Charm City Snakes

I recently decided to start formally preparing my business plan for Charm City Snakes, a commercial snake breeder of course! Yes, you can make money breeding snakes. No, it's not easy money. But hey it's about time I stepped up to a real challenge in life. I am a huge over planner in all things and this is no exception. I am currently using the Small Business Administration's website along with startupnation.com. The SBA's site is pretty basic and really kind of discouraging. They have a number of little quizzes that help you determine your business style and if you are cut out for the task of starting your own business. I took a few of these quizzes twice, first answering honestly and then giving answers I thought the quiz wanted. Both times I was given less than stellar results and found the advice to be very critical. Then I slid on over to startupnation.com and what a difference this site made. I found a lot of the same information but the presentation was better and the advice while still realistic was much less depressing. The site is more of a community for people who are starting and running their own businesses. The site is ran by the Sloan brothers who also host a radio program by the same name. The whole site is free except for individual classes and is chock-a-block full of information. I am currently using their 10 step program to help prepare for starting your own business. So far so good, it's free and as such is a little light on the specifics but does give a good start to the whole process. Once I am done this program I will begin working with the book Start Your Own Business by Rieva Lesonsky. At 700+ pages I expect to fill in a lot of details with this book. And to top it all of I have my dad who runs his own successful auto body repair shop and Pete Kahl one of the big names in snake breeding. After all of that if I should be ready to start running things like a business. Right now I am trying to expand my collection and finalize my caging and supply needs. I am specializing in Boa Constrictors to start and the name of the boa game is morphs! Morphs, morphs, and more morphs!! Morphs is the slang word we snake guys use to cover the many genetic mutations that visually affect color, pattern, and sometimes form. Morphs like albino, hypomelanism, piebald, and axanthic are scientific terms that describe a mutation across many species. Whereas jungle, motley, and sunglow describe mutations or combinations of mutations found by a breeder in a specific species. These are kind of catch phrases and can be rather confusing with everyone trying to pitch their new morph to the herp community. Herp being short for herpetological, herpeticulture, or herpetiles (reptiles and amphibians). Nomenclature aside, morphs are where the money is. It's with this money that I will be able to start, grow, and expand my business to the point where I can get into some of the more interesting work. My goal is to always stay in the boa family but to expand into some tree boas as well as locality boas. All in due time I suppose. For now I will continue my work on the business plan and start preparing the snake room for more snakes. With my wife leaving her job in the next couple of months and the breeding season approaching fast I plan on a few updates a week.

In the beginning...

Actually this is like my third blog but all the others have gone the way of Delphi. I am hoping the difference this time is that I now actually have something to blog about. Things like starting a business, growing wealth, snakes, marriage, technology, music, and just all the hilarity that goes on in my life. The name of this blog is a sailing term, I do not sail nor do I endorse sailing of any kind, referring to the outer most of two or more jibs....I am more interested in the verb form meaning to refuse to comply or resisting forward movement. The flying part just makes me sound more spectacular. That sums up most of my goals in life. I want the American dream without the American lifestyle. I am trying to find the right balance between living in the norms of society to reap the benefits without giving up my personal freedoms or independence. I hope to elaborate on these ideas more right here in this blog.