Thanks for the great write up Nick, you make a good point about people fearing the unknown. But in sharing your initial uncertainties, many people may be able to begin to understand that most of us in the industry today had our doubts when we started. I first thought Bitcoin was a ponzi scheme until I actually took the time to learn about it.
When Joe first suggested that I take a closer look at Bitcoin, my initial reaction was that I had heard about it, and that based on what I knew, I won't touch it with a ten foot pole.
We often react based on preconceived opinion, which often is based on what we knew at the time. By nature, most of us take things at face value, and do not question it, especially when we don't totally understanding the subject. Until we have acquired sufficient knowledge to be comfortable, there is always the fear of the unknown, especially if we started with a negative impression, so prevalent in our industry.
Bitcoin and digital currency is a very simple concept. It is money that can be used to purchase or exchange for something that we want. Our industry has created a great deal of confusion making early mass adaption highly unlikely. DNotesEDU is making a signification contribution in educating the masses.
Great job, Brandon. We truly appreciate your great efforts.
I had the same reservations about Bitcoin also. In fact, if I remember correctly, you and Joe worked on this for a while without my knowledge! From all the negative press at the time, I thought Bitcoin was for drug dealers and criminals. I know Joe spent some time "educating" you on Bitcoin, and it took a little time for me to really be on board also. In fact, the only reason I went along with it at first was because I respected you and Joe's opinion so much.
It kinda reminded me of how you convinced me to get into the daylily biz. Here we were, owning a fireplace shop for over 25 years, had 15 or 20 employees, and you WANTED TO SELL FLOWERS? I though you were nuts! We had no equipment, no knowledge of the biz, AND no daylilies! I still remember the day I "got it". You took me out to the warehouse, and pointed to a woodstove setting on a rack. You said, what if you bought that stove, and had a choice.....you could sell it now, and have no more stoves on the rack. OR....you could leave it set on the shelf, and in one year, there would be 2 to 5 stoves setting on the shelf!! Then, I could sell 2 or 3 of them, and have 5 or 10 stoves setting there the next year. The light bulb went off. If I paid 1000 dollars for a stove, I usually sold it for about 1400 dollars. If I bought 1000 dollars worth of daylilies, I could sell that daylily FOREVER, and never buy that particular cultivar again! I got it right away.......40% gross profit VS 99% gross profit. (that is what really sold me on it).
We sold our first daylily within 6 months of that day......the rest of the story is history! That was less than 10 years ago, and now we are one of the largest daylily suppliers in the world, having over 2000 cultivars, millions of plants in stock, on 40 acres of prime farmland. We have developed customized equipment to automate most processes, and we have probably the lowest "out the door" cost for dayliles. We took a strawberry planter made in 1950, took it back to the factory it was made at, and had it "customized" for planting daylilies. We can plant 2000 to 3000 plants per hour with a 3 man crew, instead of hand planting. We altered a potato digger to harvest plants, instead of hand digging. We can now harvest 1000 flowers in about 15 minutes, it would take a couple of guys half a day or more to hand dig that many. We customized a vegtable washer to wash outgoing plants that were sold (they cannot have ANY dirt on them to cross state lines). We started out having 6 "wash stations" to hand wash the flowers, employing 6 people to wash the flowers before shipping. The customized vegetable washer now requires one person 4 hours a day to keep up with the shipping and packaging, instead of 6 guys working 8 hours a day. We can ship over 5000 plants per day, individually packaged and clearly marked, with about 8 or ten workers. That includes digging, washing, trimming, labeling and packaging 5000 plants, usually to over 100 different addresses. 5000 in one day!
We are building DNotes the same way. Exciting stuff!!
Smokey
