In the early seventies, I came off the road as a musician, and with a partner opened a retail repair shop in San Francisco called Stars Guitars. We began to manufacture the replacement parts we used, and in a couple of years became the largest manufacturer of custom guitar parts in the country.
This experience taught me much about marketing, and more importantly about the various sales and distribution channels. While guitar parts is a pretty limited vertical market, the principles learned here have held me in good stead over the years. Perhaps most importantly, we bought one of the very first Apple II computers to help manage our business.
Since the mid 70's, the power of online community has been a clear and present part of my life. Once the concept became clear to me, the applications of this concept seemed limitless. although the technology was laughably primitive, the concept was sound.
Better to be lucky than smart
I had been a musician most of my adult life, and found myself living in the small coastal town of Half Moon Bay just south of San Francisco. Serendipity put me in touch with Neil Young who was had a specific problem that I thought I could help to fix. This little bit of serendipity sent me on a journey that resulted in helping to produce the first three years of FarmAid.