HERE'S WHYI KNOW THAT...
Those of you who've followed me and read my books know I didn't tell my kindergarten teacher I wanted to grow up and be a cheesemaker. Actually, until about adecadeago you could say I was stuck. Stuck behind a desk, stuck on an airplane or stuck on the giving or receiving end of an unending chain of Powerpoint presentations.
Sure, the money was good, but the quality of life wasn't and I didn't find meaning in what I was doing. Perhaps some of you can relate.
But here was the thing...I knew that if I didn't pry myself out of that career immediatelythen I'd be stuckfor the rest of my life.
Doing what someone else wanted me to do instead of doing something I love!
That scared the heck out of me!
I abruptly pursued a self-sufficient lifestyle that led me to cheesemaking. Of course I had no idea I'd becomean award-winning artisan cheesemaker. Heck,I hadnever even made cheese at home(so don't worry if you haven't either) and certainly had no connections with anyone who would want to buy my cheeseifI could figure out how to make it.
Of courseI did figure out how to make the cheeses that were right for me. I went from having never made a cheese in 2010 to producing 30,000 pounds of cheese in 2015...a huge amount for somefolks and a tinyamount for others.
But that's the beauty of artisan cheese--you can create a small, profitable lifestyle business or a quite large and very lucrative business.
I've run both afarmsteadcheese business (where I made cheese from the milk of my own animals) and a purelyartisanalcheese business (where I made cheese from milk I purchased from other dairies), so I have a unique perspective into the pros and cons of eachbusiness model.
Naturally I was thrilled when my cheeses won a number of awards from the United States Cheese Championship, Good Food Awards, American Cheese Society and even at overseas competitions in the U.K. and South Africa. Heck, one of my cheeses was named best food produced in the state of Georgia in 2014 and the same cheese was even named Best Food in the South by Garden & Gun Magazine in 2012!
That success was thrilling and selling in person to adoringconsumerswas very fulfilling, but ultimately Itransitionedfrom selling cheese directly to consumers at farmers markets and CSA deliveries to selling exclusively through distributors so that fine cheese shops, Whole Foods, Murray's/Kroger and top-notch restaurants and resorts could get their hands on it.
In retrospect,figuring out how to make cheese wasn'tso difficult and there are lots of resources available for that. Navigating the do's and dont's of starting and running an artisan cheese business and knowing how tomake cheese safely...well,that wasa costly lesson, both in terms of timeAND money.
Still,after a successfulcorporate career running technology, marketing and financial services firms, I can say this with complete honesty:
