The Ice Cream Story: The First Hurdle

Picking up from where I left off on my previous post . . .

My first thought was to import ice cream from the east coast. When the supreme impracticality of that idea dawned on me, I thought I’d get a little homemade ice cream freezer to make my own to sell. But someone pointed out that ice cream made that way developed coarse ice crystals if stored in a normal household freezer. He said ice cream needed to be hardened quickly at extremely low temperatures so those ice crystals couldn’t grow. 

With that piece of knowledge, I was stymied. I had run out of ideas. But then I heard about this man in Texas who sold used ice cream making equipment. I called him up. He said he had everything I needed to set up a small homemade ice cream parlor. And then I heard the price – $7000.

I distinctly remember thinking, ‘Gee, if I had $7000, I wouldn’t need to start a business.’

At the time, $7000 was an astronomical figure. I never in my entire life had anything close to $7000. If anything was going to kill my impetus, it was that price tag of $7000. I hung up the phone completely depressed. The idea of starting an ice cream company was dead.

And then it occurred to me in an inspired flash of pure lucidity – investors!

In my book, I have written about key moments on one’s path to success where it is necessary to make a commitment. These are times when you realize that you can no longer dibble-dabble. It is like Nature has increased the stakes and, if you want to continue to play the game, you have to ante up. That means you have to make a leap. More specifically, it means you have to make a commitment of time or money or brain capacity or something that requires you to stretch out of your comfort zone. Miraculous things happen when you do make that leap but we’ll get into that later. Before the leap is made, however, those miraculous things are not at all obvious or certain so it can be a very scary time.

At first blush, you may think that my wanting to use other people’s money was a way of avoiding that personal commitment. That would be a wrong analysis. I gave the prospect of using other people’s money deep thought because I knew it would mean that the idea of an ice cream company was leaving the realm of fanciful mealtime gossip and entering the domain where I’d actually be required to do it. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should quickly point out that I didn’t see that my not knowing the first thing about how to make ice cream as an impediment to getting investors. Tomorrow (or thereabouts) we’ll see how I fare in convincing investors.

www.lazyway.net

Comments

[ted]

I like learning about how you started your first business. You write very well. These memoirs may be the start of yet another book...

[Berlin Brown]

This is fun. I love this. It is like gathering,waiting for a storyteller to tell his story.

I have a question. What is the time frame for all this to take place. Were there months/weeks where you were just sitting around and what did you do? I know in your first article, you hung around the beach and read. What could you do in Iowa. I know you probably weren't hashing out business models.