Today’s blog is written by Midwest Entrepreneurs student Gustavo Calderon. It focuses on the interesting dual-career entrepreneurial story of Monmouth College President Dr. Mauri Ditzler.

Prof. Gabel

——————————————————————————————————————–

This past Tuesday, Midwest Entrepreneurs students were delighted to have our very own president, Dr. Mauri Ditzler, come and speak of his own entrepreneurial journey. From starting his own strawberry farm at a young age, to successfully running a business for 35 years, the class was able to learn a lot from his experiences.

President Ditzler opened up the class by explaining that he has always been an entrepreneur at heart. As mentioned earlier, it was in fact in eighth grade when he started his first business; his very own strawberry farm. He took a passion of his and was able to create something that most individuals would not think about at that age. Moving forward, the president spoke of how he spent his summers during his high school years: detasseling corn for local farmers. As he explains it, this job was a “right of passage” for kids his age in the farming belt in the Midwestern United States. This work was something that he took much pride in.

When it was time for Dr. Ditzler to pursue his number one passion of education, he realized that the salary offered by these types of jobs was not very high. This caused him to brainstorm ideas as to how he could both do what he loved, but also gain extra income to more comfortably support his family. The corn detasseling business was perfect (and fit well with his academic calendar, with summers off from teaching). He knew that if he was to pursue the idea of starting a business, it needed to be something that he did not spend much time on. It was then that his business was born; he partnered with an old friend and decided that they would become providers of detasseling services to seed companies (that had outsourced the planting and harvesting of corn to local farmers). In essence, the human resources function of growing corn was outsourced to Dr. Ditzler’s company.

In this capacity, Dr. Ditzler and his partner–eventually joined in the business by another partner–organized groups of high school students to travel to these different farms and do a job that they dreaded. For 35 years, he was able to work hard during the Summer month of July, make the extra amount of income he was searching for, and forget about the business for the next 11 months.

During the prime of his detasseling business, Dr. Ditzler had about 1000 employees working in 3 states (Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri); transported from field to field on as many as 20 buses at a time. As he told the class, his detasseling entrepreneurial venture may very well have been the largest in the country at its peak.

The most important aspect of this whole story is that, unlike many of the guest speakers we have had in class so far, President Ditzler was able to start this business with almost no money. The business ran solely on handshakes and agreements. When he rented the buses, he promised he would pay them back at the end of the month; the same worked with use of his gas. Another advantage was that he never had worries about purchasing insurance. Early in the venture, it was something that he and his partners weren’t able to persuade insurance companies to provide. Later, when they began to work for larger agribusiness firms that took over the local seed companies, these companies purchased insurance for their workers.

Ultimately, Dr. Ditzler quit the corn detasseling business due to accepting the job as President of Monmouth College in 2005. However, the business served its purpose. He was able to pursue two of his passions without either one negatively affecting the other!!

Gustavo Calderon