Wise Uncle Ben

The Atlanta-Journal Constitution:

Olav Kristoffer Bauer makes an unusual business mogul.

At 24, Bauer co-owns six restaurants in Beijing and is looking to expand.

The Buckhead native, who also lived for a time near Stone Mountain, has a tattoo of a Chinese flag on his back (he decided against a hammer-and-sickle design) and wears his hair in a shaggy mohawk. He figures he lost $100,000 last year by ignoring his accounting books and dreams of opening a charity school.

“It’s kind of unreal,” Bauer said over Chinese beers at the Kro’s Nest, one of two pizzerias he runs in Beijing. “I’m a 24-year-old sitting on six or seven restaurants. Where does that happen in America?”

Bauer’s eateries include one modeled on a combination of a Fellini’s pizzeria franchise and Fox & Hounds, the English-style pub in Buckhead. He’s not sure how much money he’s earned since 2006, when he opened his first pizzeria, but he estimates that the number might “push like six zeros.”

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With all of the talk of an impending recession, are you second guessing your dream of starting a business? Has the decline in your stock portfolio made you want to reconsider your goals and just find a safe employer? You cannot pick up a newspaper or listen to the news without encountering a discussion of the credit crunch, the housing crisis or the inevitability of a recession.

Many economists liken our current situation with that of 1973. The United States was in an oil crisis. The stock market started a two-year downturn that saw the DJIA drop by 45%. Moreover, credit products were still evolving and generally less available than they are today. (Credit cards were barely twenty years old at that time.) As if that were not enough, the Watergate investigations were underway and the last U.S. soldiers were leaving Vietnam. Surely it must have seemed in 1973 as if it were not the best time to start a new business.

Why not start a transportation company?

Can you think of a better time to start an overnight delivery company than during an oil crisis? Fortunately Fred Smith did not let it hold him back, because FedEx began operations on April 17, 1973. To be fair, the oil crisis had not yet begun when FedEx started operating, but by October the oil embargo had begun. Fred had done his homework, literally as the business case for FedEx came from a 1965 class paper, and despite everything, FedEx moved forward. It took two years before FedEx made a profit, but just look at them now with a market capitalization of nearly $28.5B.

Of the companies founded in 1973, at least another 104 have gone public. Maybe you have heard of the Men’s Warehouse with it’s $1.25B market cap?

What to do?

Now more than ever, you should rigorously analyze the potential of your idea. Do a SWOT analysis, build your business case, etc. Maybe now is not the perfect time to finance your start-up with credit cards, but then again money is cheap if you qualify. As the saying goes: when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Technorati Tags: start-up,fedex

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What is the largest wasted food product in the world?

If you guessed rice bran, you are correct. Rice bran is the outer hull or shell of the grain of rice. When peeled from the grain, rice bran goes rancid in 48 hours or less. All of the world’s rice bran has simply been discarded until recently. It turns out that this waste product is not only the most nutritious part of the rice, but it also has the highest antioxidant content of any food on earth. Oddly enough the millers are stripping the nutrition from the rice and throwing it away. To find out more about the nutritional composition of rice bran click here.

One Woman’s Dream

Patricia McPeak founder of Rice X, Nutristar and now Nutracea had a dream. Her dream was to capture the rice bran and make it into a viable food source to save starving children in third world countries. She is on her way to succeeding and has in many ways. Nutracea supplies many third world countries with their product. In addition to being a powerful agent against malnutrition, it seems to help with arthritis and has a stabilizing effect on blood sugar levels. You may have seen her on ITV, the infomercial channel, selling Rice and Shine a meal replacement shake based on stabilized rice bran. You will find Nutracea’s branded products on the label of many nutritional supplements in the aisles of your local Whole Foods Market. In addition to Nutracea’s human line, they also use their proprietary formula as an additive in animal feeds.

Drive!!!!

Although it took 30 years to see the realization of her dream, we can all take one lesson from Patricia McPeak. The lesson is simple, never quit if you believe in something. Now I have never interviewed her and there are no biographies written about her, but you can see she has drive and passion. Ms. McPeak has been through many rounds of funding and corporate name changes. Her companies have teetered on the brink of bankruptcy on more than one occasion. However she never gave up and now it looks as if rice bran is here to stay. That being said I will end with a personal quote.

People love to tell you why your idea won’t work; it is up to you not to listen to them.

Disclosure: In the interest of full disclosure I do own shares of NTRZ which trades on the over the counter exchange.

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