My name is Bernie Anderson and I have the honor of taking over the BAM blog for the next several weeks. I am a certified business and nonprofit consultant with Growability® – read more in my bio below.
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Flour. Water. Salt.
Three of the most basic ingredients imaginable.
Yet, when properly combined, processed, and timed, these three ingredients produce what might be the perfect food: Crusty, soft, sourdough bread with complex flavor and texture.
Yes, I was one of those COVID-shutdown sourdough people. And I’m still at it three and a half years later.
I started simple. Created a starter.
Fed the starter until it was active.
Made a few discard recipes.
Keep that starter alive and flourishing.
I was well over a year in before I started creating actual sourdough loaves without added yeast.
Then I went in deep.
The magic of sourdough is the chemical creation of natural yeast. And it really is a miracle. Flour, water, and salt, mixed with a fermented starter made of a living fungus (yeast) and a living bacterium called lactobacillus. They work together to eat the sugars in the flour. These living creatures basically poop acid – a tasty, savory acid that puts the sour in sourdough. When the fungus and bacteria finish their feast and have suitably relieved themselves, the dough is ready and baking can begin.
The result is a crusty, airy, flavorful loaf of delicious. The complexity of flavor and texture in a loaf of sourdough is a veritable miracle given the simplicity of ingredients.
It’s possible to complicate the recipe. Add sugars and oils, preservatives and shelf stabilizers. But complexified breads are rarely as good as simplified loaves. Three simple ingredients, with time and a specific process, will bring extraordinary results.
The simple believe everything, but the clever consider their steps.
Proverbs 15:15
Like anything in life worth doing, starting a business is difficult. Starting or running a BAM project adds more complexities. But, one of the biggest stumbling blocks for entrepreneurs is overcomplicating the essentials. You can read thousands of business books, take hundreds of online courses, attend seminars, and even go to University and get an MBA – but the simple ingredients for starting a business stay the same.
And that’s exactly what makes a BAM project both exciting and daunting!
Business done right makes life better for everyone involved, from customer to employees to the community where it lives. Let’s simplify your BAM project by extracting the essential ingredients for starting and running a business anywhere in the world.
Every business, no matter how large or small, simple or complicated, grows from a combination of these three simple ingredients:
- Leadership
- Management
- Marketing
