Starting a passion business

One theme of mine is that if we buy less stuff we can work less. But what to do with all the extra free hours?

Some people choose to start a business, or more specifically, a social enterprise. These are businesses that have a social outcome as their main goal. If they make some money along the way, that's good - but it's not the main purpose.

I recently attended a webinar of social start-ups pitching their enterprise. One of these is Fruit Butcher.

The Fruit Butcher?

Elliot Carter calls himself a Fruit Butcher. After an animal safari in Africa, he and his wife decided to go vegetarian for a month but found the options limited.

A fruit wholesaler by trade, Elliot realised he could use his fruit knowledge to provide tasty vegetarian options for people who want a great meat alternative.

Here's his pitch video:

Jackfruit's back, alright

While Elliot's got plans for a range of plant-based alternatives the first is a pork-like product that's made from jackfruit.

At the moment he's selling jackfruit burgers at markets in my city (my wife and I enjoyed a couple). He's also selling pre-prepared jackfruit take-home packs to use in home cooking.

In short

Starting a business may not be for you, but it shows what someone can do with a bunch of free time. Changing the world for the better, having the opportunity to follow an interest or passion and potentially making some money while doing it. Sounds good to me.

More examples?

In coming weeks I intend to feature a couple more great initiatives from the event. It's another great reason to subscribe to my monthly updates.

Comments

What to do with 128 pens?

I never need buy a pen again. Ever. The pen round-up. I searched the house for pens and gathered them up. We had 128. Woah - that's more than I expected. Then it was test-time. (You can get a lot done watching summer sport ;). Good ones went on the table. Broken ones in the box. Pen operations I saved a few 'broken' pens, by taking working insides and matching them with functional outsides. Particularly much-loved pens, for sentimental reasons, were given a life-extending 'ink transplant'. Final Tally We ended up with 67 broken pens and 61 good ones. And about 10 pencils. What to do with 67 broken pens? In my city Biome recycles pens . It's as easy as taking them into the store and dropping them into the giant collection box. Decluttering and recycling together - I love it. A lifetime of pens An average pen writes 45,000 words. So that dedicated shopping list pen on the fridge could write a 20-word shopping list for 43 years. Our 61 pens repre...

How to waste a year's wages

A friend recently asked me why it is that so many people (on good incomes) are struggling to save. Often the big three money areas are housing, transport and food. In one sense these are necessary items. But what we spend on them is often way more than necessary. I crunched some numbers on how much extra my wife and I could spend on these things - if for some reason we wanted to burn our money. 1. Housing Our apartment is fairly nice, but also cost-effective. I've mentioned how choosing it saves us $1,800 per year , compared to a similar one we saw. The high end of 2-bedroom apartments in our suburb is $305 per week more than our apartment. Not $305 per week. $305 per week more than ours is. I cannot get over that. Sure it's new and modern-looking, but that's a lot of money. It's an extra $15,860 per year above what we pay. 2. Transport The Australian Automobile Association lists the costs of owning and running a car. It includes many often-overlooked c...

Why millionaires don't "feel" rich

We're wealthier than ever - so why don't we feel like it? Australia has gone almost three decades without recession. The stock market recently hit a record high. Our wages are record highs. Home loan rates are at record lows. We live in one of the richest countries in the world at the richest point in history. So what's wrong? Comparison Wealth is relative. So what do we compare to? Where we expect to be? "When your wages growth is only 2 or 3 per cent, you don't feel as well-off as when it's going up 10 per cent. That's that nominal distortion that people often suffer from" , says economist Shane Oliver, and that "expectations have grown a lot faster than reality." We're earning more than last year, but we want even more. So compared to our imaginary situation, we see ourselves as worse off. What we see around us? Shane Oliver again. "If you think about it - Australians today are a lot wealthier. They're living far ric...

But wait... there's less!

Search This Blog