity.

And so I’m paid a percent of the profits or distributions of that entity that is derived directly from my productivity in the clinic and indirectly from the profits and percent of my ownership in our optical business and in the surgery center.

It’s all based on fee for service.

So it’s not like being a passive owner of a business.  If you park there, you’re working, doing surgery, doing exams, seeing patients then you’ll generate income.

So unlike somebody who may own a factory or a car dealership, they keep on making income whether they are there or whether they’re spending the winter in Florida.

How much money do you make as an ophthalmalogist?

The average income of an ophthalmologist is around $250,000-$300,000 and that income will vary depending upon how busy or productive an ophthalmologist might be.  The average productivity in a clinic or a benchmark productivity for an ophthalmologist is producing around $800,000 a year gross and he might keep around 40% of that.  And then busier ophthalmologists may produce two, three, or four times that much.

And if the ophthalmologist owns an optical clinic or surgery center that’s profitable, which they aren’t at all profitable, that income can also be supplemented between those other ancillary businesses.

And there are ophthalmologists that go bankrupt.  I bet there’s half a dozen I can name in in the last 10 years just in this state that actually have gotten into a bankruptcy and maybe they had to restructure or have their practice closed.

You’re going to have to finish high in your medical school class to get a residency position[in ophthalmology]. So you need to expect and understand that you’re going to have to be in the top 10% of your class to have a shot at getting a position which is real hard because medical school is not easy to get into in the first place.

The dynamic is changing in health care industry.  About a half of the new physicians are really not owners but employees of either clinics or health care systems. And so those doctors still make a reasonably good percent of their production but they don’t have a lot of autonomy.

The good news is you don’t have part of the ownership and the risk of going bankrupt and having to have a lot of administrative support people and put in extra hours in terms of leading a company or leading, managing and directing an entity.  So it can be that you may work less and have less stress in terms of the business administrative aspects of owning a business but you have less autonomy and you have less decision making latitude.  And essentially it’s somebody else who technically tells you what time to come in, what you need to do, and what’s expected of you.

How much money did you make starting out in this career?

Well, I started as an ophthalmology resident making around 25,000 a year, maybe a little less than that back when I first started.  I supplemented that by moonlighting in emergency rooms and then my first job in 1983 as an ophthalmologist in Florida was probably base salary of 75,000 with some production incentives.

Would you say there are any perks associated with your job?

Well, I think this job’s biggest perk is just the gratification of doing something really dramatic and helping restore sight and helping improve people’s life.

And that’s essentially life changing service you’re providing for people.  So the biggest perk or reward is the gratification of doing dramatic things to improve their vision and their quality of life.

What education and/or skills would you say are needed to do this job?

To become an ophthalmologist, you have to go to college.  I actually got accepted to a few medical schools before I got my undergraduate degree after just three years of college.

But generally you have to have an undergraduate degree and go to medical school and become an M.D.  And then there’s somewhere between 3 to 5 years of training to be an eye surgeon.

And it requires a certain amount of dexterity and hand-eye coordination to be able to do microsurgery.

And the uncertainty about that is you just never know when you could lose that.  If you come down with tremor, a neurological problem, Parkinson’s Disease, arthritis, or have a stroke, you’re done.

As far as determining if you have what it takes, there’s not really a process in this country or sort of an obstacle course or hand-eye testing to see if you can become a surgeon.  A lot of it just comes in the training, and in the process of the training, finding out if they can do it and if not they can become just a medical specialist rather than a surgeon.

So when you get in your internship training you kind of find out if this something you’re really cut out for or if you have to do more of a medical specialty in ophthalmology like a medical ophthalmologist.  You don’t necessarily have to do surgery.

There are certain specialties in ophthalmology that are less surgically inclined like being an neuro-ophthalmologist or being a specialist pediatric ophthalmologist.  They do less surgery and will do more of children’s exam and just some surgeries on the eye muscles.

This job also requires the ability to be able to interact well with patients.

And a successful ophthalmologist has a fairly high overhead with lot of employees in their practice.  So they have to have the energy and drive to see a lot of patients and to be able to manage all that.

What is the most challenging about what you do?

I’m a perfectionist and I can’t have complications so the most challenging thing is to try to maintain concentration and diligence to a point that I essentially avoid any complications in surgery at all.  So I’ve got to have zero tolerance for ever making a mistake or having a problem or complication related to an error on my part.  And that just takes a lot of attention to detail and experience.  And it’s mentally taxing and fatiguing. So I’m real hard on myself to avoid problems errors and complications.  Number two, people’s expectations as such that even if things go well they aren’t always uniformly happy, so that can be frustrating.

What is the most rewarding about what you do?

Well, the rewarding thing is that we are in the business of miracles and being able to restore the sense of sight to people who are really blown away.  Being able to see that is very gratifying.

What advice would you offer considering this career?

My advice would be it’s a good career.  I think it’s something worthwhile to do.  I would recommend it—for myself, over many other surgical specialties.  But you’re going to have to finish high in your medical school class to get a residency position.  So you need to expect and understand that you’re going to have to be in the top 10% of your class to have a shot at getting a position which is real hard because medical school is not easy to get into in the first place.

You got to be in the top 5 or 10% of your medical school class and that makes it even tougher.

So ophthalmology, dermatology, radiology, and orthopedics still are very highly sought after residencies.

And the nice thing about ophthalmology also is you’ve got a little more control over your time.  The surgeries are not emergencies so you can schedule them out in advance.  Not like in appendicitis or a gunshot wound that has to be fixed right now.

So you have a little more control that when you leave work you don’t often get called back at night and when you’re on call on the weekend it doesn’t mean you’re going to have to spend the whole weekend in the ER.

It’s not easy. It’s exacting. It’s stressful. There’s no margin for error but you get to the end of the week and you’ll know that you’re in the business of miracles and you’re not going to reach a point of the week or point in middle age where you look in the mirror and go, “Have I done anything with my life?”

It’s not like as a general surgeon.  If they get called on the weekend, chances are they are going to be spending sometime in the O.R. over the weekend.

And that’s not to say there aren’t emergencies. There could be perforating eye injuries, blood eye injuries, trauma, laceration of the eye lids, so there are a lot of things that can require us to have to come in and do surgery or just see somebody in the office for some medical eye problem.

How much time do you get off or do you take off?

Six weeks a year for meetings and vacations.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

Let’s see… People probably think that since I’m an ophthalmologist I prescribe a lot of glasses.  But I really don’t do much in a way of prescribing glasses because I’ve got a group of optometrists that I work with who take care of the glasses and the contact lenses.

What are your goals and dreams for the future in this career?

It’s hard to believe I’ve been out of medical school now for 33 years.  But I’m still young.  I’m 58.  So I would hope to have the health to be able to continue to work for at least another 10 years.  And I had planned on slowing down some and handing over things to one of the newer doctors but that didn’t work out so ironically I’m probably going to be the busiest in my life for the next 10 years doing more surgery than I have ever done before.   

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

I would just say that it’s not easy.  It’s exacting.  It’s stressful.  There’s no margin for error but you get to the end of the week and you’ll know that you’re in the business of miracles and you’re not going to have to reach the point of the week or point in middle age where you look in the mirror and go, “Have I done anything with my life?”

I think that it’s also worthwhile for people to know what we do in terms of cataract surgery is probably as high a level of service of cataract surgery as is available anywhere in the world.  Furthermore, I like them to know that there are a lot of options now in terms of the refractive lens implant where people can elect for distance vision.

They can elect for getting their stigmatism corrected.  They can also do what’s called a multi focal implant that they could actually also read through.  So there are a lot of options along the lines of the technology.  And I want them to know that we’re a team and staff extremely conscientious who wants to deal with everybody like it’s a family member.  And we have some measurable outcomes that are evidence of that.  For instance, we have the best record in the world on preventing infection after cataract surgery for example.

Scott Brown of the Scooter Brown Band was kind enough to let us interview him about his career in the music business. You can check out his band and website at The Scooter Brown Band

What do you do for a living?

I am a professional musician, singer, and song writer.

How would you describe what you do to someone?

I write and compose music and perform it on stage.

What does your work entail?

It entails writing music and composing, obviously performing live shows, traveling, a lot of phone conferences and emails with bookings and management companies and venues and promotional stuff, radio, TV, internet.

What’s a typical work week look like for you?

During the beginning of the week I do a lot of phone calls, emails, and conference calls.  I do some acoustic house gigs close to where I live and then usually, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we travel and play shows.

How did you get started?

It’s kind of funny, when I first started playing guitar, I told my dad, “This is so cool.  I love music.  One day, I just want to play on stage in front of somebody with a microphone and some speakers and just do it like that will make me happy.”  And then it happened.

When you step on stage and you look out and there’s a thousand people in front of you that all paid their hard earned money to come in and watch your show and sing along to the words, that’s the most rewarding…that 90 minutes that you’re on stage is the easiest thing about this, it’s by far the reason why we do this job.

Then the next thing I was able to put a band together and it happened.  Then I said if I can just get the music on the radio and hear my songs on radio like that would be unbelievable.  And it’s happening.  It’s like you always kind of push for those next things and you get to those and now those things are no big deal anymore.  Now you’re like I want to do this, I want to do that.  You just keep pushing for bigger and better as the years go by.  You keep accomplishing goals and obviously for us we want to be big as we can possibly get and make good money and take care of our families and play music.

What do you like about what you do?

I love music in general.  I love writing it.  I love performing it.  I love traveling.  I love going to new towns, meeting new people.  One of my favorite things about what I do is performing a song and getting a reaction out of somebody whether they smile or laugh or it brings a tear in their eye.  It’s great when you hit emotionally with the lyrics that you’ve written.  Those are some of my favorite things about what I do.

What do you dislike about this job?

I spend a lot of time away from my family.  It also comes with a very high stress level because there are so many people out there trying to do the same thing that we’re doing and competing.  It’s kind of like being on a hundred percent commission.  You could just knock it out of the ballpark one month and the next month you might be scraping by.

There’s just a ton of overhead in the business itself between recording, records, putting songs out on the radio, touring, and gas and hotels. And sometimes people think that you make a lot of money and you do gross pretty decent money but a ton of it goes back into the business itself.

How do you make money or how are you compensated on this career?

One, I make money off writing songs.  If I write a song and somebody else records it then you receive a royalty off of it.  When the songs are played on the radios or TV we receive royalties off it.  There’s also merchandise sales such as CDs, T-shirt, hats etc.  And then obviously performing at live shows.

How much money do you make as a professional musician?

Because we put so much money back into the band I probably bring home maybe $50,000 a year right now after paying for everything.  As a band we probably gross like over $200,000 or more.

With some shows you might make $6,000 or $7,000 grand.  Then you pay out the band.  You pay your management.  You pay your booking agent.  You pay yourself and then you try to stuff as much money away because you might have a show a thousand dollars away.  You might be opening for somebody, a bigger band and you might only get two hundred bucks for that show for coming and opening.  You still have to pay the fuel and the hotel rooms, and all that stuff and it adds up pretty quickly.  On a two or three day run it literally may be a thousand dollars or $1500 out of pocket.

The thing about this career is if you truly believe that this is what you want to do, you should get out there, do your best at it, make as many contacts as you possibly can and never give up. There are people that had been at it for 15 or 20 years before they actually became successful…If your heart is in it and you truly love music and enjoy performing in front of people, don’t give up. Always chase your dream because not all people get to do it.

For our band, every year has been a better year.  Every year we’ve gotten on better shows, grossed more money and have gotten a bigger fan base.  It just fluctuates throughout the year though.  There are times of the year that are slow for everybody in the business.  But for us, every year overall has been a better year for sure.

How much money did you make starting out?

When I was doing it part time and had another job I was probably making like $10,000/year.

Would you say there are any perks associated with what you do?

Yeah, definitely.  There’s perks like being recognized by fans and people around town.  We’ve picked up sponsorships where you get free clothes or free boots.  At dinner you may go into a restaurant and the owner knows you and they’ll pay for your dinner or something like that.  Also you just get to do a lot of really cool things like getting to meet and play shows with other people in the business that you look up to.

What education and/or skills would you say are needed to be a professional musician?

That’s a really hard question to answer because there are people out there that are just naturally talented and gifted people and then there’s people that go to college and know everything about the theory of music.

There are guys like Dave Matthews and John Mayer who are freakin’ musical geniuses.  They went to college and they know everything about the theory of music and then there are guys like myself.  I have a high school education and I did four years in the Marine Corps.  I didn’t go to college.  I started writing as a hobby and I picked up playing the guitar when I was 19 and I still to this day probably couldn’t tell you half the chords that I play or what key I even play in.  I just picked it up by ear and started writing.  And I don’t know much about music theory or stuff like that.  I just play it.

As far as other skills you do need to have some sort of business sense.  So if you don’t have good business, then you need to have somebody working for you that does for sure.  Other than that it’s just a lot of determination, a lot of people quit this business when they’re so close to breaking through.

What is most challenging about what you do?

Probably staying busy and just keeping the gigs rolling in, especially in Texas since there are so many bands.  Also, just continually writing my music that’s relevant and that fans want to hear.  You can write songs all days that you think are good but at the end of the day it’s about really putting asses in the seats, connecting with fans, and selling tickets to make a living.

Obviously [the goal] is always to grow as big as possible and to play in more places. Right now, I can say I’m living my dream. I get to play music for a living and I support my family off of it. And as long as I can keep doing that I will always be happy.

So creating a show, creating music that people want to buy and listen to, and staying on top of your game and being relevant in the music scene is probably the most difficult.

What do you find most rewarding about what you do?

Performing the show.  When you step on stage and you look out and there’s a thousand people in front of you that all paid their hard earned money to come in and watch your show and sing along to the words, that’s the most rewarding.

All the other stuff like dealing with contracts, booking agents, PR, ordering merchandise, etc can be a pain in the ass.  I’m not complaining but it can be a pain.  But that 90 minutes that you’re on stage is the easiest thing about this, it’s by far the reason why we do this job.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

The thing about this career is if you truly believe that this is what you want to do, you should get out there, do your best at it, make as many contacts as you possibly can and never give up.  The people that have been successful in this business, and granted you get a lot of people that they get on TV shows and they become an overnight success or they form a band together and they get in front of that right person and they become an overnight success and they’ve only been at it for a couple of years.

But a lot of people that have really been successful, if you go back and read their stories, they are people that had been at it for 15 or 20 years before they actually became successful.  And if after 10 years or whatever, something finally hits you in the face, and you say, “I did my best and it’s not working out.”, that’s one thing.  But I feel a lot of people go at it for a couple of years and, say “Oh, we didn’t make it,” and they go back to work in their day job.  Who knows what would happen if they have gone for another year or another five years, maybe that would have been what it took.

A lot of people settle for less because they gave up too easily or too early and throw their hands up in the air, but if you want it you can make it happen.

If your heart is in it and you truly love music and enjoy performing in front of people, don’t give up.  Always chase your dream because not all people get to do it.

How much time off do you get or take for a vacation or free time?

I pretty much play on average about 220 days a year.  I spend the other days at the house around my kids and my wife.

So the rest of the time I’m not working per se.  I may be sitting in my gym shorts like now doing interviews, paperwork, or stuff like that.  So I actually get a lot of time off where I’m technically still working.

If I feel like shutting the computer off or turning my phone off I can do that.  If I want to go on a vacation and take five days off all I need to do is tell my booking agent don’t book me during these days.

If the money is coming in, if I want to take two months off, I could take two months off.  It all depends.  That’s probably the best answer I could give you.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

I think the common misconception would be that we just get up on stage and play music.  I think people don’t realize how much work goes into a show and getting out on the road and actually performing and putting music out.  I mean there’s a lot of work involved to do that.  Some people will be like, “Man, it must be cool, you get to sleep until noon every day and you get up and you come out and drink beers and play music and hang out with everybody,” and that’s not what really happens.

I mean I get up in the morning and I start working.  I make phone calls.  I’m on the computer.  I go to the gym.  I keep myself healthy.  When you’re on radio tour sometimes you’ve got to be on the radio station at 6:30 in the morning or go into a live TV thing and the news at 5 o’clock in the morning.  There’s just a lot of work that goes into it besides the show that you put on.

What are you goals and dreams for the future in this career?

Obviously it’s always to grow as big as possible and to play in more places.  Right now, I can say I’m living my dream.  I get to play music for a living and I support my family off of it.  And as long as I can keep doing that, I will always be happy.  We got a couple of nice cars and we live in a nice house.  It’s nothing fancy.

It’s never going to be on MTV cribs or nothing but we get by and that’s completely fine with me.  But with that being said, we want to be a nationally based band touring all over the United States.  We want to go play in Europe and push our music over there.  We would love to put out great music and be awarded for it whether it be country music awards or the even Grammy’s or whatever, or get to play on a late night talk show.

It’s just little stuff like that as far as a bucket list that we try to strive for.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

Whenever somebody buys our CD we tell them thank you and we say all we ask is if you like it, burn and give it to your friends.  They’re like, “No, we’re not going to burn it.  We’ll tell them to go to iTunes and download it,” which, obviously is fine.  But we say burn it and give it to people.  Tell people about it.

We’re making $10 on the sale of a CD.  If somebody burns 10 of them and just two or three more people become fans out of those 10 people, they’ll come to shows and pass it along to friends.  It all works out in the long run we just want to get the music out there and get people coming to our shows.

What do you do for a living?

Primarily I’m a cattle farmer. But as with most farming operations I end up being an investor in land almost as much as anything.

How would you describe what you do?

We run 8,000-9,000 head of cattle a year and they come in as small calves weighing 300 pounds and we grow them up to about 1300 pounds and then sell them to a packing plant.

What does your work entail?

Well, I’ve got about the equivalent of 8-9 full time employees and then some additional part time workers.  I manage them and then there’s a fair amount of routines that I do myself on a daily basis. We do a fair amount of our own construction work since it’s a large operation.  So sometimes I’ll lead crews on that, then also there is the routine stuff like caring for the cattle, doctoring them, feeding them, etc.

And I’d say that I probably used to probably put in a total of 80-90 hours a week and now as I have gotten older, I try to do it at about 60-70 hours.

How did you get started?

I went through college with a chemical engineering degree and then a law degree.  I worked out in the law industry for four years and my dad hit me up again to come back to the farm. Growing up I would have never thought I’d do this in my life but I did and it has turned out great.  I came back in 1979, in 1979, that date may not sound important to you, but in that year 1979-1980, that was end of the boom in agriculture in terms of livestock prices, grain prices, land prices, just rocketed upward and it looked like it would go on forever.

And then about 1980, boy we had a tremendous not only a recession, but a depression in agriculture and where our commodity prices collapsed and in our area.  Land prices from about 1980-85 reduced over by more than half and we barely made it through it. We made it through it and in hindsight, I still do not know how we did it. We were able to fight through the tough times and even acquire and buy more land as people went under during the hard times.

When I had come back we typically ran 2,000 head of cattle and over a number of years I doubled that from 2,000 to 4,000 and then I doubled again from 4,000 to 8,000.

What do you like about what you do?

I like not having any boss other than the marketplace.  There’s no one I report to other than the marketplace.  And that’s really the ‘hub’ of what I do, which is to combine land, capital, and resources to produce cattle for market at a significantly cheaper cost than the marketplace average.  And, so you have to use your business and economic skills to find ways to combine all those things to bring your product to the market in the most efficient way possible.  And I really enjoy that aspect of it and challenge.  If we do that right then we can set money back and expand our operations.

What do you dislike?

Until recently, there was a fair amount of risk since we were expanding and borrowing a lot of money.  So there were a few sleepless nights when you might have an economic reversal in the market.

Having employees is probably the greatest joy and the greatest headache in life and that can be somewhat difficult.  But I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years now and you learn mechanisms of how to deal with managing employees, so it becomes easier to deal with over time.  But I think in this business that labor issues in general are probably one of the biggest headaches that people will have.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

If we sell our cattle for more than what our expenses are we make money.   And the secondary way is just the long term appreciation of your real estate.  And so, those are probably the two, the realized profits and the unrealized profits.

How much money do you make as a cattle farmer?

Well, I hate to go there, but given that we’re a capital intensive operation we might net $200,000-$300,000 would probably be typical at this point after costs.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

One, they would need to spend quite a bit of time in an apprenticeship with an existing operation for a period of years to figure out what works and what does not and I was fortunate enough to have my dad for that.  There are so many nuances you have to pick up on; whats going to be the most cost effective way to do it this year, working around weather, economics, people, and the contractors. I’d say if somebody was going to do this that they would clearly need to spend a number of years with somebody on the inside to get a good understanding of what’s going on.

There have been many, many cases where a wealthy person that has made money, inherited money, or made money in another industry decided to step into agriculture and most of the time they literally get their head handed to them and and lose a lot of money.  They think farming is simpler and easier than it is and they can apply knowledge from another industry and do it better than a lot of the cattlemen already out there.  But the majority of the time they lose their shirts.  And it’s because they don’t know the nuances of the business.  So, I would say it’s very important to get an apprenticeship and work in this business for a while to really understand what all goes into it.

What is most challenging about what you do?
Managing employees where they can work together, be productive, and have a similar vision of what we’re trying to accomplish.  That’s probably the biggest challenge requires the most of my ‘higher level thinking’, if you will.

What is most rewarding?
Clearly the fact that everything is so visible. Your crops, you can see if things have gone well or gone poorly. With the livestock, you can both see in the animals and you can see in the financial returns if things are going well or going poorly.  Or if a piece of farm equipment breaks down and you can see it get repaired.  You’re dealing with physical, tangible things.

Also, being outside is rewarding.   I bet most of my employees, one of the reasons they’re here rather than a higher paying job in town is that they’d rather be outside even though it’s often too hot or too cold, or raining and the wind blowing, we’re just kind of the type of people that don’t like being cooped up I guess.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

To work with an existing operation to gain the experience.  That is first and foremost.  And then, if you’re wanting to get into the business, try looking for an existing operation that has shut down, or gone under financially etc.  Because the infrastructure, feed lots, facilities, etc. can be so expensive, you really need to get a good deal on those things to get started.  And so, your physical facilities would already be set up and ready to go instead of having to start with raw land from sratch.

But I can’t stress enough about having experience in the business.  Go work on a farm somewhere because boy, trying to jump in without the experience, you could have a Ph.D. in agronomy and livestock, and the chance of success would be about as strong as doing brain surgery on yourself, the chance of success is going to be pretty remote.

How much time off do you get/take?

Typically with family vacations, a week or ten days.  But also there will be some agricultural events or such that I will take off for and I really enjoy.

But I don’t really take that much vacation.  As they say ‘work is only work if there’s something else you would rather be doing’.

When things are going well if I was offered to have a limo pick me up and a leer jet take me to the Super Bowl and then bring me back, I’d say, “No, I want to stay out here with my Track-ho and keep digging.” Or whatever job I’m working on.

And so, vacation only works if there’s something else you would rather be doing and in many cases, I probably get more joy out of this than normal people would.  It’s one of those jobs, if you didn’t love it, you’d hate it.  Fortunately I love it.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

One, that agriculture today is mainly the family farm with the husband, the wife and the kid doing all the labor.  The most successful farming operations are much larger and would almost be considered businesses or industry.

Another one is that the economics are fairly easy, when in fact, the economics keep knocking people out of agriculture.  There is a relatively small number that go ahead and prosper.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

I think in all of life, farming or whatever you do, what achieves and determines success is how well one is able to interact with other people.

Where you’re able to reach common goals, resolve conflicts, achieve win-win solutions, and have everybody on the same page.  Employers, suppliers, people I sell to, that is probably the most neglected item and it is clearly the most important.

You’ve got to foster relationships in this business, and in any business, and focus on how you and the people you do business with can grow together.  All too often I’ve seen people worry about how much the other guy is making, or how much some supplier of theirs is making, instead of looking at whether the relationship is mutually beneficial or not.

People who have done well in this business did not put together a big fortune by going out and screwing other people, or nickel and diming people, they did it by making others successful.

David Risley of www.davidrisley.com was nice enough to visit with us about his job as a professional blogger.

What do you do for a living?

I’m a blogger, which I know doesn’t really sound like a real job.  What I sometimes tell people is that I actually market things on the Internet, and that I just happen to do it using blogs.

How would you describe what you do?

Basically I write for online readers in order to provide them value to help them accomplish things that they want to accomplish.  So the purpose of these blogs is basically to attract readers’ attention, to help them, and then to ultimately form an ongoing relationship with them.

What does your work entail?

It entails a lot of things, obviously writing is one of them.  In fact right before you and I started speaking that was exactly what I was doing. But a lot of people would be surprised, especially when you say that you are a blogger, that you don’t just write.  You also have to create products to be sold, you have to go out there and line up promotions and promote other people’s products as an affiliate.  I also have to prepare webinar presentations sometimes and deal with e-mail and customer support issues.  There is a lot really.  It’s the typical things that would go into running a business.  You are doing the same exact thing when you are running a business online.

What does a typical workweek look like for you?

These days I try to work a fairly normal schedule.  I’ve got kids now, so whereas I used to work sometimes at night or even the weekends, I try not to do that anymore.  These days it is typically about a nine to five or a nine to six type thing.  I obviously I work for myself so if something comes up I can take care of it, but on a typical basis I work a pretty standard forty-hour week.

How did you get started in this career?

I started a long time ago.  I’ve been doing this since about 1999, and I kind of fell into it as a hobby.  I started a pretty large tech site which helped people with upgrading and building computers. I got into that mainly because it was just a hobby for me at the time.  Then it took maybe a couple of years, three at the max for that idea to eventually evolve into a business.  I was getting into having banner ads on my sites and things like that, and from there it evolved into an actual career rather than just a hobby.

What do you like about what you do?

I like being able to help people and to influence them.  I like the flexibility of what I do and the fact that I can do as well as I am financially but not have to report to a boss.  If I want to go on a vacation or schedule even a business trip I don’t have to arrange it with anybody else, except for maybe my wife.  So I like the flexibility, I really don’t know how well I would take to having a normal job, so what I do suits me pretty well.

What do you dislike about it?

Not a whole lot.  I would say one of the biggest challenges is the fact that when you are your own boss then every single thing depends on me.  When things go right it is because I thought up the right ideas.  When things go wrong it is because I screwed up. So I’m the ultimate point of responsibility.  At the end of the day I can’t really say I dislike it, some people probably would, but I’ve grown to take it on as a challenge.

How do you make money or how are you compensated as a Blogger?

I make money in a variety of ways.  Most bloggers out there make their money via banner advertising, and I do as well, primarily on my tech site.  So people pay to put the banner ads there and if I run it through an ad network such as Google or some other network then I will take a percentage of whatever the gross is that they are paying to be seen on my website.  But where my main focus is, at least these days, is selling products to my audience. I promote other people’s products using an affiliate link, so basically I am getting paid a commission every time one of my readers buys that product. I sell my own stuff as well, I’ve got four trade programs out there now, more are coming soon, and obviously whenever somebody buys into one of those it is 100% profit for me.  So I create these membership sites and I sell access to them as a value added service.  They are being helped for free on my blog but if they want more information or more access to me, videos and things like that, then they have the option to pay for that.

How much money do you make as Blogger?

It goes up and down, that is one of the things about it.  Last year my business brought in about $210,000.  This year, we are only about half way through and it will probably line up to being fairly close.  Whether it is going to be up or down I am not really sure yet.  But on a monthly basis it goes up and down.  Sometimes there are pretty wild variations.  If I conduct a product launch I can have a really, really good month.  On a month where I am not really promoting much of anything, then it is a lot less than that, but on the whole that is what I made last year.

How much money did you make starting out in this career?

Not much at all. That is one of the things about blogging, or even online marketing, whatever you want to call it.  There is a lot of work involved before you make money.  It doesn’t necessarily have to take as long as I took.  I didn’t know what I was doing when I started this out, and not only that I was doing it as a hobby.  There are other people who do what I do who have built up quite nice incomes online in two or three years, so I’m not going to sit here and say you have to do it for a decade like I had to before it works.  But most of the time, regardless of how good you are, you are going to have to put in a little bit of time at the beginning, and you are really not going to be making very much at all.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

Well you obviously need to know how to write, and it’s not writing like you would do in school or to pass an English class or something.  This is writing which is designed to attract people’s attention, and then hold it.  Because on the Internet there are so many things vying and competing for our attention that you need to know how to write something to keep that attention once you have got it.  So that is a skill in and of itself.  You have to apply marketing too, even just in the creation of your free blog posts to be able to do things like that. There are certain skills that go along with marketing online, quite frankly marketing at all, because a lot of the old marketing techniques like direct response marketing or something like that in the 70s and 80s.  They all still very much still apply, it has just translated into the Internet.  Those types of things can help make or break people.  On top of all that you’ve got various technical things; designing your site, installing your blog software, etc.

What would you say is the most challenging about what you do?

The reason you are not making a lot of money when you start is because at the beginning all of it is a challenge.  Just learning how to write in such a way that attracts and gets attention.  Learning how to get traffic.  A lot of bloggers struggle with how to get enough people actually reading their website.  A lot of people struggle with the technical aspect.  They let it get the best of them in some cases and they will even give up because they can’t figure out how to install WordPress or something like that, which isn’t that complicated, but can seem tough if you don’t know what you’re doing.  So again, you just need to hire somebody or just learn it, or maybe just dedicate a day to figure it out. All those are some of the challenges that go into it, but once you have been doing it for a while you’ve already mastered all that. The biggest challenges after that are just continually growing the website and not plateauing, and also continuingly being able to provide fresh value to your readers so that you are not repeating yourself over and over again.  That is probably a couple of challenges that I deal with.

What would you say is the most rewarding about this job?

I love the fact that I can help people from the comfort of my home. I love being able to influence other people, help them, communicate with them and do all that without having to travel all over the world or the country.  And not only that, you are providing value that actually helps them get things done, and they can turn that into an actual business.  So the fact that I can make a living doing all that is just awesome.

What advice would you offer to someone considering this career?

The first thing would be to make sure you give it time.  But the caveat there is that time itself is not going to bring success, it is a matter of doing the right things in that time.  So you need to learn from the people that are making it in this career already, learn what they are doing and consider the products they offer.  I’m not saying go out there and buy everything everyone offers, but typically these people are providing real value, they have the right to charge for it and you might want to consider it.   I know that one of the ways my business really took off was when I finally stopped trying to get everything for free and I actually started paying people for what they knew and what they were teaching.  I put that information to use and I took action and it really worked out.  So that would be my biggest advice, just taking action, learn from the people who are already making it work and on top of that make sure you understand that this is not something that is going to happen overnight.

How much time off do you take each year?

I don’t really have a set amount, but basically I can kind of do it whenever I want. Things need to get done in the business, so it is not like I can take off six months without coming back to something that has essentially collapsed without me.  But at the same time I don’t have a set amount.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

Probably one of the big misconceptions, is the fact that you can’t make money doing it.  That is why a lot of times when I tell people I am a blogger I sometimes now will tell them I’m an online marketer or something like that.  This is because a lot of people associate the word Blog with people that are out there writing about their pets or something like that, and nothing serious.  Whereas if you are doing this as a business then you are not doing that at all, you are actually doing things that are actually valuable to people, so that is probably the biggest misconception, the fact that you really can’t make money doing it.

What are your goals and dreams for the future in this career?

Right now I am basically focused on simply growing what I am already doing.  I want to just help more people.  There is still a lot of room for growth in my business.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

It is a lot of fun.  There are a lot of people out there, especially these days who are having a hard time finding a job, or they have lost the one that they had, and I am not saying you need to go out and become a blogger because I am not going to sit here also and say this is the easiest thing in the world to do.  It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of the right moves, but there is a lot of opportunity online, and there are a lot of people who have given up trying to find a job and they are simply trying to do the entrepreneur thing using the Internet.  Because the Internet is a global marketplace, there is a lot going on there online.  So I think I would just leave it off with that.  There is a lot of opportunity online.  If somebody has not considered doing something like that, even if it just a spare type of thing then I think they should look into it.

Marsh Shapiro of the Nitty Gritty was kind enough to let me interview him. He is the owner of the Nitty Gritty a popular Madison, WI restaurant.

What do you do for a living?

I’m the owner and operator of a restaurant and bar.

How would you describe what you do?

I’m the owner and operator of a restaurant and bar which is a very high-volume operation here in Madison, Wisconsin. We’re located just adjacent to the University of Wisconsin campus. We are predominantly, what you would call, a pub-type operation, serving bar food and, of course, alcohol. There are literally thousands of students living directly across the street, and we are a very popular place here in the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison.

What does your work entail as a restaurant owner?

I was an absentee owner for a good share of the time, to the extent that there were managers operating the place when I was doing work and away from here. And then in 1985, I left the television business and have been full-time on the premises doing all of the marketing and promotion and overseeing the operations for the last 22 years.

we’re actually known as Madison’s official birthday place…We have 50 to 60 birthday parties here every day, 7 days a week…Our record is 103 birthdays in one day. Our youngest is one-day old. Our oldest is a lady that’s 108…Virtually everyone in Madison knows the Nitty Gritty as a place to celebrate your birthday. We make kind of a big deal out of it…They are very special people to us.

We have one hundred employees to manage during the height of the school year when there are events at the Kohl Center and the University of Wisconsin is in session.  We have a very high-volume, fast-paced operation, with a capacity of a little over 400. We’re able to serve food to probably 275 seated at one time.

How did you get started?

The business over the course of the 39 years since I’ve been the owner has evolved a great deal. I’ve had, basically, two overlapping careers. I’m a professional broadcaster by trade. I have a degree in radio and television and I was in television here in Madison, Wisconsin for 25 years, from 1961 to 1985. In the early 60′s I did kids’ shows, and then transitioned into becoming sports director from 1975 to 1985. I was the broadcaster for all the Wisconsin football and basketball games on television. And in 1968 I purchased what is now the Nitty Gritty Restaurant and Bar that we have talked about.

What do you like about what you do?

The part that appeals to me is I’m a very outgoing, extroverted type person, and I see this not as a food and bar business, but as a people business, which is a very, very old, worn cliche. I really enjoy the interaction with the people. We have a birthday theme here, we’re actually known as Madison’s official birthday place so many people come on their birthday. We have 50 to 60 birthday parties here everyday, 7 days a week, in addition to our regular clientele that are here for events or just for eating our food. Our record is 103 birthdays in one day. Our youngest is one-day old. Our oldest is a lady that’s 108. We’re a place where the Governor comes, the Mayor is here, the football players are here, the coaches are here. Virtually everyone in Madison knows the Nitty Gritty as a place to celebrate your birthday. We make kind of a big deal out of it. We have birthday balloons, we get their name up on an electric birthday board, we give them a glass mug that they are able to keep, and they get to drink free beer or soda while they’re on our premises. They are very special people to us.

..it’s really very rewarding when people leave our building and say that they’ve had a wonderful experience here and that the food was very good…It’s rewarding knowing people enjoy being here, and that you’ve had an opportunity to make people happy, and they had a wonderful dining experience

It’s the kind of thing where people come up to me and say, This is the first time I’ve been here for my birthday, but this is one of the most memorable birthdays I’ve ever had, thank you for all your hospitality. Those are kind of things I enjoy and that we capitalize on and have made the foundation of our business.

What do you dislike?

I dislike that the hours are very difficult in this business. We are pretty much of a seven-day a week operation. And then the second most problematic thing is dealing with employees. It can be difficult managing that. Although, I think we’ve done a very good job in not having the type of turnover that many of the restaurants in our industry have, and that is because we try to take care of our employees to the extent that we make them kind of a part of our family. We work hard, we play hard, and we want people to enjoy their time that they’re here working at the Nitty Gritty.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

We make money in our business by selling food and by selling alcohol, and by setting margins that we hope will be able to pay the bills plus enable us to make a few dollars on the side.

How much money do you make as restaurant owner?

A couple hundred thousands dollars a year is easily attainable in this type of business.

Are there any perks to this career?

The perks are that you just have that gratification of knowing that you’ve done a good job and people are happy and you’ve helped them have a wonderful dining experience.

The restaurant business is the most highly regulated in this country, so you need to be prepared to deal with the health department, fire department, police, neighborhood associations, building ordinances, people coming in and sticking thermometers in your soup at high noon when you’re very busy. If you can’t deal with those kinds of things, you’re not going to be a very happy person and you’re not probably going be very successful in this business.

The rewards are in the compliments that you receive, and the awards that you receive, and the public recognition that you receive. And when you start having those kinds of things happen and prominent people come into your place and people are talking about you, those are all very, very rewarding things.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

I don’t know if there are any special educational qualities that you need to have. I think there are plenty of people in this business that are not really college-educated, although I think it certainly would help if you wanted to take some business courses. I think you would want to take some courses in public relations and you’d probably want to take some courses in improving your speaking. Social skills are also very, very important. And I think that depending on the type of operation that you have, that’s where your emphasis would be on getting those skills. If your skills are in the area of culinary-type things, then you want to look at technical schools that will provide you with those skills. There are many of the top scale-type restaurants where the chefs are the primary owners and operators, and so you could come out of that type of background. Or there’s other types of people who just want to be a management-type leader and just have to have the people skills and the social skills that will enable them to know what they want and effectively communicate that.

What is most challenging about what you do?

Just the day-to-day operations and dealing with all of the things that can happen. Over the course of my 39 years here, I’ve seen just about everything. We’re dealing with clientele that are very demanding at times, you’re dealing with people that want everything perfect. You’re dealing employees that are troublesome sometimes, employees that have a mind of their own and don’t want to do things the way you’d like them to be done, employees that are not present when they are supposed to be or are late. Those are the things that are most troublesome in the industry that you have to deal with on a daily basis. And I can honestly tell you that in 39 years, from a management point of view, that has not changed¦those are the things that you deal with on a day-to-day basis. The one thing that comes to my mind right now is we’re dealing with an issue which seems very minuscule to some, but it’s important to us. And that is the fact that there’s a helium shortage right now. We can’t get helium to blow up the balloons that we want to give away to the people that are having birthdays. It’s just not available and there’s a worldwide shortage, and we’re not going to get any helium into our market here in Madison for probably another three or four months, if we get it then.  So this is something that seems a very small thing, but to us it’s very important.

What is most rewarding?

While it certainly can be financially rewarding, it’s really very rewarding when people leave our building and say that they’ve had a wonderful experience here and that the food was very good and our bartenders are the best and all of our servers have wonderful personalities and it was a pleasure to be here and they can’t wait to come back the next time. It’s rewarding knowing people enjoy being here, and that you’ve had an opportunity to make people happy, and they had a wonderful dining experience, which is the reason that they go out in the first place.

What advice would you offer someone considering owning a restaurant?

Anyone that is considering this career or business has love to be around people and has to be a very outgoing type person if they’re going to be the owner/operator. From a management point of view, it’s important that you are able to look at the big picture while also being willing and able to do everything that all of your employees would do. If it means cleaning the toilets, and that happens on occasion when your cleaning people don’t show up or if the cleaners don’t do a good job, then that’s what you have to do. You have to be a jack of all trades. You have to enjoy working mornings, noons, nights, holidays, weekends, because that’s the nature of this business. When everybody is out partying or having a good time on New Year’s Eve, chances are you’re going to be open and working in your establishment till the wee hours in the morning, and then you’re going to get up the next morning, and maybe even have to go clean or to have to go into work because the next day is another day.

How much time off do you get/take?

It depends. In the early days of my operation, I didn’t take off at all. I probably didn’t have a lot of vacations for the first 15 or 20 years. Since that time, I’d maybe take a few days off never more than two or three at one time and now later on, in my particular stage of my career, I feel that I can get away for probably a week or two at a time. I have adequate management that I feel comfortable when I’m not in the establishment. But when I return, there are still notes and cards and things like that from people that were here that expected me to be here, that were upset that I was not here. So, when you have that kind of visibility it can be difficult to get away. You’ve just got to take that in stride, and follow up with those people and make sure that you let them know that you’re sorry you missed them, but that you’re looking forward to their next visit.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

I think that the common misconception is that it’s an easy type of business to operate. That anybody can do it and that once you hang out your sign and tell people what you’re doing and what you’re serving, that lines are going to be a block long and that people are going to come in and they’re going to love you no matter what price you charge, they’re going to love paying the prices and they’re going to love the product. And also from the alcohol point of view, people think that opening a bar is very simple and easy and you just sit at the end of the bar and have a drink in front of you, and you just have to wave to everybody and say hello and watch the world go by, and that all you do is just sit there during the day, and at night, you open up the cash register, and take the money to the bank and that’s all there is to it.

What are your goals/dreams for the future?

My goal in this career, eventually, is to retire. I’m at a point where I think that that’s probably going to take place pretty soon. I think that some of my upper- management people, if they can put it together, will probably take over my business within the next year or two. It’s been a very wonderful career, so I can’t complain. But it’s very difficult on people that want to get away and have family time because you’re pretty much on the premises working most of the time, and it can be a very, very hard life. I commend everybody in this business that has been able to be successful because there’s a very, very high percentage of failures in the restaurant and bar business. In fact, it’s very difficult for anyone to get money together to set up and operate a bar and a restaurant because the banks are very unwilling to do that because the risk rate is so high. It’s not an easy thing to go to a bank and say, I got this idea. Here’s what I want to sell. I’m going to sell tacos with bananas on top, and everybody’s going to love them and we’re going to make a million dollars in the first year I’m in business, so give me two hundred fifty thousand dollars to open up this restaurant. Those things just don’t happen very often. You’ve got be pretty grounded. I think there’s an expression in the banking industry that there’s two things that they want stay away from; restaurants and bars and sporting goods stores. Those are probably two of the things that would be the most difficult sells that you’d have to make to get the bank to give you money to open up those types of operations.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

Well, nothing more than the fact that you have to enjoy what you’re doing. If you don’t get up in the morning and look forward to going to work and have a good attitude and have a positive attitude about what you’re going to do and try to give everyone the best service possible, the best product possible, the best environment possible, then you probably are in the wrong line of work. If you just want to be a 9 to 5 person punching the clock, where you just want to sit at the desk and relax and look at a computer screen all day, this is definitely not the business for you. This is a business where you have to be outgoing, you have to think out of the box, you have to be looking at the big picture. You’ve got to deal with employees, you’ve got to deal with customers, you got to deal with advertising people and salespeople. You’re going to be receiving all kinds of requests or special favors from all of the charitable organizations, we give away thousands and thousands of dollars in gift certificates every year to all of the charitable organizations. You have to have a community involvement in order to get that kind of visibility. You have to be very positive about everything you do. The restaurant business is the most highly regulated in this country, so you need to be prepared to deal with the health department, fire department, police, neighborhood associations, building ordinances, people coming in and sticking thermometers in your soup at high noon when you’re very busy. If you can’t deal with those kinds of things, you’re not going to be a very happy person and you’re not probably going be very successful in this business.

What do you do for a living?

I’m the president of a logistics outsourcing company.

How would you describe what you do?

The company does transportation, warehousing, and all related technology to help people manage the flow of their products from the manufacturers out to retailers. I run the company, which consists of about three hundred and twenty people distributed around the country. Our main office is in California, and now our new office is coming to Fayetteville.

What does your work entail?

There’s not been a normal week in a pretty long time. But, I guess, for the most part I spend time talking to clients on solutions to some of the issues they’ve got.

A lot of people want to do some sort of entrepreneurial thing.  Most people keep thinking about it and thinking about it, but they never actually do anything.  If you’re wanting to do something, just do it already and don’t agonize over it for the rest of your life.

I spend time trying to work with our training partners, which are retailers, warehousing companies”other warehousing companies”trucking companies, recruiting people, managing people, managing issues that come up with people, selling, figuring out our marketing plans, so it’s lots of different pieces.

How did you get started?

I was at Proctor and Gamble, Nabisco, some larger consumer package goods company, and then some large services companies, and saw a piece of the market that was not really being addressed, and that had a high level of dissatisfaction with supply chain management software and supply chain management services and how they interact. So, I decided I could fix that using the Internet and as a tool that would enable people to better manage their businesses. I left my job at the time and just started with absolutely nothing there and slowly built a company. I hired an engineering person first and then other people, and we built a sort of simple technology platform, like a beta. Then we pieced together the services. We got our first small, small client, and then we got a just a small client, and then a slightly less small client. We kept developing systems to make them better for larger clients, and then when they would ask for changes or improvements to things, we would change it and improve it, and it just got better and better over time. And we continued to grow and get larger. And that’s kind of how we got to where we are.

What do you like about what you do?

Well, I like that we are innovative. Innovating new services is fun. Selling is a lot of fun, and helping people develop their careers is a lot of fun too.

What do you dislike?

I don’t like really like the administration type work. I don’t really like to get bogged down in paperwork and accounting-types of things.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

I make money if the company makes money, and the company makes money by charging clients for warehousing, transportation, and technology services.

I think if anyone wants to go down this path, it’s not an easy path, it’s a pretty difficult path…you are taking a big risk, as much as you don’t realize it¦I think the risks you know about are one thing, but there’s a whole lot of risks in your life that you’re about to take that you don’t even know exist. But you have to be okay with all of that.

When we manage more of a company’s business, we make more money. I have equity in the company as almost all of our employees do. So, if the company does really well and we have a nice sale, then everybody makes even more than they were thinking they were going to make.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

I had an MBA and that was helpful. And then more importantly, probably, is I had experience with some larger companies that I think did logistics well, and I learned. I think the best experience you probably can get is to spend some time at some larger companies that just do things well, and then you learn how to do them well, and you learn a little bit about corporate culture and then you can use that and apply it not even necessarily in the same industry. Sometimes it’s a completely different industry, but it’s analogous in some way, and that, I think is pretty important.

What is most challenging about what you do?

Finding good people and not allowing the company to become too slow moving.  We have to keep it moving, and keep on doing things that are outside of people’s comfort zones. And it’s easy not to do anything about that and just to leave it as it is. We came out of nowhere eight years ago because we sort of pushed it, and most people in the industry thought that it was sort of unnecessary or not a good idea or it wouldn’t work. And clearly, it has worked, and it’s very easy to become one of those companies now that says, Well, we got a model, and it’s fine, and it’s working, and we just need to tweak it a little, and it will be even better. And I think that the hardest part is to find a group of people that can continuously do more than just tweak it a little, because if you just keep tweaking it a little bit, you might be successful and you might be around, but you might not be around that long, and that’s the hard part.

What is most rewarding?

I think the most rewarding part is when you have clients that want to use you for more business because there’s something that you’re doing to help their business. When we grow a company’s business or solve a problem for a client that enables them to grow their business, typically that will enable us to grow our business when there’s growth because we’re sort of a part of their business. So that’s the most fun part because it solves somebody’s problem, and it helps their business grow.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

A lot of people want to do some sort of entrepreneurial thing.  Most people keep thinking about it and thinking about it, but they never actually do anything.  If you’re wanting to do something, just do it already and don’t agonize over it for the rest of your life. I think 60% of my MBA class were in the Entrepreneur Association, and out of that group I can’t think of anyone who’s done anything entrepreneurial; out of hundreds of people. Their biggest, most important thing in their life that they wanted to do, they just never did it. So, that’s one thing.

And then the second thing is if you’re going to do something entrepreneurial, and you have time and you’re willing to do it right, it’s worth going to get a job, at another, bigger company, that’s already doing something good and learning at that company. It doesn’t hurt. It seems like three years is a lifetime when you’ve just got out of grad school. But spend three years at Proctor & Gamble or at Wal-Mart or at 3M or at some innovative company that everybody in the world knows does a good job. I’m not saying you should spend twenty years there, but spend three years there, try to stick your nose into everything you can possibly do. Try to help build value at that company, and you’ll end up in all the right places, and then you typically have alternatives. If you decide you want to stay, that’s cool because you’ve done a good job and you can stay and you have a career. Or, you can decide, You know what? I learned a lot. I’m going to do something else with it. So that, I think is important. And then, eventually, if you really want to do it, just do it already and stop talking about it.

How much time off do you get/take?

Really none. That’s not by intent. My intention is to take a ten-day vacation every year, and four three-day weekends. In reality, I take none. And it’s been like that for six, seven, eight years. And it’s always just that something comes up and stops me from doing it. And that’s wrong, bad and dumb, but I just can’t ever seem to make it happen. But I still believe that I will next year.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

People always say, Oh, start your own company, and you control your own destiny. Make your own hours, you can work whenever you want. I think that’s pretty rare. I think mostly what it means¦start your own company, you will be beholden to investors, clients, and employees. You need to constantly do more than other people because you’re making an impression on your employees all the time, so you can’t really spend any money and you can’t really take any time off. Anything you would like your employees to do, you got to do a little bit more of it to show them that you’re willing to do it. You’re a small company, so your clients have these huge expectations, and they’re wary of smaller companies. And then, as you grow, you need investors to come in because you’ll need capital, and then, they’re very involved in your company. So, the misconception is that you’re going to somehow control everything in your life. So if you want to do that, I think you got to do something else, which is maybe a small company maybe run a really small business, where you really don’t have any employees, you don’t have any investors, and you maybe don’t have any large customers.

What are your goals/dreams for the future?

I’d like to continue to do what we’re doing¦to continue to build the company up, make it bigger, and then, once this company gets to some plateau where it makes sense for me to step out and do some other things, then I’d start another one or do something that’s more venture capital, private equity-related, or something like that.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

No, that’s about it, I think. I mean, I think if anyone wants to go down this path, it’s not an easy path, it’s a pretty difficult path, and most people that I know that started when I started have failed to continue with it because the market’s hard and difficult, and everything is tougher than you think. And they folded it up, and then had to kind of go back into some kind of corporate environment, and typically have taken a major step backwards in their careers. So, it’s a definite warning. You know, it’s really satisfying, it’s really cool, but you work really hard. But you are taking a big risk, as much as you don’t realize it¦I think the risks you know about are one thing, but there’s a whole lot of risks in your life that you’re about to take that you don’t even know exist. But you have to be okay with all of that.

What do you do for a living?

I own an insurance agency.

How would you describe what you do?

I sell personal insurance mainly; auto, home, and life insurance. It’s eighty percent sales, twenty percent management.

What does your work entail?

It’s pretty much sales. You have to get prospects then figure out if they’re people that need what you have. Then you have to figure out if they’re going to be profitable and that they aren’t going to cause you all kinds of problems because insurance is kind of like a loan. You can’t get people that are not going to pay their bills.

It’s good for somebody that say, went to college, moves back home, doesn’t ever want to move, wife’s happy there, and is like, “I’m going to build a career here that I can have forever and get a lot of free time and go watch my kids play ball.” It’s long-term. It’s a jog, not a sprint.

Pretty much from there it’s just selling the deal and closing the deal, and managing it, keeping customer service for the people that bought from you.

How did you get started?

My family had been it.

What do you like about what you do?

Freedom. I own my own business. I can go do whatever I want to do, work whenever I want to. There’s unlimited potential for income. I might make $40,000 more this year than I made last year and I might make $100,000 less next year? It’s all up to me. One thing that I will say though, one really positive is it’s very stable too. Once you build an agency and you get a renewal base, 90 percent of the people will stay with you, so I could be gone for two weeks and still make the same amount of money.

What do you dislike?

When someone comes in and wants insurance from you and you can’t cover them because they’ve had two claims, or it’s a friend of yours and the accidents were really not their fault but they have two claims and that’s the rule and you can’t cover them.…the insurance company kind of tells you want you can and can’t do with

I can’t set the prices on the policies, I just have to sell what I’ve been given. If you owned your own business where you sold t-shirts, you could decide if you want to sell them for $40 or $6. This isn’t that business. They tell you they’re 38 bucks, they may be twice as much as anybody else but you have to go sell it.

regards to writing policies, and sometimes it makes it hard because it differs from what you would want to do if you owned the place.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

It’s all commission and performance bonuses.

How much money do you make?

About $130,000

What education or skills are needed to do this?

College degree. It doesn’t really matter what their degree is in as long as they have one. They’ve got to be able to work with people really well. That’s the key, communication and working with people. That’s what sales is, you’ve got to have a good personality and be able to deal with a lot of situations and learn how to deal with peoples emotions.

What is most challenging about what you do?

I’d say it’s to take what you’re given and work with it. I can’t set the prices on the policies, I just have to sell what I’ve been given. If you owned your own business where you sold t-shirts, you could decide if you want to sell them for $40 or $6. This isn’t that business. They tell you they’re 38 bucks, they may be twice as much as anybody else but you have to go sell it. Also dealing with the weather and things that are out of your control that can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. I can get a bonus for Christmas for $60,000 or I can get a bonus for Christmas of $0. And that all depends on how many people filed claims against me. Anytime there’s a damn storm, we’re up in the middle of the night watching it. Trust me, dude, I’m telling you. It’s wild. It can literally, on my income anymore, it can make the difference of $100,000 to $150,000 a year in my pocket. I don’t pay it out of my pocket, but there’s a loss ratio which means they look at how much you take in and how much you pay out. And depending on if your percentage’s in the right place, you get a bonus.

What is most rewarding?

I’d say the most rewarding in this business would be long-term, the renewal base business where you built a business and you worked hard and it gets to a point where it can be put on cruise control. And you see lots State Farm agents and all those guys, they’re always hunting for two weeks, traveling and whatever.

I can get a bonus for Christmas for $60,000 or I can get a bonus for Christmas of $0. And that all depends on how many people filed claims against me. Anytime there’s a damn storm, we’re up in the middle of the night watching it. Trust me, dude, I’m telling you. It’s wild. It can literally, on my income anymore, it can make the difference of $100,000 to $150,000 a year in my pocket.

The most rewarding thing of it is, it’s not like a doctor where you’ve got to be there to see patients. Once you’ve built the business, then you can kind of go and do whatever you want to do.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

I wouldn’t start from scratch. I guess that’s the best way to put it. I would somehow either buy in or get put into an existing agency that already has a book of business. But it’s very long-term…I mean, it’s very hard to go in and just start from nothing. It takes so many years just to get to where you’re even making some money. I’d also, before you sign on, make sure you really do your due diligence on what the company’s telling you about what you’re getting. Sometimes they’ll bullshit that and say “Oh, you’re getting this many clients and you’re getting this and you’re getting that,” and then you get in there and go, “Oh, wait a minute,”.

How much time off do you get/take?

Time off, I guess that would include my other business ventures. If you want to look at it from that standpoint, probably four months. And the typical agent’s not probably going to be able to do that, but easily six to eight weeks. It’s different for everyone. I own my own business. If some guy is an agent for Farm Bureau, that guy actually works for Farm Bureau. He’s like a loan officer at a bank.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

I would say the misconception is that we make more money off things than what they really do. Like what insurance agents do or an insurance company even in general. People think you make so much more money than what you do. People don’t realize that, yes, I took in, $10,000 grand but, as soon as they wreck their car, I pay it right back out.

What are your goals/dreams for the future?

Just to build a big agency. My deal’s pretty much to get it where I make $350,000 to $400,000 a year and don’t even have to go by there. That’s my goal. And I mean, mine’s a little different. My whole goal in the long-run is to set it up to have people to sell for me. I’m trying to set up the business and let it run itself.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

It’s a long-term business. It’s a very long-term business. It’s not something you walk in to and in a couple of years you’re going to just boom, all of a sudden you’re making $100,000. It’s good for somebody that say, went to college, moves back home, doesn’t ever want to move, wife’s happy there, and is like, “I’m going to build a career here that I can have forever and get a lot of free time and go watch my kids play ball.” It’s long-term. It’s a jog, not a sprint. It takes so long to develop those relationships with wealthy clients and get lots of money to come in the door, that if you’re moving all the time, you’re going to be starting back over all the time.

What do you do for a living?

I’m a commerical painter.

What does your work entail?

I started out doing everything, doing all the painting, getting the estimates, getting the estimate turned in, getting all the paint, have it delivered to the job site, then actually do the work, finish and make sure the client is happy, then get your payment, deposit that and record all this process all while hoping that in the middle of that job you are booking other jobs. So that got to be a challenge which is where having the guys helped out because now basically all I do is go out and do the estimating and the invoicing and then just quality check. So, rather than eight hours of my day spent actually doing the labor, I’m going around trying to continue the booking process and the invoicing and all that work.

How did you get started?

I was in school to get my athletic training degree and we moved into a place and we asked the landlord if we could get a decreased rent to paint it and she said ‘ok’. The landlord had someone she hired to paint the other side of the duplex and paid them $1200 and ours equated to $300 bucks, and our side looked better and so she said ‘well, there are plenty of people that have property that could use this’. So me and my friend that I lived with at the time came up with a name and put together some paint buckets for the logo and put out flyers all over town at hardware stores and that was in 2000, so seven years later here we are. For awhile I did it only part time. I started getting more calls for the painting thing and I was like ‘I’m going to give this a try’, because I’d get my pay check from my other jobs and I’d be like, ‘I still need more money’, and so I would plan on the paint jobs to make that happen and I was like, ‘maybe I can just turn that into something’. And it was difficult in the beginning but that was two and a half years ago now. So I went full time self employed and now I’ve had a crew of guys for over a year and I’ve been keeping them busy enough to keep them around.

What do you like about what you do?

It’s kind of a double edged sword. I love it and sometimes it’s challenging at the same time. I can basically write my own schedule. If I don’t want to get up in the morning, I don’t have to get up in the morning but then later in the day I’m just thinking about what I could have gotten done if I had gotten up in the morning. So, I love that that aspect of it, but at the same time if you are not disciplined about it that can be your downfall.

What do you dislike?

The inconsistency, it’s not like a regular job where you show up and you know you are going to get that money and you know you are going to have that money to count on. I can be in the middle of a job that’s going to end at the end of this week and I haven’t gotten any calls and I don’t know where the next job is going to come from. So that’s my biggest, the thing I hate the most is just not having any idea where the next job is going to come from.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

You walk in and you just got to figure out ‘how much is my time worth on this?’, ‘Is it my time or is it my guys’ time?’ ‘Alright, I have to pay my guys this much and I still need to make some money off of this.’ So planning those things out and then coming as close to possible as measuring square feet for paint costs. Another thing that a lot of people don’t take into consideration is the taxes. You try to figure out those numbers so that you do have a profit margin, otherwise it will get eaten by those little figures that don’t get taken into consideration very often. Then you put all those things together on a QuickBooks estimate form and send it to the customer and hope that you are able to fit all of that into their preconceived budget that they have in their head.

How much money do you make?

I had a really,in my opinion, a good year. It was our first full year of the painting company, with two guys only working six months of the year. We grossed $110,000. I ended up netting close to $50,000 from my first full January to December year of self employment, that’s pretty exciting.

What education or skills are needed to do this?

I don’t think a degree is necessary. But having a business education definitely would help. I mean you’ve got to know accounting, you’ve got to know how to set up the corporation right as far as an LLC, then you get to learn how to save money on taxes and make sure you are fileing properly so that you are not getting taxed the most possible. Then there is the invoicing and the management of customers. Then there is the advertising aspect of it, to make sure that you get your name out there enough to get more business and then there is the labor aspect of it that you might have to be doing until you get to the point where you don’t have to do it. It can be done, which I’m proof of the first three or four or five years I was doing it, while I was in college, but, then if you want to keep growing and reach different levels you’ve got to manage it on a higher level. And there is always the risk of getting sued or injured. If you get injured you’re screwed because you are your source of income, there’s not disability you can take or if you screw up somebody’s house on accident you could get sued. So, there are always those concerns that a lot of people just forget about.

What is most challenging about what you do?

Keeping your crew motivated and keeping them paid, and worrying about where the next job is coming from. You can’t think so selfishly about how am I going to get paid, and how am I going to be able to afford to live and then have some fun at the same time, because you’ve got guys that are depending upon you. One of the my guys has a wife and two kids. So I have got to provide for them and keep them happy first otherwise I ‘m not going to be able to get the work completed, especially considering that it’s been a year since I have actually done a lot of the work and you get rusty after that length of time. So just managing all those aspects of it and then managing the other people is the challenging part.

What is most rewarding?

At the end of the job, seeing the guys happy that they are getting their paycheck and enjoying the work that they do. And what’s amazed me the most, and I guess I just never thought of this because of my ambitions as far as wanting to own a company, but there’s people that just want to work. So that parts probably the most rewarding. I had one guy with two kids and a wife and another guy with three kids and a wife and I’m supplying them with solid work. It’s a pleasure to watch them enjoy doing the work for you. And being able to communicate with them and kind of empower them to a certain degree that they feel that they have some control as far as decisions are made and things like that.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

It’s tricky. I’m actually just now getting to the point where I am prepared to do things the right way. And I say the right way in that, the majority of the people who start up a business, ideally have a business plan, ideally they have capital and then put all those things together and put themselves on the market. If anything I had negative capital because I was in college and and trying to get to this point. As a result I was kind of piecemealing things together, you know, ‘oh I have an extra $500, we’ll call that marketing money and make some business cards’, so I’ve just been piecemealing all that together. The advice would be, in a perfect world, be disciplined about putting together a structured business plan and having goals, even if they are small goals, and say, ‘I am going to make sure I get three jobs this month’. If you get more than that, then that’s good. You’ll beat your goal and now you can have something to grow from. But it can be done without that.

How much time off do you get/take?

I like to think there a controlled out of control situation where sometimes you feel like, ‘I’m taking a lot of time off’ but then again there are time’s when I am working at two o’clock in the morning because that’s when I am feeling the most motivated. I am not always that person who can get up at eight o’clock in the morning and go ‘okay, it’s time to get work done’. Sometimes it is one o’clock in the morning and there are some creative juices flowing.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

That I don’t work. People always say he is “working”, you know. But there is a mind draining process to all these things. I’m in one of the few painting companies that have a website, and website development is probably one of the most mind draining things that I do. It’s lot’s of little things and then, ‘how can I plan for tomorrow to make it the most productive?’. So there is a lot of seemingly idle time that’s not idle.

What are your goals/dreams for the future?

I don’t just want the painting company. I have an idea box full of other things from at least a half dozen or more inventions that I would like to pursue as well as other business ideas. Someone could argue that I have already spread myself thin, I’m trying to make sure I don’t and focus on what I’ve got going on right now and keep that growing.