'office' system

Rich -
I know you're knee deep in hatchlings....
I had a question about the 'back end' of the business. With my hatchlings arriving in the next few weeks I was wondering how the larger breeders keep their records on the parents & offspring genetic history and also the egg volume & sales data etc....
I won't be there for quite awhile, but I know it's much easier to set a system up right in the beginning than to have to change it mid-stream.
You do an amazing job with the corns, the web site, the forum etc...Any thoughts and advice on the 'business side' of the setup would be greatly appreciated.
(When you have time! )
And congratulations, in advance, on another great hatchling season!
Deb

About the best advice I can give is that when you reach the point of getting 3,000 to 6,000 babies hatch out per year, right before hatching season, make sure you have enough Valiums available to get you through.

Be prepared to piss people off because you can't do everything all at once and just do not have the time to please everyone.

Forget about vacations. So if you take them now, take LOTS of photographs so that you can look at them to remember how it used to be.

Take stock of your situation and see how many little tiny details that if any one of them goes wrong can sink your boat. Then take another Valium.

Volume statistics and sales stats? Hah! Record keeping will consists of notes you jot down on index cards sitting with the cages the animals are in. Sales stats will be done while you are trying desperately to get your taxes down before breeding season rolls around again in Spring. Normally you will have no idea whether your business is doing well or not until it is too late to do anything about it but only hope next year will be better.

Personally, going into this with the plan of becoming a business is not the best thing in the world to do. Do it as a hobby, and if it does become a business, then just go with the flow with the understanding that maybe you are doing it right and this is the way it should be. I NEVER had any intention at all of this becoming a business. I wouldn't know how to write a business plan if my life depended on it.

Hey Rich, do you ever think you'll TOTALLY be able to give this up?

I mean, in X number of years are you going to sell your entire stock and business name to someone else, or are you just going to dump most of the animals and keep working with a select few?

I wonder if it's like professional sports----once people stop playing, they come back as announcers, broadcasters, coaches, general managers, etc. I guess I'm just curious if you think you'll be able to quit cold turkey or if you'll always have something lying around in numbers that you are capable of keeping yourself.

True...my husband has a business selling orchids and thats exactly how it's run!!! It was a hobby for almost 15 years before becoming a business.
That's the way the corns will be too, I have no doubt.... if we ever decide to even make it a 'formal' business. I am completely entraced with them ...they are amazing creatures. Even with that, I can't imagine ever handling the volume you do...it boggles the mind. (valium. pleeease!)
Even as a hobby breeder, I just want to make sure that I do a good job tracking the genetics and breeding data so I don't let folks that buy from me down. The good news is I have a long time to think about it. We're starting with just hatchlings so we have plenty of time to grow into it.
Thanks for repsonding to me, in what I can ony imagine, is an insane time. And thanks for setting up the Forum...it's a great opportunity for us to learn and enjoy the corns!
Deb

Originally Posted by Joejr14

Hey Rich, do you ever think you'll TOTALLY be able to give this up?

I mean, in X number of years are you going to sell your entire stock and business name to someone else, or are you just going to dump most of the animals and keep working with a select few?

I wonder if it's like professional sports----once people stop playing, they come back as announcers, broadcasters, coaches, general managers, etc. I guess I'm just curious if you think you'll be able to quit cold turkey or if you'll always have something lying around in numbers that you are capable of keeping yourself.

I really don't know. I'm getting to the part of my life that I fear that many decisions will not be based on "want" as much as "need". So much of this kind of work is demandingly physical. I just can't do some things that I could do 10 years ago. What will it be like 10 years from now? Certainly not better, I presume. But exactly HOW much worse will it be? Can I continue doing this if I cannot see the hemipenes on baby snakes? My wife does nearly all of the work with the mice. How long can she do that? 50 pound bags of rodent chow used to be nothing at all. Not so any longer.

Yeah, I wish I could say that I am making enough money off of SerpenCo that I should just hire people to do the work and I would do the higher level stuff, but it just isn't so. Plus there are just certain aspects of it that I couldn't turn over anyway.

Good question, Joe, but I just don't have an answer. I suspect events will just wind up making that decision for me when the time comes. Certainly a stint in the hospital at the wrong time of year would put an end to it right then and there. But all I can do is to hope that doesn't happen. For neither Connie nor myself. Because quite frankly this business needs both of us to keep it running. And unfortunately, people only pay for what I can produce and sell to them. If I can't produce the animals, then the game is over with.

Pretty droll subject matter, isn't it?

I guess I just screwed up by not picking rich parents when I was born.....