One thing about me that does not appear on my LinkedIn profile: in a previous life I was co-owner of a pasta business. I don’t remember how the conversation got started - I’m assuming can pretty much guarantee it was over beers - but the tl;dr is that a good buddy of mine (JoJo) talked me into rushing off to become an Entrepreneur. We would seek our fortune making and selling handmade pasta at a local farmer’s market on Saturday mornings. We did not quit our day jobs…but Our Mission: to boldly go into starting up a side gig and see where it went from there.

There are about a million stories I could tell. I could talk about the portable 3-compartment sink we had to build in order to be compliant with health regulations when we started selling prepped food onsite. Or I could talk about every Tom, Dick, and Jackass making the joke about “You brought everything including the kitchen sink har har” as we lugged that goddam thing down the sidewalk to the parking lot where we set up shop every Saturday. I could talk about the time a rainstorm brought our humble tent down around our ears. Or I could talk about how a jillion gallons of airborne water is literally The Perfect Storm when it comes to ruining many, many pounds of handmade pasta.

What I really wanna talk about: the fucking boxes.

Of a million details - large and small - we had to find some way to package our product to sell at market. I took on the task of figuring this bit out. How hard could it be, right? I did a little Googling, put some feelers out on The Interwebitubes, and started making some calls. Something I learned pretty early on: be very careful not to mention what it is that you’re packaging. “Food Grade” either means “we don’t have a product for that, have a nice day” “let me or direct you to our Premium (read: high-priced) line of goods.”

Volume was my enemy, in more ways than one. I didn’t know the volume of pasta we were likely to sell, and the pricing for boxes - or really any bulk product - is structured such that the more you buy the lower the unit cost. Worse, I didn’t know exactly what the dimensions of the box would need to be. Pasta is sold in 1-pound increments, right? So how big a box do I need? Imagine agonizing for hours over a kitchen table with a ruler, noodles, and cardboard. It was like that.

Did I mention that we planned to go to market with 3 different shapes of pasta?

Long story less-long: I made a judgement call, pulled the trigger, and ordered a whole shitload of 2 different kinds of boxes that I thought would meet our needs. I mean not a “we needed a forklift” shitload…more of a “more boxes than any 100 people I know have ever touched in their lives” shitload.

The boxes arrived. We unpacked some of the boxes. We sat down with a pile of pasta and a food scale and some boxes.

The pasta didn’t fit. Hilarity ensued.

This is kind of the critical section of the story for me. JoJo and I had a long conversation. It was clear that the boxes weren’t going to work out, we’d invested a non-trivial amount of money in them, and we had to do something about it. I don’t recall the details of how the entire conversation played out, but what I do recall is one specific exchange. JoJo suggested returning the boxes. I’d had it up to here with the goddam things, and I said something along the lines of “You know what, go for it, you can return the boxes.” …and then JoJo hit me - real calm - with something that has stuck with me, with something I still think about.

“No. You return the boxes. You signed up to do the boxes, you handle the boxes. Look, if you don’t do it then it’s just another thing that I have to do.”

Man, it hit hard. He’d called me out…and he was absolutely right. We were both busting ass trying to make a thing work and in this moment I was being a total shithead. It didn’t really matter that I was “tired of boxes”…that was the thing I signed up to do and I’d better goddam well do it. We were in this together trying to build something successful. The approach to success absolutely could not be “when there’s a setback drop it in The Other Guy’s lap”.

Epilogue:

So…what happened with the boxes? Well, the cost of return shipping was outrageous so we played around with them a bit. Sunk cost due diligence, if you like. We ended up figuring out that each box could hold a quarter of a pound of pasta…which happens to be just about the right amount of pasta for an individual serving. We were selling to a farmer’s market crowd - folks looking for something fresh to pick up and prepare for lunch/dinner - so, ultimately, the packaging ended up working to our benefit. Think: “How many people are you feeding? 3? Okay, then you’re gonna need 3 boxes.” Easy-peasy, lemon-

squeezy.