How I Got Started, and What the Work Taught Me

Before this became my life, I was working for a microphone company. This was around 2010 to 2011. It was a stable job, a good job, not the kind of situation that suggests leaving everything behind and starting over.

And yet, somewhere in that season, I found myself doing something I never would have expected. I started writing a business plan. Putting pencil to paper. Trying to make sense of an idea that would not quite leave me alone.

At some point, I said to my girlfriend, “If I ever want this to become real, I’m going to have to take the plunge and leave my job.” That was the first real step. Not meat. Not a shop. Not equipment. Just the decision to walk away from stability without any guarantee on the other side.

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Why This Idea Wouldn’t Leave Me Alone

If I am being honest, the motivation was selfish.

I wanted what I did not have.

In the years leading up to this, I had learned a lot about diet, nutrition, and fitness. As a result, finding good meat suddenly mattered to me in a way it had not before. And it was not easy. You could buy a quarter or a half beef from a local rancher, and it was good beef, but it was not very convenient for everyday life.

I kept having this internal dialogue.

“I wish we had a good butcher shop in this town.”

That turned into, “Someone should build that.”

Then, “What if I did that?”

And finally, “OK, I think I’m going to try.”

Michael Gerber calls this the entrepreneurial fire. I did not have language for it at the time, I just felt the pressure. The sense that this idea was not going away until I either acted on it or deliberately ignored it.

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The Resistance I Didn’t Expect

Once I started moving forward, I was surprised by how much resistance showed up, not necessarily from people, but from the system itself.

I remember telling someone, “It feels like they don’t want me to do this.” The unspoken message felt like, go get back in line with everyone else.

But that just is not me.

You are talking to the same guy who dropped out of college to move to Los Angeles and try to be a rock star. I have never been especially good at “get back in line.” So while the regulatory hurdles and pushback might have dissuaded someone else, they actually motivated me.

Not because I wanted a fight, but because resistance has always felt like confirmation that something real is at stake.

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When the Bill Came Due

The first thing that truly humbled me was not stress or doubt. It was an invoice.

I remember exactly where I was, at my girlfriend’s parents’ house, the weekend after Thanksgiving. We had opened for business one week before Thanksgiving, on November 17th, 2011.

Here is the part that still feels a little crazy. I was taking turkey orders from customers even though I was not one hundred percent sure we would be open in time to fill them. We were waiting on contractors, inspectors, and all the usual moving pieces. It could have blown up immediately.

But we opened. And we filled those turkey orders.

And then the invoice came due.

Seven day terms. Black and white. No ambiguity. Every turkey we sold had to be paid for by me. Not by some company I worked for. Not by an accounting department. Me.

That was the moment I truly learned about supply chains, cash flow, and responsibility. Not conceptually, but personally. Selling something is one thing. Paying for it changes how you think forever.

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What Ownership Changes

Before this, I had done a lot of things. Warehouse management. Sales. Repairs. Customer service. Invoicing. I felt like I had a well rounded background to run a business.

And in a sense, that was true.

But what time proved me wrong about was not my competence, it was the dynamic itself. Running a business changes everything.

I can build a spreadsheet, sure. But I no longer have a boss to come check my work. If I do not fix something, it does not get fixed. If I let something slide, it stays slid.

Ownership removes the safety net. Systems do not enforce themselves. Standards do not hold automatically. You either steward them, or they decay.

That took time to learn, and I am still learning it.

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What I Watch for Now

Early on, I thought the answers lived in the numbers. Somewhere there had to be a magic metric, a margin percentage, a profit per pound figure, and if I could just find it, everything would be fine.

Full disclosure, I still look for that number.

But what I pay the closest attention to now is not a spreadsheet. It is people.

I want to know how everyone is doing, employees and customers alike. If someone here is bothered, I am bothered. Not because I am sentimental, but because I have learned that people signal problems long before numbers do.

I would be nothing without the people who work here and the people who shop here. Nothing. And no metric compensates for a burned out team, a discouraged culture, or customers who feel unseen.

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Why I’m Sharing This

Any technician wants to be appreciated. And sure, the more you understand what we do, the more you will probably appreciate it.

But this goes deeper than that.

I do not want this to be a place where you just glance through the window and watch us work. I do not just want people to shop here. I want them to participate here.

I have said for years that I am not the one who decides what goes in our display cases. I am not even the one who decides when we open or close. The market, people, tell us that. We adjust, we hedge where we need to, but people are driving the bus.

My role is just to keep it running.

The Framework exists so that if you want to understand the work, the tradeoffs, the constraints, and the reasons behind what we do, you can. Not so you buy more, but so you are part of it.

Because this place has never really been about selling meat.

It is about building something together that actually works.