Episode-1424- Mike Cornwell on Building a Business from Scratch
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Mike, “New Mike” Cornwell
Mike is a highly motivated Permaculture enthusiast who enjoys working with diverse living systems and attempting to invert problems into solutions. Michael is passionate about sharing the knowledge he has gained, and helping people with starting their own paths to happy and healthy lifestyles.
He specializes in the hot and humid climate transition between temperate and sub-tropical at 30 degrees latitude. He lives with his wife Christine on their 8.5 Acre homestead in South Eastern Louisiana. They started the transition of their homestead in early 2013 and has made great progress towards increasing bio-diversity and establishing a welcoming human habitat.
His homestead is now home to many animals, earthworks and over 100 different cultivar varieties of perennial edible trees and bushes. He maintains a permaculture and homesteading blog about his homestead at MikeCornwell.com. Mike received his Permaculture Design Certificate from Geoff Lawton and another by Ben Falk from Whole Systems Design.
Mike joins us today to discuss, Starting your own business and passive income streams using niches as a focus. This includes any business idea to include permaculture. Including the book he is writing and why it was chosen as his first project, the book is called, “Easy Chicken Tractors You Can Build Today”.
Resources for today’s show…
- Join the Members Brigade
- The Year 1424
- Join Our Forum
- Walking To Freedom
- TSP Gear
- PermaEthos.com
- AgriTrue.com
- The Great Big AgriTrue Contest
- Knife Kits – (sponsor of the day)
- Backwoods Home – (sponsor of the day)
- MikeCornwell.com
- Build a Chicken Tractor Today
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:O THE NEW MIKE!? 😀 This one is going to be fun.
Thanks for having me on Jack, I really appreciate it, and hopefully it helped at least a few great TSPers out there get a spark to make some major positive changes in their life.
Gotta correct myself on something. The Exploited created “Punk’s not dead” in 1981 with the tune “I still believe in Anarchy”. Just happens when you’re rolling with the flow on tape.
Smaaaaaalll sligggggght correction. My last name is Cromwell. What is SO hilarious to me is how often people call me Cromwell, and always have. No other last name, just Cromwell. To this day it is 100% expected by me. In fact so much so, that I went ahead and purchased mikecromwell.com yesterday and redirected it to my main page. I can’t find it at the moment but I was going to upload this name military patch I had created while I was in Afghanistan. I went the whole time in Afghanistan as Cromwell. ha.
Correction on the name. Last time, I swear.
I am confused now. I thought I said it wrong at the beginning, right at the end and spelled it right in the post?
You’d think my name was some sort of Eastern European name with 10 consonants in a row hah. My guess is that the letters in “corn” when glanced at get all flip flopped around and turned into “crom.”
It’s not a big deal. =)
alright.. you just misspelled your own last name.. Cromwell. ;-p
Yeah… im confused.
you need to grab ‘Mike Cornwall’ also =)
I think he was joking? I can tell you it is Cornwell… I dunno what he was thinking when he wrote that. Now that it is there on the internet for forever, is pretty funny. This must be the case of, you say something wrong enough (or type wrong enough), you start doing it without thinking. Sigh, we can’t let him live this one down! 🙂
OOOOOOK. So now I’m back home (left to meet with the CPA and met the wife after work).
My last name is CORNWELL. Everybody calls me Cromwell. To the point where apparently I don’t even know my own name hahaha.
mike plants CORN well
This is awesome, having all these actionable info particularly on starting a small business is just really great timing. It just gets a guy going and just pushing onward. Btw, I’m going back to listening to 5mins w Jack and starting from episode 1 (Jack fyi, videos aren’t working on the earlier posts. No big deal just saying). Great resource and thanks to Jack and all who prodded him to put that site up.
That is what I was hoping for. I’m glad to have helped. I’d love to shoot you some resources or point you in some good directions if you’d like, just shoot me an email.
Awesome interview guys. Good luck in your business Mike!
One of the things that drives me crazy is a You Tube presentation labelled something like “Build (xyz) for $50” and then you find out the reason it’s $50 is because they have all the expensive stuff “left over from previous projects”. It’s refreshing that his book is going to be so much more honest.
Very annoying indeed. I actually went out and purchased EXACTLY what I expect you to, especially so I know exactly how much it costs. I could have bought the BIG box of screws, but I bought individual boxes especially so I could confirm one box of screws would be enough.
Cool interview. Interesting note on some of the stuff you guys were talking about regarding the design manual. A couple weeks ago I took a workshop with a world renowned Permaculture expert/Farm Designer who learned from Mollison and taught with Mollison in Australia. We were chatting about the manual, and he mentioned that Bill didn’t EXACTLY just sit down and write the book. On the title page it says, “Manuscript and Editing by…” He said that Mollison scribbles in notebooks that are scattered all over. The editor along with (I think it was) Mollison’s daughter got the notebooks and then pieced them together into the manual as it is. I thought it was an interesting insight into the creative genius of it all.
awesome podcast today jack and mike. got me inspired to finish some things i’ve been making excuses for. if you can take anything from the podcast is that you can’t really make excuses and you can always make time. awesome.
thanks for the podcast jack. hope you have mike on again!
That’s good to hear Damian. We need to hang out again sometime soon. Have you guys up for some Brewskies and grass feed beef on the grill.
That sounds awesome mike. A few weeks from now is probably the soonest but we definately would love that. We can drink some beer. Have the wives talk about babies. Good times.
Your idea for a band subscription service exists at patreon.com. At that web site, people commit to paying what they want every time the artist produces a specific product (video, song, etc.) Their subscription then gives them access to behind the scenes products.
This episode and the teaching episode both made me think that an episode on ‘how to learn something’ might be a good thing to add to your list. Of course, everyone HAS learned.. but having done it, doesn’t mean you’re good at it.
To do/be more than we are, we have to learn.
To quote from a Khan Academy email I got this morning:
‘ Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University has been studying people’s mindsets towards learning for decades. She has found that most people adhere to one of two mindsets: fixed or growth.
Fixed mindsets mistakenly believe that people are either smart or not, that intelligence is fixed by genes. People with growth mindsets correctly believe that capability and intelligence can be grown through effort, struggle and failure.
Dweck found that those with a fixed mindset tended to focus their effort on tasks where they had a high likelihood of success and avoided tasks where they may have had to struggle, which limited their learning.
People with a growth mindset, however, embraced challenges, and understood that tenacity and effort could change their learning outcomes.
As you can imagine, this correlated with the latter group more actively pushing themselves and growing intellectually.’
‘..even small changes in communication or seemingly innocuous comments can have fairly long-lasting implications for a person’s mindset. For instance, praising someone’s process (“I really like how you struggled with that problem”) versus praising an innate trait or talent (“You’re so clever!”) is one way to reinforce a growth mindset with someone. Process praise acknowledges the effort; talent praise reinforces the notion that one only succeeds (or doesn’t) based on a fixed trait.’
To be/do/have more.. IMO one has to start with the belief that one CAN be/do/have more. And take action with that conviction.
For a video version of this message (for the reading impaired) 😉 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC82Il2cjqA
This would include ‘how to find out what the unknown-unknowns are’ 😉
The short answer being ‘exploration’.
I should have included:
‘Researchers have known for some time that the brain is like a muscle; that the more you use it, the more it grows. They’ve found that neural connections form and deepen most when we make mistakes doing difficult tasks rather than repeatedly having success with easy ones.’
Failure = Growth = Strength
And the article link:
https://www.khanacademy.org/about/blog/post/95208400815/the-learning-myth-why-ill-never-tell-my-son-hes?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=All%20Users&utm_campaign=Sal%20Op-ed%20Email%20%28Students%20-%20Remaining%29&utm_content=D
‘Man often becomes what he believes himself to be.
If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it.
On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.’
– Mahatma Gandhi
One comment. If you’re going to provide a link for the “reading impaired”, it might make more sense at the TOP of the reading material…… =) Just saying.
It’s funny when you start to look at our language and how some other people use their words and you’ll certainly find these kind of value statements or deep seeded beliefs all over the place. One thing I do now, is catch myself every time I notice myself not owning up to things that are or where in my control, and noticing when things don’t necessarily go my way, to instead of hitting it again with the same approach, stop, think, and then try something different.
It’s hard work, but its the only way to improve yourself.
that’s known as a ‘Darwin trap’ (c)
insidious industries inc.
Hi Mike- good interview. I’ll offer one alternative view to quitting your job. Give it some time, establish a solid income stream from your new ventures before going full time as an entrepreneur. You’re young, lots of time ahead of you. Sounds like you’re doing IT work from home- that’s a good gig to transition from, take advantage of it.
PS- you should start calling yourself the NEW Cornwell !
Thanks for the advice John I appreciate it. New Cornwell indeed! My dad has recently made a similar change himself but coming from a different angle, so we’ll see who comes out on top!
So, if I heard you correctly, what we really need is a trashy permaculture novel.
What an awesome idea. Some hippie person falling madly in love with a tree and then having tree sex by the beach….
Good show. And i hate to be the downer in all this, but one thing kept bugging me all through out it. Your writing a book on a subject you really have no practical knowledge of. Now i am not saying you can’t build a chicken tractor and if you used enough design info from people who have the practical knowledge then they might all be great designs, but none of that comes from your experience with them, or your using them. To me it sounds like you want to teach, well what you don’t know.
Like i said i hate to be harsh and if you do it as a online book you can edit and update as your experience using them goes on, then i do believe it will end up being very worth while knowledge. I could write a book on heart surgery and research the terms, instruments used and methods doctors talk about, but should i really be teaching it to anyone since i have never done what i am writing about? I just don’t want to see a bunch of books and info thrown out because people know how to do sales and marketing if the books and knowledge in them is only theoretical. Anyway just my thoughts on your get rich scheme using other peoples knowledge and a lot of sales and marketing.
@GotCox, I am wondering if in all that listening if you did much hearing? The process Mike described likely makes him one of the most qualified people to write such a book.
Perhaps he should go to College and get a Chicken Tractor Degree first?
Those that build with their hands have the best knowledge on what works and what doesn’t. He just didn’t read about it or draw a design. He’s the most qualified in my view.
@GotCox
I think what Mike is attempting to do (and he can correct me if I’m wrong) is to consolidate a lot of the information out there on chicken tractors and put it into a lean, mean, workable and tested form that people can buy and read as a way to avoid some of the problems that inevitably come up when your doing things for the first time – maybe something like a detailed SOP for chicken tractors.
If he were writing a book on chickens themselves then I think you’d have a better point, but this is about tractors, as I understand it. Besides, there’s lots of books on chickens already and apparently few books on tractors and how to build them. I think the goal he’s shooting for is to lower the intimidation factor of building one of these things so that more people will be more inclined to raise chickens, which is good step towards personal liberty and independence. Anything that will get more people into learning about forgotten knowledge (at least forgotten in this country) is a worthwhile goal in my book.
Chad pretty much summed it up correctly.
There is “zero” theory in this book. I’m not sure you heard the part in the podcast where I stated I’ve taken nearly 2000 pictures, most of which will be going in the book.
“Anyway just my thoughts on your get rich scheme using other peoples knowledge and a lot of sales and marketing.”
That’s just downright funny to me. “Get Rich Scheme” using a chicken tractor “How-to” guide. Hilarious. I can’t imagine you listened to the entire podcast and came away with this as what I’m doing or “advocate”. And let me put it this way as straight forward as I can, that’s not possible.
So where is your blog Mike? I don’t see it in the link.
Yeah it didn’t make it up there.
http://freedomlouisiana.org
This has a lot of the stuff we have done around the homestead in the last year. It has taken a backseat to other things I’ve been doing, but I’m still taking pictures and all that. I need to keep putting stuff up, at least for documentation purposes.
“I am wondering if in all that listening if you did much hearing? The process Mike described likely makes him one of the most qualified people to write such a book.
Perhaps he should go to College and get a Chicken Tractor Degree first?”
If i am not mistaken he says he has not had chickens before, but just made the choice to get some. And again if i recall correctly this homestead is the first place he has gotten into homesteading and that was in 2013, also i don’t see prior chicken raising while he was busy in the military. So his total of practical knowledge on the subject is….
No i do not think he needs schooling to teach, but some real world practical knowledge and use of what your going to teach would sure be handy. lol but i digress. My opinions don’t seem to align with many here.
As someone with a LOT of practical chicken experience I can tell you in a year you know what you need to know and then some.
The chicken tractor concept is also well known, the what is pretty damn simple. The how is the key. One can learn a chickens needs, inputs and outputs and behaviors in a day, really get and understand them in a week. A year teaches you about dealing with everything you need to know and then some. Like dealing with freezing temps, molting birds, etc.
A chicken tractor is a simple element in this system. You need food, water, shelter, shade, enough space, effective design and ease of use. The fact that no really good resource exists for this is kind of strange and good for Mike for capitalizing on it. It also shows that it is a simple thing, the reason there is no good definitive guide (the two that exist get crappy reviews on Amazon) is that doing it just isn’t that hard.
So Mike takes something that is usually tossed together from random crap and half assed, comes up with three ways to do it with a full bill of materials, etc. He does it for the small flock owner, not the commercial (Salatin Style) producer.
Your view is the one that ends up being the excuse most people never do anything and only talk about doing a thing. “I don’t know enough yet”.
Did you listen to the show about teaching?
Speaking of the “commercial (Salatin Style) producer” type of chicken tractor…. do you know of any resource that has tips/guides for building one of these? Will be housing at the start 200 chickens and working up to maybe 400 for our 157 acre farm in central OK.
The chickens will be part of a leader follower with the leaders being pigs for right now.
@Kevin
From what I gather Salatin Style pens are NOT recommended anymore. The design is bulky, clunky and extremely ineffective. The Salatin style tractor apparently was created in the late 80s if I’m not mistaken and has long since abandoned by Salatin (as far as I know, somebody can correct me). The design is heavy and the birds get zero air-flow. Some of the best looking designs I’ve seen were welded metal that could best be described as moveable alumnimum fencing.
Correct but not what I meant. What I meant is your book is for the small flock owner at this time, not the guy running 2,000 meat birds. When one is raising a dozen chickens or less, care just isn’t a big problem. Your detractors seemed to be indicating a degree in animal husbandry might be needed to handle a few chickens.
FWIW at PermaEthos we are doing something different. Our “tractors” are really just shelters, covered with tarps. They are about 7 feet wide and two cattle panels deep, then tarped like a covered wagon. Each is surrounded with an area of electro net. The tractors are moved every day and the electro net every third day. For meat birds this works really well.
Here is what we used this year which sounds similar to what Jack is referring to. We liked this better as it was easier for kids than the Salatin style (which we also have and can be seen in the picture). Both have gravity fed water with nipples (this picture doesn’t show it all). For the Salatin style we fill the feeder and then put it down in the tractor and have to slide it under the covered area (kids can’t do that). It is WAY heavier than the taller unit. For the taller unit, we hang the feeder in the middle and just bring nfood in through the door (spread some around on the ground to keep the chickens from attacking you). It is a basic from with 2 cattle panels arched and some chicken fence around the bottom 2 feet to keep the holes smaller. It has been far easier to move, far easier to use and overall a better solution for us. Next year I will use a 2nd one and not use the Salatin style. We raised 300 broilers and 30 turkeys in these 2 this year. Grossed about $8000 from these 2 tractors on about 2 acres in total (we have 14).
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10478126_582033581909193_3029661973566819233_n.jpg?oh=d26aa6100e3f3dd618f6e8a9a3de322e&oe=549701E9&__gda__=1422718083_92d67658e9d6fd23192523fe1d2a4a4e
Sorta kinda like the one on the left. Our tarps go all the way to the ground and again we circle them with electronet so the birds are not confined to the tractor but yea the one on the left is very similar to what we are doing.
@ahmishwannabe
Do you have videos on youtube? I feel like your taller design is what I saw on youtube that I was like “that looks excellent for meat chickens”.
I don’t have videos that I know of. I usually keep my stuff private. If you are interested in seeing more, I’d be happy to send you what I have. It has all been guess and test for me and I’ve spent far too much time building these silly little things.
Jesse
I have electronet around about 1.5 acres for protection from predators. Broilers are always confined to the tractor. Turkeys will eventually be let loose on the netted area as they get big enough to kind of defend themselves.
@ahmishwannabe
I have considered running fencing how you have myself although I’m considering using something other than netting. (most irritating product of all time). Although what I do like using the netting for is enclosing specific areas to keep the animals in, long enough for them to do what they want to do, before going apeshit and destroying everything. (Ontop of swale mounds etc).
One thing I will be building soon is a mobile solar array using those Gorilla karts. I have also considered electrifying the outside of the tractors and attaching them to my mobile solar array.
@Mike on electronet, this is where the experience thing does have an impact. So for egg layers what is my opinion of all portable fencing? Likely worse than yours, it sucks.
Now for broilers, it is the bomb in my view. It reduces rather than increases work.
Conventional tractor, birds are in brooder 3 weeks and on pasture for 5-9 weeks. Let’s use 7 weeks and split the middle.
7×7=49 tractor moves. Each time worrying about killing a bird or five under the tractor. We are now likely dealing with 50 or more birds a tractor not 4-12 if we are doing meat birds.
Now it is true I move the tractor the same 49 times with the ring method but they are easy moves. I throw some feed to an area where the birds are not in the way, drag it a few feet done. Since I don’t care if the birds get out of it, I can set it to have simple wheels if I want to make it easier. I do this three times for each one fence move. On the 4th move, I push the tractor all the way to one edge, I toss some feed out at that point, I bring up the rear of the net, take the front forward, I do that two times, fist time half ass the second I set it where I want the next “paddock” to be.
About the only way this would be easier is to make the tractor more “coop like” so it can close up. I could then close up the thing at night and move it like a bird mobile before opening the next day.
The thing is a broiler (conventional) is a way different animal than a Rhode Island Red and certainly a lighter bird like a white leghorn. Most net is 3-4 feet, most of my layers can clear that even with a clipped wing. Broliers? they are lucky to walk fast enough to keep up with a net/tractor move. They waddle by the time they are 3 weeks of age. They can’t fly a foot off the ground, etc.
I will say this though, this approach is only good with good open access ares, trees and electronet are the devil!
@Jack
Oh I agree, but I’ll add this that what you’re referring to is optimizing your operation and making it as streamlined for commercial use (I’m sure you’d agree). This is specifically why I’ve stayed out of this realm (for this project) and in the first chapter I specifically address this. While I may have a bit of a design or two that might be helpful for commercial, the designs are so un-optimized for that purpose, it’s night and day. Another reason why tying the book to my upcoming business venture is a bit more not quite there. (One is for the home user, the other is for commerical).
I agree that net fencing is actually very very nice for open areas. When the wife and I move the fence in a grassy field, it’s like “ahhhhh wow how quick”. But unlike others we’ll fence in brush and forests, which makes you want to kill the other spouse. hahah. I wrote a script recently that puts together material costs for paddocks (you input some various factors like number of paddocks, distance between fences) and it handles the rest. When I finally get my shit together and put together these semi-permenant paddocks (that will go through the woods) I’ll be going with something other than netting.
My other problem with netting is the curling of the bottom which, I haven’t found one way to prevent it from happening no matter how tight. Even my ridiculously over-powered charger has issues (lately) maintaining the amount of charge I’d like if there is just about any grass touching the fence.
Plus if the ground is fairly dry from the lack of rain, putting the fence posts in the ground is damn near impossible. I think of Paul Wheaton every time I’m angry while moving the fences. “OH SO ITS SOOOO EASY IS IT?” hahahha.,
LMAO, this makes me think of my late friend Howell Dodd talking about pop up RVs. He told me a pop up was the most expensive RV you could even own, because dee-vorce was really expensive.
He owned one, used it one time and pulled one of his craigslist barters and upgraded it to a conventional one.
Yea I also challenged Paul to come put a post in my ground, he has yet to do so. LOL
Ok so to be fair, my ground isn’t nearly as hard as yours… haha. Although the knuckle heads who owned this place before hand good lord, did they gravel the WHOLE fing yard?
Anywhere near our workshop, even 20-30 feet away you’ll find it almost impossible to put stakes in the ground (without doing crazy voodoo shimming) because there is immense amount of gravel under the grass. You’d never know it either.
You know you’re onto something when you’re pricing out fencing, you send it to the wife and she goes “Oh that’s it? Maybe that can be my christmas present”. WOOOO HOOO.
The good news is if gravel is the issue you can put in rebar anywhere you want for quick easy fencing, just get a post pounder, it will find its way right in.
Note this would be for temporary stuff.
I don’t have the time at the moment to address all the concerns (I will later, perhaps tomorrow) but what I will say to this, is you can learn nearly ANY skill and be functional extremely quick. In the podcast I very much touch on this by saying you can’t be a MASTER quickly, but technical proficiency very fast.
Chicken tractors are NOT rocket science, let’s get that clear. You attempted to compare this book with heart surgery above, which is quite frankly silly. The book isn’t about “the best” or “great”, even if they are actually QUITE good tractors. One of the biggest problem of listening to “experts” is the average person cannot and will not see eye to eye with them and take their advice seriously. “Yeah Geoff Lawton can do that but me… who am I?”
Even further there is nothing in the process of building chicken tractors that relates to master of Chickens. There is no identification of chicken diseases, or all sorts of things that would take time to learn.
@Mike, I think you shouldn’t bother wasting any more time answering this, plenty of others have done so for you.
There is a simple fact that those that do are always attacked by those that do not do. Get used to it, if this is to be your path, what you see here is Romper Room in caparison to what success will bring you. I get dragged into such things often, I try more and more to say my piece and move on, realizing that the people who like to bitch about what others do are NOT PART OF THE DOACRACY and hence they don’t apply to me or my goals nor in anyway to my success or failure.
Agreed. I mean we literally went over this point for this specific reason. It wasn’t “by accident” that we discussed “why am I qualified to write this book”.
Yes i did and really enjoyed the show. I enjoy teaching others the things i know and enjoy. But i am not sure what that show has to do with this. In your own outline you state:
*Develop passion for things that are important to you
*Develop knowledge and experience about those things
*Show and tell others about them
*Repeat
It clearly states and you also did in your show that knowledge and experience come before teaching and sharing with others, not the other way around. But again i must be seeing something no one else is.
Or we possibly don’t see what you’re seeing to be relevant? Yeah he could have a degree in animal husbandry and be a master carpenter. The fact that he isn’t and still is building them is who will make these: the book is for suburban house wives that have zero construction experience.
@GotCox, I think you should not buy Mikes book, I think you should do what you want and likely that will be a LOT of talking and ZERO action and in a year or three you will email me some bullshit about “how do I get started doing ____” and I will probably be stupid and waste my time trying to help you so you can make excuses and do another three or four years of nothing and repeat that over and over.
How about this, quit fucking bitching about what others are doing and may be you will start doing.
I completely agree with what you are saying GotCox. My rabbit hutches that I use are 4th generation design. Why? Because I needed to fix some error with each prior design. Oh yeah, I only found those errors after using them for some amount of time.
Same thing with chicken tractors. I built a dual grow out pen for either chickens or rabbits. It is now on it’s 4th generation design as well. Predators are a bitch. Especially when you never see them, or have even seen them before. But put out some helpless chickens and they will come. Again, first design was not predator proof, but with real experience I realized I needed it to be that way.
Joe
Here’s where I think Mike is correct and what GotCox & Joe aren’t seeing.
Mike isn’t writing a one-off expert book on chicken tractors- and trying to cash in on it. He isn’t trying to “fake it till he makes it”.
Joe had to make lots of iterations and learned from them…that’s true and fine…but mostly all that knowledge has only benefited Joe.
Mike is offering multiple designs and then selling them (for a small fee) to the public. He will continue to iterate on his own PLUS he will receive feedback from 100’s or 1,000’s of people that bought his book. [academic community calls this “peer review”] He will update the book with this info. Effectively he is creating a chicken tractor wiki in reference book form. As consolidator of this info, he is adding value where none currently exists.
The market rewards people (or companies) that add value. Did Apple invent the- PC, mp3 player, music downloads, Tablet, Smartphone, etc…no they didn’t invent any of these…they just added value.
@John, great post!
Let me just add, did Apple stop at version 1.0 of any of those or not get started because they were not yet ready to do version 5.0?
Those with limited thinking are always subject to limited incomes.
inspiring, motivating and informative…this was a great interview! I have had a book idea swirling around in my head for about a year and a half, I put pen to paper the same day I listened to this podcast.
All the best to you Mike, Semper Fi and thanks for the great podcast Jack!
Awesome news. A good tip I received from an author is that if you spend just 20 minutes a day writing (when you’re in the zone and writing at least decent material) it takes less time than you’d think. It’s all about “write write write” eventually leaving yourself with duplicate of the content that you can then edit and pare through.
Good luck and stay in touch!
Mike, thanks for that…it’s ironic you mention that. I literally have been setting a daily goal of 20 minutes…and I spilled the beans to my wife!
No turning back. Btw, I retire from the Marine Corps in two weeks and I’m headed down the entrepreneurial path for sure. Cheers
20 minutes a day for 30 days is 600 minutes, 10 hours.
Neil Franklin and I co-wrote “Your Inner Salesman” http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/jack-spirko-and-neil-franklin/your-inner-salesman/paperback/product-2758964.html in two days at a hotel lobby drinking wine. It can be done if you want it done.
I advise the 20 minutes a day approach to the two days drinking wine but it does make a point. We likely seriously wrote for about 3 hours a day, bullshitted and yes drank wine the rest but bullshitted about selling. It is a thin book but that is what 6 real man hours, no reason a dedicated author following your formula couldn’t do say a book a month. You’d need a dedicated editor to maintain that pace but again it can be done.
Jack,
Awesome! That’s inspiring…I’m going to write 20 min a day. It’s sink or swim time. My initial plan after the Marine Corps was to get a transition job, work the businesses part time until…nothing, I’m jumping in head long. Part of that is listening to your show, thanks. Don’t worry if I crash and burn I won’t blame you but I will sure as heck get back up and plow forward. Plus, I think of everything in terms of primary, secondary and tertiary…planning is continuous.
Mike,
I would like to keep in touch…I just completed Geoff Lawton’s 2014 PDC so it is definitely in the fold for my future entrepreneurial pursuits, among many.
@Outlanderz
We’ve got but one life to live, and you’re just not going to go homeless and begging on the street if you give it a shot and fail (especially if you keep your wits about you). In the mean time you’ll get to enjoy life the way it should be, in the drivers seat.
Good stuff about the PDC, if you want go ahead and shoot me an email mike@mikecornwell.com
Hey Mike….a friend of mine is a stay at home dad. Right now he’s running for county supervisor. He is heavily involved with the school board (fighting dis-education) and also “home schools” during the summer. His wife makes great money and she has the insurance for the family. Stay at home dads are GREAT!
Rock on!
As soon as its possible for us to re-re-orient the family and she can stay home (and do what she wants to do), I know I’ll have succeeded.
You’ll get there buddy. When I talk to people about my wife staying home they look at me like I have an owl on my head or something. Small dedicated steps to any goal and you’ll succeed. Most people have vacation as a goal where we have sustainability and liberty.
Dude you guys are certainly there!
Unless you’re really trying to conquest debt, as much at home time is best. I didn’t say it on the interview but being able to be off work at 2pm AND at home (no commute) adds crazy amounts of extra hours not normally gained, plus I’m not burnt out by 4 or 5 or even 6 like some people.
“technical knowledge is so overrated” Great point @Mike. I only assume the reason is that others are simply intimidated. It’s like I know a special secret. Sitting down and just figuring out some technical skills allows me a good deal of autonomy at work. At the top of my “why I like my job” list.
I tell you what the more people try to tell me something is difficult, or try to indicate there are technical and “Experience” barriers to entry, the more I find it’s smoke and mirrors, and typically people puffing themselves up and their own acolades. Nearly my entire Marine Corps experience felt like this to me. (Everyone acts like it’s tough, but it’s really not if you let go and get with it). Oddly enough that same institution provided me the environment to prove not how far a human can go, but how unbelivably low we set our thresholds for “pain”.
Of course experience is important and getting good at technical skills is necessary in the long run, but my major point was you can become functional and decent extremely fast. Master? No, but capable, easily. Usually the need for advanced technical knowledge and skills comes much later when they’re needed, when getting off the ground, you need functional.
Regardless of how much training or preparation on any particular task, at some point you just have to jump in anyway and sink or swim.
…pain is just weakness leaving the body.
I liked this interview and learned a lot. Mike seems like a super cool guy.
I’d to hear him say “Why do I have to be Mr. Pink?”.
Rock on Mike.
Great show! I just listened to it today, so this may be a little late to be useful. But Mike brought up the idea of an aggregating website for permaculture that also acts as a library of online resources. I have been working on a site that is essentially the same as the idea he brought up and so I just thought I’d take the opportunity to get some input from Mike or anyone who might happen upon this post. If anyone has ideas or thoughts on this type of project, I would appreciate you sharing them at this link: http://hungryphantom.com/2014/03/seeking-input/
Thanks for any help.
Loved this interview.
Mike – if you ever write a book on passive income streams and how you built everything up from nothing, I would buy it. Maybe set up a data bank of all the articles you found valuable.
Thanks for all in inspiration!
Thank you for this show. I missed the original air date because I had “bid” on a new position at work and had moved into that position that very same week. Little did I know that despite the large pay increase, I would hate the job, the hours, the time away from my children, etc. By the weeks end I chose to disqualify myself from that very position and go back to the last position I had, which made me happy, had less hours and still made decent money. It also gives me more spare time to go out and do what I really want! Eventually I plan to build a small side business with an income from fruits and vegetables and this episode gave me some nifty ways to look at starting out. Just what I needed to hear at just the right time.
Thanks guys!