Whats the worst buisness or venture you been mixed up in

JOCCO

Well-known Member
No I do not mean farming in general!! I am talking about something like you were the 3rd party contract on say warrantee repair and did not get paid. 2.You were 1/2 owner of a motel or golf course and it consumed all your time and the other 1/2 made all the money. 3. you invested in something that went obsolete or the company went out. 4. Your father took a snowplow contract based on a per storm basis and there was very few storms!! I have been in a few things that was a "glad when it ended" yes third party is not my favorite deal. Yes I have seen many such deals where I was glad to be a spectator not a participant. So lets hear yours
 
jocco- #2.You were 1/2 owner of a motel or golf course and it consumed all your time and the other 1/2 made all the money.

Yup, ex-wife. She is on here 5th husband and has bankrupted every one of them.
 
Buying, renovating and renting houses. Won't go into the gory details or the freakin' axxwholes, but three was the unlucky number. Got out unscathed when the properties (after re-reno's and values went up) were sold. Never again.
 
(quoted from post at 15:09:25 12/02/16) No I do not mean farming in general!! I am talking about something like you were the 3rd party contract on say warrantee repair and did not get paid. 2.You were 1/2 owner of a motel or golf course and it consumed all your time and the other 1/2 made all the money. 3. you invested in something that went obsolete or the company went out. 4. Your father took a snowplow contract based on a per storm basis and there was very few storms!! I have been in a few things that was a "glad when it ended" yes third party is not my favorite deal. Yes I have seen many such deals where I was glad to be a spectator not a participant. So lets hear yours

1) Minority investor in a restaurant.

2) Rental property. Ok until the tenants lost their middle class jobs and had to get Mcjobs. ( IT and teacher ).
 

The worst things I've ever seen is ANYTHING to do with MLM. Amway is a scam. Legal, but a scam. So are all the other MLM scams.
 
We invested in Phoenix Biocomposites over a decade ago.

They folded, and re emerged with us still having a bit of investment in them.

They folded, and were renamed Environ Biocomposites .

They folded twice I think.

Now it is called Agristrand since mid 2012.

They folded, and as far as I can tell, owe a bunch and are in default and are looking, for the past year, for the next investor/buyer of what is there.

It was a pretty neat idea, but never funded or built or marketed right, and never went. The original idea was to take soybeans and new paper and combine them into some neat looking pressed decorative wood panels. They never ever got the process quite right, and they never had their market matched to the size of their manufacturing plant.

So they reached out into many different ideas, from simple particle board made of soybean straw, to plastic panels that were decorative, to many other 'quick ideas' to try to generate some revenue. Too little too late, not enough money to carry through any of the ideas.

In case anyone is interested, I will put up the latest news I can find of them. An offer for anyone to invest in the plant and restart it.

My investment was gone three bankruptcies ago, so it doesn't matter to me if anyone wants to run with it. :)

I still think it was a cool concept, it just never had the right process to move forward. Early on they got involved in several issues, perhaps they weren't savy enough, or were trying to pull a fast one, or were played for fools by a city/county politics, they had a building finalized and a lot invested in that site and the city then pulled the rug out from under them, that was a blow to a new deal that had no ongoing business to generate cash bu had to start over and waste another 18 months getting a plant up. they got caught in the housing deal as well, high projections on what building materials were bringing, and then lumber and fancy panels crashed to all time lows.

Paul
Phoenix Environ Agristrand
 
One of the toughest businesses you can be in is snowmobile/dirt bike/ATV used parts. You have to have a sixth sense about when it is time to quit buying up brands/model years because there are so few left running anymore that the demand for parts starts to dry up. Easy to get your money tied up in inventory that will never sell unless you are REAL careful.
 
my sister opened a tanning/spa salon and my dad cosigned if I get out of this with keeping the farm I will have been blessed by the Lord immensely. Btw, I went to tanning bed school to be able to get parts cheaper and save on the cost of repairs. One of my bigger nightmares.
 
We had two $10,000.00 business loans with a total of four cosigners. After we closed the business we we each took a note to pay off,($10,000.00 per couple). After the notes came due again, the bank took our names off the second loan, but renewed ours. About three months after they split the notes the bank wanted me to cosign the other couples note,they are still waiting.
 
Small potatoes by comparison to these other stories, but I was trustee in a small country church pastored by a preacher with a cult mentality. It was turning into a seven day a week job when I bailed. Much of the work/materials financed by me, but again, small potatoes, by comparison. The mind games were severe. Beware of developing a cult mentality - it sneaks up on you. This is the very worst venture that I've ever been involved in. Scheming, conniving, manipulating, shystering, secrecy, politics, anger, threats, intimidation, and retaliation were the central part of his ministry. And then on top of all that, he had a goat game where he'd swell up and stick his nose in the air and treat you like a goat if you failed to succumb to his manipulation in a manner that he deemed appropriate. I'll never get involved in another fiasco like that again. Bitter? Yes I am!
 
Probably 10 years ago, a company was looking for farmers to buy in to a not yet built ethanol plant near me. Dad said he thought that would be neat. He thought he'd invest like 20,000 in it, but they told him there was a minimum, and if I recall it was 50 or 60,000 dollars. That kinda scared him off, he wasn't willing to gamble that kind of money. But it was going to be the biggest/best ethanol plant in the midwest!! Yeah right, they went bankrupt after building a few storage bins and a couple small buildings, maybe 10% of the structures they had planned on building. Some people actually did invest though. I would hate to be them. The company who took over their assets just sold the 480 acres and few structures to a large feed/ag supplement company who is currently building what is supposed to be the largest soybean processing plant in the midwest. On their own dime too! Dad said he's sire glad he didn't get mixed up in that one

Ross
 
servgeral ,,. before I got a drivers license I workred for a guy that always banked my hours ,.. and paid whenervr I needed money ,.it was nt bad work , his wife fed usreal good ,I learned how to raise pigs and feed hogs ,, got to drive tractors, trucks combines and skidsteers,he had the very 1st electric log splitter I ever seen in the county . 4 of us school pals would split a dumptruck load of wood every nite . and he would deliver it the next day after his bus route . about 3 or 4yrs went by and that same farmer talkt my brother and I into borrowing 10 grand to buy 275 head of his feeder pigs and keep them in his facility ,.. we did not know that he was also borrowing against those same animals , to get a crop production loan that spring ,I would feed 2 times per day . one day the farmer come to us with a scheme to sort out quality breeding stok fromgthe pens with the promise of making 100 bux more for each animal , above market price ,. we sorted out 20 and he took themto the dirt lot to the boar and advertied them as bred gilts for sale ,. before we could sell the 1st bred gilt ,.. rhinitis hit his sows and then the gilts got it ,.. then the building where we had hogs came down with it ,,. all in a matter of a weeks time ,. then the bottom fell out of breeding stock ,. our bred gilts scheme with rhinitis were not fit for anything but market ,.. then the farmers bank forced a note he had to pay,,.one day as I was taking a load of hogs to market and I did not see the gilts in the dirt pen ,, I stoped and told my brother and he said not gto worry ,, they are probably moved around back so we can load them better in a few days ,.. when I got to armours ,. a fellow neighbor farmer was there ,. and he commentd," I thought harlan swas done raising fat hogs ", I replied" that's rite he has not sold any in at least 4 monthes ,. we took over the fattening floor".. he then said " you better talk to dik in the scale house " ,. which I did ,.. dick told me Harlan brought in 20 head that morning and nervousely waited around for the chek to come back because he needed the money today,. I asked if "were they were all gilts" ,,and shorty piped up and said" they sure as hale was",. that evening my brother and I paid the farmr a visit ,.. he said the money for those gilts was needed to keep him from going broke ,.which he did over the next 2 yrs,. we got barely 10 cents on a dollar .. we were able to pay off the bank ,. but reduced market prices made very little extra mony for us..
 
When oil got to $50 I invested in energy stock. Hasn't made me a dime, instead I've lost about $2K.

Each year broker says oil has to come back to it's previous high.

I'm leaning towards selling it at a loss and using loss to off lower income tax. I took a paper loss in 2008 and have been able to deduct $3k income for tax purposes for 15 years.

Taking a $3k loss each year means I can take 25% off Fed, 3,4% state and 1% local. That translates to slightly less than a Grand off total taxes.
 
in the early 90s my dad and a family friend went into a partnership on a third party dairy. dad already had 50 cows and the partner had 20 so they bought 30 together to fill the rented barn. i was the crop and fix it guy and i never cared for the dairy deal but i would milk if some one got sick or hurt. anyway the feeding and manure handling equipment on dads farm was getting in bad shape. the previous winter the high moisture corn silo was giving us trouble and i froze both legs so bad they were numb when i got done . then the next fall they were going to put 50 more cows on each place and the barn where i kept my sheep was going to be converted to free stalls so i was to sell the flock my mom started in the 50s so i wanted to get about a dozen beef cows but they wanted me to invest in the dairy. so i thought it over and a couple days later after going up the 80 foot corn silage silo twice to make repairs before 7.30 in the morning i decided to leave . both dairys folded in a year. i was glad i didnt invest in that.
 
Google Pigeon King.....a guy set up a scheme selling / buying pigeons here in Ontario .... Lots of people lots thousands of dollars....guest at the crowbar hotel now. Ben
 
RBoots: Just north of me here they started an ethanol plant coop deal. Many fellows signed up and invested money. Not a single thing ever happened other than their money disappeared.

I told any of them that would listen to me that if ethanol was so profitable there would already be investors from other walks of life begging to invest their money. Farmers too many times "invest" with their emotions. These include an emotional attachment to crops/livestock/land. Once this happens the real value of things becomes a moot point.
 
Yep, I think you're right JD. There is at least one that I know of probably around 50 miles from me. It seems to be "successful", so I thinkicked people were hoping that's what the one near me was going to be. But, like in your case, the only thing anybody got out of it was smaller bank accounts.
 
There was one around here about 10 years ago that went belly up. It was a mismanaged coop deal and a bunch of farmers around here got screwed on. They managed to build the plant but it was not right so it never made any ethanol. I believe they still handle grain on that side of the plant.
 
Pumpkins with my brother. I'd spend just as much as him on supplies, then when it came time to split profits, he paid me a few hundred and he kept the other $10,000, for himself.

I had enough after 2 or 3 years and walked away because it wasn't worth my time. he's also the reason for the farm auction and dad hanging it up, but that's a whole other story.

Donovan from Wisconsin
 
Television evangelists who say that if you send them just $1,000 "seed money" that miracles will happen in your life.
 
Went into partnership with a guy as Truck and Tractor repair{me-trucks} Worked several weeks no pay,his wife did the book work. Finally got SBA loan from the local bank in partnership name. Finally got wages but partner took out money to pay for back loans on farming operation that he lost money on. The loan was a 3 yr deal and I decided to get out after the three yrs. Partnerships are not a good thing in my book.
 
A friend and I bought a foreclosure house to rehab and sell. Problem was that his wife was too involved in it- she's a classy lady, and everything had to be first class. That's NOT the was to make money on a flip. To preserve the friendship, my friend volunteered to take on the cost of some of the unnecessary improvements on his side of the ledger. I ended up about breaking even, he lost a few grand. And we're still friends. And we got out of the flipping business.
 
McCulloch chain saw dealer back in the 1970's when McCulloch was at it's peak.

It looked like a great deal, but all that counted to McCulloch was how many new saws you sold. They cared nothing about your profit margin, and they were always getting into price wars with Homelite. You'd buy a half dozen of a popular model of saw, with a profit margin of maybe $30 per saw, to build up your inventory when McCulloch would get into a price war and notify you to cut the retail price of that saw by $20 or so. So-by the time you paid interest on your inventory, threw in a jug of oil or something to close a sale, you were lucky to break even on those saws.

McCulloch wasn't impress by the fact that I could tune up somebody's saw, sharpen a couple of chains, sell him some supplies, and make 'way more money than if I'd sold him a new saw. After a couple or years, McCulloch was as disillusioned with me as I was with them. I will say when I called it quits they did buy all of my inventory, parts and saws both, back at my cost.
 
Goose: That and many other dealerships has not changed much since then. Another example is they will quit building a popular model and build one no body wants.
 
(quoted from post at 08:13:55 12/03/16) Goose: That and many other dealerships has not changed much since then. Another example is they will quit building a popular model and build one no body wants.


Lot of the time a company gets forced into that. A competitor will run ads hinting that the other companies "whatever" is outdated so sales drop off, not only for that model but the entire line. Heck it's more profitable to stay with a good working design than to pay to research and develop something new. So company A is good with staying with that design. Company B intro's an new item hinting that the design is more modern and therefore better. Sometimes that's all it takes. Company A is now back at the drawing board!

Rick
 

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