I woke up the other morning to the sound of chainsaws and loud thunderous sounds vibrating up through my floor. I remembered that my neighbor across the street had a large tree limb that had fallen in a recent storm and thought that that neighbor was cleaning up the tree. I also remembered that the neighbor immediately behind me, had a large 110 ft tall tree that was primarily dead. We had recently talked to that neighbor about tearing down the tree and learned that she was already in the process of collecting bids.

So I grabbed the dog and walked outside just in time to see a huge limb falling 100 feet to the ground.   It was the 110 foot tree behind us.  I watched for a few minutes as four guys started dismantling this behemoth of a tree.   Among the four guys there was an older gentleman perhaps in his 60s.  He came over and introduced himself. I guessed that he was the business owner. After talking briefly, I learned that he had worked with AT&T for the length of a normal career 25 to 30 years.

Upon retirement, he decided he wanted to run his own business. And, so he started a tree cutting business. I found this a little remarkable given that the average person working an average career term of 30 years would be around mid 50s. Scaling trees seems to be a young man’s game; but, what do I know. I believe he’s been in business for 10 to 15 years. And he says he stays very busy. He wasn’t the guy in the tree but he was very active in managing the crew of guys.

I thought this was an interesting story relating to our low-risk entrepreneurship principles. I don’t know the full story behind this business owner: Did he need to work; did he just want to continue working; did he not have any retirement;or did he really just want to start a business?

In any case, assuming he didn’t financially need to work what better time to start a business. Theoretically he could have saved up some money through a Roth IRA or a 401k, perhaps earned a pension or a health care plan from the company.  In addition to the aforementioned items he  acquired a set of skills over 25 or 30 years that he could deploy. Lastly, basically having littlie financial need, the business owner now had plenty of time given he was retired.

Again theoretically speaking, he had money, time, and desire – I would have to say this would be one of the best times to start a “low-risk” business.