Pivoting During Uncertainty: Career Shifts and Cottage Food Law Ventures

After a brief hiatus due to illness, I return to discuss my career pivot and new entrepreneurial plans. I'm scaling back my work at Metro Trading Association to pursue substitute teaching and explore starting a cottage food business.

• Transitioning to part-time work at MTA due to changing economic landscape
• Starting substitute teaching as a stable career option amidst AI advancements
• Planning to launch a cottage food business under Michigan's $25,000 sales cap
• Exploring food business ideas with low overhead and high profit margins
• Considering the example of a successful but mediocre BBQ vendor at a campground
• Evaluating multiple income streams for better work-life balance

Visit the Renaissance Festival for their final weekend! Metro Trading Association members can get tickets on trade.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and health update
• 2:45 Career shift to substitute teaching
• 5:48 Michigan cottage food business plans
• 8:41 Food truck inspiration and business model
• 12:00 Closing thoughts and next steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Trading Post Podcast, where we unlock the secrets of business-to-business trade, dive into powerful networking strategies, and share my exciting journey of using a podcast to market my business instead of relying on SEO. I'm your host, Trader Stew. Okay, Ever the I'm always a pessimist, but I guess let's be optimistic here. Had to take the last week and a half off because had this stupid cough. I kidnapped rid of my whole family's sick with something. I don't know if it's like a COVID virus, a cold, a head cold, a upper respiratory infection, according to AI. This is going around the Metro Detroit area as an upper respiratory. Before that, my kids had hand, foot, and mouth and dodged that bullet. It's been it's been a rough month, so I'm gonna see what we can do here. I have an issue with trying to talk and not coughing, so please uh I got a cough mall, a cough drop in my mouth right now so I can actually talk without hacking into the mic. And as you know, I try and not edit these videos these these podcasts at all or minimally, or you know, maybe in the beginning and end, but that's about it. I don't I don't overtly edit. I try and keep it real with y'all, especially in the avent in the age of AI. I'd like to keep it legit. So, yeah, if I cough in the mic like that, sorry about that. Uh, we'll see what we can do. So, welcome back to the Trading Post Podcast. I'm your host, Trader Stu, and I am thrilled to have back this short pause last week. Oh man, I can't I don't know. All right, so let's just do this. This is gonna be a quick one. So I want to thank my sponsors real quick. And the reason why I wanted to get a podcast out is this is the last week in the Renaissance Festival here in Michigan. And if you haven't checked it out yet, check it out because it is fun and they have the last hoorah, as they call it, at the Michigan Renaissance Renaissance Festival. If you're a Metro Trading Association uh member, of course, you can get your tickets on trade and enjoy the day. And then also, of course, Metro Trading Association. I appreciate them. And then Quantum Indoor Media and bringing hyperlocal advertising via indoor digital billboards, and of course, press X to play, creators of the immersive video game experience, which I will be in. I guess my voice is recorded in the video game, which is getting launched here, and I think they said they got a new demo, a demo coming out. I think I'm in the demo. I can't wait to see it. Anyway, and you haven't checked out my great partners yet? Take a moment and see what they offer. They're uh key players in my uh in my situation here. So let's get to the show. All right, I wanted to talk about a couple of things that's been in my head, and I I actually talked to the dealer day before yesterday at Metro Trading Association, and I am gonna take a step down and go halftime or part-time or something. With the advent of the AI revolution, I believe there are gonna be five jobs that are left. And I'm not gonna join the medical crew, and even nurses are getting replaced by the robots, but I digress about that. We have a long way before surgeries and things like that are gonna be replaced by robots. But one of them that I can do right now, as a matter of fact, is the education system. And I never thought I would be a teacher. Not that I'm gonna be a teacher, I'm gonna be a substitute teacher. But when I got out of the Air Force, they were doing a troops to teachers program, and that has been defunded. But the problem with that system, that that that program was they're putting troops in the inner city schools, and where I live, it it would be Metro Detroit, or no, downtown Detroit, or in Detroit. And I'm not I'm not dealing with that. So I didn't do the uh troops of teachers program. So instead, I'm gonna substitute, take a half a pay cut because they don't pay much of anything, and but I can work when I want, how I want, get all the weekends off. You cover you get summers off, of course, all your little holidays you forget about, you know, that kids get off that are inconvenient for parents. I get those off now too. And yeah, so I'm gonna try it on my I got training next week, next month, and and uh we're gonna try that. I don't know how well it'll do because I don't know if I like other kids besides mine, but I think I'll be a fun sub. I think I'll be a fun sub. And we'll go from there, but yeah, I don't know. And if that doesn't work out, there's other things to do. But holy crap, there is a helicopter, dude, like below roof line of this two-story building. I'm sorry, I got I wow, he's right at the power lines, dude. Any rate, that was cool. I think it came off from the hello hospital next door. So that's what I'm gonna do. Why is because I just just you know, for COIA for my family. I want to get into the system now while they're still open. And by the way, there's a ton of opening. If you want to be a substitute teacher, if you can fog a mirror, I think basically. And in Michigan, I think you have to have a two-year degree at minimum, uh, and then you can get in. But so I have an associate's degree in aviation operations from the Air University, which is the CCAF, Community College of the Air Force, which I just happened to get because I had enough credits uh from flying in all my schools. I did, and I did a couple of classes at Bigger College anyway. So yeah, I got that, I got lucky there. And we'll yeah, we'll go from there. And so what I'm gonna do after that is this podcast. I'm gonna do a section about I want to do a Michigan cottage food law job, or not job, but open up a business. And I want to see and compete with myself is see if I can actually make the$25,000 annual sales cap, which I don't know if I disclosed this before or not, but my wife and I were doing homegrown like microgreens, and there was a different law. There's a different law for farmers as there are for like the cottage food law. So with that, we just had to keep everything cut as naturally as possible and couldn't grind nothing up, and that was part of the law of you know growing produce. So, but this one I'm gonna find something that's uh low overhead, high profit, and see how fast or if I can even get to the$25,000 sales cap. And I guess there was talks of Michigan trying to make it to$50,000 or$100,000. At one time I think it was$100,000 back when we were doing this a few years ago, and then that didn't go through. Then I think they lowered it to$50 or$40,000 now. That didn't go through because really it's$25,000 gross, which is not a lot of money, even for like maybe I don't know, if you're a stay-at-home mom or whatever like that, you're making an extra$25 grand. But the problem is it's gross, so not net. So if you're following the program or the math, and you usually triple if you have a high quality product, maybe quadruple your overhead. So let's just say you know, you're at six times three, seven times see, seven times four is twenty-eight, six times three is eighteen thousand. So set, yeah. So let's just say you're at seven. So you have seven thousand dollars, because uh that's twenty-eight thousand. Yeah, let's just let's just go with that, or even six times four. If you do a quarter of if you four multiply your your four times, you're at six thousand dollars in overhead to make twenty-five grand. This is what that's the math I'm trying to do. So six times four is twenty-four. Seven, if you do three, then you got seven, roughly seven times three is you know, you're gonna be three thousand over. So, but all I'm saying is is that three to four times is what you're gonna charge. So you are not making that much money by the time it's all done and said, not really, you know, and that's the whole point. I that's not meant to make a living off of. I think the whole program is designed to see if you have actually in a market to where you can actually sell your product and then upgrade from there, form a I think you still have to have an LLC with the college food law, and then either way, then scale up your business from there before you buy oh, maybe like a brick and mortar mortar store or hire employees or buy bigger equipment, commercial kitchen, all that stuff. I think it's just a beta test to see if you can do it, you know. So, anyway, that's what I plan on doing. I'd love to open a little barbecue stand or something like that, and a trailer, and that way I can still work when I want. There's a guy who does his barbecue and a food truck at a campground that we go to and it's just there permanently at the campground. He only works I think it's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And then he shuts down for the whole winter, of course. The fall, they close down, and then he goes to Florida and just chills and comes back and make, you know. And I hate to say it because barbecue is not even that good, like it's not really good. He's got, I think he said a hickory smoker, that's what it's called. Not good, it doesn't taste smoky. You know, everything's just kind of smothered in barbecue sauce. The brisket's okay, but it's good. I mean, it's good enough, right? Because he's the only one in town, literally, that's doing a food other than what you're making at your own camp, or the campground has burgers, dogs, and pizza. So if you want something a bit better than that, you know, he's got elephant ears and funnel cakes, whatever like that, too. You know what I mean? So he and he's got lemonade. Uh, you know, he it's it's a good stand. I'm not I'm not I'm not docking him. All I'm saying is that it's not awesome. It's not great, it's mediocre barbecue at best. But he's killing it, dude. He's killing it. So that's yeah, that's kind of what I'm looking at, maybe doing and going from there because I would love to get some more cash flow. One thing I missed about being a bartender was that I always had cash on me. And with the economy, the way it's going, and the way they're see, the other thing is too, we're getting away from a cashless society or getting, we're going we're going towards a cashless society, which I don't know, get it while you can, maybe, any rate. Um, that's kind of what I'm looking at doing. And uh going down, maybe working four days a week. Maybe I work like Mondays and Wednesdays here at MTA, and then I substitute teach like Tuesdays, Thursdays, and then I get Friday, Saturday, Sunday off. When I say off, I mean by working my own business, you know, because if I'm doing like tortillas or whatever like that, you know, you gotta do something like a bread. I'm not doing bread, everyone does bread, but tortillas or cornbread or something like that, and just like sell it. There's a lady that used to do it next to us, and she made these short bread cookies, sold out, dude. Sold out every weekend within hours, and like they weren't cheap. I think it was eight dollars for like a like six or eight pack or something like that of these tiny little cookies and killed it, dude. Made so much money. They she always had a line, and yeah, anyway. I don't know if she ever scaled up or not, but you know, the they they were good. So I'm gonna do something like that. What else? Let me talk about I made some notes here. It's been so long, god, a week and a half is a long time not to do something, and then you forget what the heck, you know. And I had a whole script written out here, and I hate reading from the script, but I was just like, well, I don't know how much I got left in me to like actually think. So now I'm just I hate the script, so now I'm just kind of reading as I'm talking here and seeing if I want to hit else anything else up. But I think I hit everything. That's it. I don't want to keep talking as a talk. Check out the uh Renaissance Festival, and yeah, we hit it. We're all done. See you next week. I got more to talk about and be good or be good at it.