The birth of a company

I started working on Wisconsin Specialty Protein in 2006.  Here we are in 2009 and I've raised $14 M and built the country's first LEED certified dairy manufacturing facility.  We will be starting up the plant three weeks from now and will be the only plant in the world that makes nutritional supplement grade organic cow, goat, and sheep whey proteins.  

Many, many people have asked me how I managed to start this company.  So many people that I've decided to start telling my story.  I am inspired to share this because I want everyone to know that they can create exactly what they intend to create in life, with enough persistence, good will, integrity, and commitment to constantly searching for solutions to problems where both sides win.  It's companies like mine that are going to create the good jobs of the future.  It would be my greatest reward if my story inspires many of you to go out and create the companies of your dreams.

New uses for the nest

My older friends always told me that I would get used to having an empty house once all of my kids were off to College.  At first I thought they were totally nuts.  I have a house full of memories that used to be full of the cacaphony of three kids, a cat, a dog, all of their friends.  Now the kids are off to College, the pets are off to a netherworld, and instead I'm running my whey company and my daughter's non profit organization out of my house.  I didn't realize how lucky I was to have this empty house to use this way until my daughter returned from her latest trip to the Amazon and lived here for a few days.  Suddenly I had kid stuff, her non profit stuff, and whey business stuff all intermingled. Turns out I never could have incubated my whey business had my kids still been living here.  Amazing how the universe seems to give us exactly what we need when we need it, even though it's not always obvious when it happens.