I am a "Retired" small business person. I say that with Quotes as an Entrepreneur is never retired, we are just between ideas.

I grew up in Dayton, Ohio. Parents were small business printers and owned their own business. I tried college before joining the US Navy in 1968, boring! So to spice up my life and to recover from the loss of the love of my life, she dumped me, I went sailing on a Nuc Submarine for 6 patrols and was honorably discharged in 1974. Before leaving the service, I created a position for myself at an electronics firm in Columbus, Ohio as an engineering consultant and salesperson.

At the age of 25 I quit to start my own business. Within weeks, I was approached by a local entrepreneur who wanted to invest in my new company. I sold him an Option for 20% in exchange for a $150,000 loan. Big mistake #1. I loved the man and truthfully, I was just not well versed in small business and how to deal with partnerships at that stage of my career, i.e. I blew it. It was not long until one of my clients recommended me to hook up with a larger engineering firm in Latham, NY where I stayed on for two years as a program manger.

This 600 person firm had a dozen program managers that dealt with many different industry segments related to mechanical engineering consulting.

At the end of my contract, I packed my wife and newborn girl into a mobile home and vanished to wilds of the bayous in Louisiana to start a new company. Within weeks, I signed deals with Dow Chemical and Cities Services in Lake Charles and we were back in the engineering consulting business working for large petrochemical businesses on the Gulf Coast.

I traveled a lot. I had contracts with plants in 30 states from the West to the East. So, I bought an aircraft so I could respond faster to my customer needs. I now more than 3,000 hours of flying time.

My small 5-6 man consulting firm serviced more than 100 petrochemical plants in about 34 states from Washington to Florida. After I moved to Atlanta in 1981, I hired a turbo machinery mechanical engineer and he and I ran the company for the next 20 years.

In the 80's I got distracted with Apple computers and desktop publishing. My parents were printers and I had spent a lot of time working and waiting on my parents at their shop growing up. I opened a desktop printing company in Atlanta, bought a bunch of Macs, laser printers and laser typesetters. Our customers included magazines, Gold Kist and TBS - Turner Broadcasting Services.

In the early 90's we began to develop software to produce catalog pages using DTP technologies and Sharper Image introduced me to a RR Donnelly salesperson on the West Coast. I moved the entire company to CA. We immediately opened an office inside of West Marine and a few months later another office at the Right Start catalog facility in Westlake, CA. This business grew to $6 million annual sales in two years and we had fewer than 12 employees.

Many other pre-press companies were wanting our software. Rather than sell it, we licensed it for a royalty to them. In 1994, we returned to Atlanta and opened a East Coast operation. We were using the 'Cloud' to connect all of our customers to our pre-press facilities before the "Cloud" or Internet was known. This unique arrangement was perfect for our customers and our pre-press shops. We could produce a 200 page full color catalog in 1/10 the time at 1/3 of the cost. Time to a cataloger is pure gold.

The engineering company was in autopilot and technologies continued to improve. We expand our publishing services business to textbook publishers in NYC. We landed a deal with Columbia House in NYC and a deal with a small textbook production facility who had a major client in NYC as well.

Eventually, I sold the software rights to one of my major clients and started to look for another business to start. Video production costs were being majorly impacted again by Apple systems so I thought this looks very similar to what I did with printing, so we jumped in with both feet into video and photo digital services. That company produced about 600 videos for families as tributes for all sorts of events.

I am living a childhood dream now. Retired, living in the country where my neighbors are chickens and cows. I like to hunt, target shoot and reload my own ammo. I can target shoot and hunt in my backyard. Life is good, but, I am still looking for my next small business.

Boring life I know, but it is the only one I can talk about. I am also pursing another dream to be a stand up comic, my persona is The "Cereal" Entrepreneur. I wish to use humor to teach younger people about the benefits of being self-employed and being entrepreneurial. I think everyone should be their own boss even when you are working as an employee. You see, being entrepreneurial is a mindset not a position.

If you made it to the end, you need to find something better to do with your time, really! :)

Barry