Great story on the Today Show this morning. (I watched it as my coffee was brewing so forgive me if I get one or two details wrong, but the gist of the following is accurate.) A guy (let's call him Al) in his fifties, who was in a corporate sales career and hating it, walks into a marine store one day to get some boat supplies and hears another guy talking about his alpaca. So he goes home and asks his wife (let's call her Alison) what an alcapa is, and presto (not quite) they are alpaca ranchers in Oregon and loving it. Alison still works full-time as a technical writer working from home while she does her other full-time job with her husband. The sunset view from the porch is amazing.
Good for the Today folks for spending a few moments on Al's decision-making process to take the wooly plunge. It wasn't an overnight impulse. He quit his high-paying sales job and spent nine months working on an alpaca farm. Now that's research. He knew he could always get another sales job. What he didn't know was whether he'd like the lifestyle of an Alpaca rancher, or how difficult these animals might be. Fortunately he found the animals easy to be around, and as a breeder he was lucky that, apparently, alpacas give birth only between 7am-2pm (really!) and are self-sufficient about it. You still have to muck the stalls, but he didn't mind that so much.
Al and Alison also opened an alpaca yarn store on the farm. Yarn which Al spins himself, by the way. The place is packed on weekends with families buying yarn and mingling with the animals. So his sales background came into play. If you can sell computers, industrial supplies, or whatever it was he was selling before (remember, I hadn't had my coffee yet) you can sell yarn.
Al had sales skills, knew how to do research the right way, did not act impulsively, had 100% buy-in from his wife of 36 years, and developed his idea with multiple revenue streams in mind. They aren't going to be millionaires, but they're sure living a millionaire lifestyle up in Oregon.
Loved the story. It gives hope and inspiration.
It looks like a great lifestyle. Some day, I’d like to do the same.