[–]username_unavailable 576 points 9 hours ago*22

You could fall into the "your peach vinaigrette dressing is so good you should bottle and sell it" trap where you give up a promising but boring career trajectory in favor of "taking a risk" and trying to become the dressing king of the tri-state area. You start by mixing larger batches in your kitchen and desperately hawking them by the case to boutique food stores within a 50 mile radius of you, turning your once solid hybrid Camry into a high-milage nightmare that constantly reeks of peaches and vinegar. Your wife is understanding even though you hardly see the kids any more because you are constantly out on sales calls or delivery runs desperately trying to generate cash flow to cover your increasing credit card debt. Then one day it happens... you get the call to the big leagues... the manager of a reasonably priced grocery store two towns over wants to carry your dressing. This is your shot! In order to guarantee your best chance at success you agree to a grueling in-store promo schedule, hand-build an elaborate peach tree display and sample stand for your dressing, and start mixing dressing batches at night so you'll have enough supply. The big day has arrived and you're standing in front of a homemade display presenting your work and are having flashbacks to your high-school science fair. You spend the next 5 days on your feet for 11 straight hours trying to convince disinterested strangers to part with $5 for a bottle of your peach vinaigrette dressing (which, to be honest, you're starting to lose the taste for) until it's time to pack up your display and head home. Your house is dark when you get home. It's still dark when you leave again the next morning. You suspect you've forgotten what your kids look like. Two weeks of solid effort later and you've convinced the store manager that your product will sell. His 6 case order is the biggest you've ever had and the adrenaline rush from that moment is the most intense thing you've experienced in ten years. You rush home and take the family to Dave and Buster's to celebrate. You can't lose focus for long, though, because you have 6 cases of dressing to make tonight. The next week, buoyed by this incredible success and motivated by your long-suffering wife's pleas to move your production line out of her kitchen, you rent a small commercial space and set up a tiny production facility. You credit cards are long overused. You are now well into "2nd mortgage securing an SBA loan" territory. You focus on selling your dressing in case quantity to other grocery chains and mom-and-pop stores. You're still making the occasional delivery but most of your goods are going out on delivery services. You hire two assistants to help pit and puree the peaches, combine the spices into large batches, mix them with the vinegar and oil, and bottle the final product. You're still not sleeping because you spend evenings cleaning the commercial kitchen anticipating the next health inspection. Your fingers constantly smell like salad dressing. You spend the next 6 years of your life sampling in stores, running stalls at farmer's markets on the weekends, displaying at grocery conventions, and looking for the next big hit to boost your business. In the meantime you have developed 5 new flavors of dressing including a creamy peach and cucumber that is a massive chore to make but rapidly becomes your best seller. You are packaging holiday gift packs, baskets for mother's day, and Christmas assortments. Your online store requires constant maintenance but continually sells a few dozen bottles a week. All the while you have slowly begun to lose enthusiasm for the dressing game. Your kids are in high school. They don't hug you any more and they hate salad. Your wife took a job to help make ends meet. She enjoys it but you can't help but feel she resents you a little. The dressing company is still earning more than she is, but only barely. As time goes on, tastes begin to evolve and vinaigrettes go out of fashion. Your sales drop off slightly but it's enough that the interest payments on your loans are catching up to you. You have to let several members of your production staff go and you're fulfilling all the web orders by yourself. The unsold returns from your large grocery customers start increasing in size and you can see the writing on the wall. It's time to close the dressing company. After it's all over, you've sunk ten years of your life chasing a dream that, now that you look back on it, was really driven by the excitement of other people. You're pickled, your wife is exhausted, your kids are off to college, and your credit card companies seem to care more about you than any of the people that used to be your friends. Years later, you're pushing a cart down the condiments aisle when you run into someone you graduated with. As you chat, he puts a bottle of generic dressing into his cart and remarks "hey, I remember you used to make a really good peach vinaigrette. You should try selling it."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5351594&forum_id=2#46397632)