Hi E-junkies! I am Chris 'Fantastic' Powell, author of "Going One-On-One with Life". I grew up with the passion of growing into a successful business man. Here, I would like to share with you guys my bumpy business journey. I'm not sure how, I have many stories like the one you will read, and this is not all of it, of the different businesses I have started from the ground up from just making a few hundred to a couple of thousand to hundreds of thousands to a few million and of course losing it all and starting over a few times.

I am very passionate about the great opportunity in starting a business and the opportunity it creates. I think it takes guts, craziness, and drive to think the idea you have in your head will actually work. But most of all you got to really want it. Success and failure both sit on the same coin; they are just opposite of each other and how you flip it over to your favor is what we all ask.

A person can win against all odds.



Most of the businesses I started were on a shoe string or no budget at all and I lost all the money from the previous business.

I was 10 years old when I saw my first exotic sports car. It was the summer time and I was with my father. I asked him what kind of car was it and he said it's a Dino Farrier; it's for the rich guys. At that moment I knew I wanted to be rich so that I could also drive a beautiful red sports car.

I started my first business at 12 years old and made some pocket money. But that also drove the passion deep within me. I knew I wanted to start my own businesses and I did.

I started a wholesale company to sell lovechild emergency signs back in the 80's. Then a publishing company to sell job publications to agencies to help others find work. This grew well also but as the economy got better less people needed the publication, but my first big business was in snack foods.

One day I was getting a snack out of a vending machine and I noticed there was only cookies and candy but no dried snack food products.

So I went home and over the next few months, I created a mix of fruits and nuts that people would like. I also didn't know anything about vending machines or bag sizes or materials. But I decided to get into the business and the learning would happen, and it did; with no money or even knowing how to start a
snack food company.

I started by purchasing dried fruits from the store and asking everyone where and how do you get better pricing. I bought bags from a local bag plastic company where I learned about plastics and cello bags and a lot more. I was packing them by hand and placing labels on each bag. We were in business slowly. We began to sell to a small vending distributor. That distributor referred me to a larger distributor because our mixes were selling quickly. After our first meeting with the distributor, he wanted a pallet size of our snack products. I didn't know what a pallet was and its cost. We were just selling in small quantiles which we hand packed. Now I was facing a problem - where do you get snack packing machine to keep up with the orders we were going to get.

Over the next few months, the business grew, I even recruited a great team and tried to purchase larger companies than what we were. We were all still under 22 years old.

Our orders were coming in and still we did not have a packaging machine. So my father had a friend who might want to invest in our small company. So I was asked to come to Los Angles, CA.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but to get the business going I had to purchase a machine and that too be without any delay. So my partner and I drove down to this professional office tower. We entered the lobby and up the elevator we went. We reached the floor we were supposed to reach and entered the office. There we all three attorneys met.

I was 22 at that time. We went into the massive conference room and all sat. I didn't know what to think. But I felt these professionals were probably surprised to see still dangling looking kids, in our suites. So at the table we sat and the questions began to come at me like arrows. I made up my mind the worse that could happen was we wasted the gas to come to see them. So I passed out my information pack to each one of them and started talking about how our snacks were selling and showed them the letters we get from some of our customers and I also brought some for them to eat.

It took about an hour but we walked out of the meeting with an 'okay' from all the three attorneys. :) Oh boy! First financial investment into our business. Finally we were on our way to success or at least I thought.

The secret to growing a business is to grow it slowly and under control. Everyone wants to grow their businesses as big as they can and quickly. But with growth comes expenses, more paper, computers, taxes, more inventory, just more of everything, but it doesn't mean you're growing your bottom line any quicker.

We were growing under control but a new company was going to be our new client 'Price Club'. At last, we were finally going to make it to the big times.

We were already selling to schools and hospitals all over the country. But Price Club would be the road to success. We used to receive payment by everyone in 15 to 30 days so this kept our cash flow tight but still we could survive. But Price Club - they pay in 120 days and for a small company this was tough. We tried to obtain funding but our profits were too low.

So after just one order to Price Club which was the same as selling 5 months of our snack foods as we had been doing, we finally went out of business. It was devastating and we grew from 1 to 30 people, a small company but we were growing. Lesson - there is no rush to grow big.

I couldn't believe it but I knew I had to not let this get me down and had to start again, and so I did. I started an employment company,  I begin again.

To be continued...