My last name, Campos, is often mispronounced, at least by my fellow Americans. The first syllable doesn't sound like “camp,” but rather “comp.” So to say Campos correctly just think “compost” without the “t” on the end. This will make more sense a bit later.
Business, and particularly small, family business, has always fascinated me. I love the hustle of it, the creativity, the cooperation. I love the direct relationship between selling something that satisfies a need and having money to put food on your table. There’s a beauty and an art to the whole process that I’ve been chasing ever since I was a boy.
I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family, which is where my love of business came from. My father has run a photography business since before I was born. This family business, Campos Photography Center, provided for us and connected our family to a creative community that really loved my father. It was also a roller coaster as our family would rise and fall with the rising and falling fortunes of the business. My mother was a teacher, but she also had a business setting up computer systems when I was young and, years later, sold handcrafted wooden chairs.
I, too, had many businesses of my own growing up. They came and went based on my interests at the time. I sold baseball cards out of my middle school locker. My brother and I had a candy store in our attic in the summertime, where we bought wholesale and sold to the neighborhood kids at a small discount to the corner store. I had a paper route delivering the Buffalo News, and I grew it significantly over time selling subscriptions. I had lemonade stands early on. I also cut lawns and shoveled snow and babysat. I enjoyed them all, and I liked making money too, even though I only spent a small portion of what I made.
But there were two businesses that I ran back in the day that stand apart from the rest. They still loom large in my mind and I think of them often.
The first was the hot dog stand my brother and I had at the annual St. James Place block sale. The block sale was an amazing event that I looked forward to all year long. There were about one hundred houses on our street, and on block sale day at least fifty of them would have yard sales. The houses on St. James Place were very close together with tiny front yards, so everyone sold their wares right up at the sidewalk, and our house was located smack in the middle of the block, right in the center of the action.
Folks would come in droves from the larger neighborhood, with the experienced yard salers showing up bright and early at around eight in the morning to get the best stuff before it was gone. But then the sale went on all day until almost dinnertime, and I loved every minute of it. Deal hunting, bartering, finding diamonds in the rough. There was also a distinct sense of community and togetherness in the air.
For years our family had a yard sale just like everybody else. But then one day a light bulb went off. All these people came to our street on a hot summer day, but there was only so long they could stay on the block without food or drink. In an instant it became so clear and obvious that we could feed these people and quench their thirst, and perhaps make a few bucks while we’re at it, by selling hot dogs and drinks. We didn't realize we’d make a killing.
When the next block sale kicked off on a perfect July morning as the sun dried the dewy grass, we were ready. We had built a nice looking hot dog stand out of 2x4s and plywood, which we painted a crisp white. On the front of the stand below the counter was a handwritten menu, and at the top was a big sign that simply said “FOOD,” with colorful balloons surrounding it. It came across as a clean, legitimate operation, even though it was obviously run by kids.
Behind the stand was a charcoal grill where we cooked the dogs and in front we had a cooler filled with soda and popsicles. We also sold coffee out of a big stainless steel urn along with fresh baked brownies. We had the market cornered. But even though we had a legitimate monopoly, we charged fair prices and focused on delighting customers to generate word of mouth. As our neighbors sold old encyclopedias and knick knacks, my brother and I cranked out a tremendous volume of carefully charred hot dogs. I happily grilled all day long to keep up with all the orders.
We only did the hot dog stand a few times, but it still inspires me to this day. It’s just a wonderful feeling to serve people well and enjoy yourself while doing it. I will never forget running the grill completely loaded with dogs at the age of eleven or twelve, taking them off at the perfect time and watching our customers love every bite. It was awesome.
The second truly noteworthy business of my youth came a year or two later, and this is where the pronunciation of my last name comes in.
It was the summer of 1991, right after I finished my freshman year in high school. I had become almost obsessed with recycling and all things Earth Day, and I was looking for ways to save the planet right from our home. So that summer I decided to get into composting, and my first targets were the bags of grass clippings that came about every time I cut our lawn.
My mom and I talked about this extensively, and the concept we ultimately came up with was a wooden compost bin that we’d make exclusively from garbage-picked wood. This of course meant that I’d be able to compost the grass clippings, but there was also the added bonus of reusing wood that was destined for the garbage heap. There was a story there that felt right on all fronts.
I’m going to take a moment here to give a shout out to my mom, who was my partner in crime in generally all of my business dealings back then. She worked with my brother and I to design and build the hot dog stand, which is to say she did much of it herself. My brother and I cooked and sold everything, but my mom carted us around to buy all the inventory in advance. Simply put, without her the hot dog stand never would’ve happened. With the compost bin I was a bit older, so I was able to do much more of the construction myself, but it was still a true collaboration start to finish. We had fun on these projects, thinking about them, designing them and seeing them through, and I’m still so proud of what we did together more than thirty years later.
But let’s get back to the compost bin. Now that we had the concept fleshed out, the next garbage day we drove endlessly around the neighborhood in my mom’s wood-paneled station wagon. We’d find people throwing out scraps of wood from home demo projects and swoop in and take anything we could find that we thought would be useful, including 2x4s, plywood sections and old fence slats, all of which ended up playing an important role in the final design.
When we got home we got to building, and a few hours later we had a very attractive compost bin in the back corner of our yard. I cut the grass right after and dumped in the clippings and we were off to the races with home composting. It was a great feeling.
But then everything went to another level a few days later when Sally, our next door neighbor, saw it. Sally was really into organic gardening way before it became the thing it is today, and she had a huge vegetable garden in her yard, which at the time was separated from ours by a short chain link fence. Immediately she asked if I could make another compost bin for her, and just like that a new business was born.
The next garbage day mom and I loaded up again on wood scraps and soon after Sally’s compost bin was ready. But this one got a special finishing touch. On the top cover I wrote “Campos-ter” just above the handle with a wood burning pen. It all came together at that moment. What had been just a compost bin a moment before was now the Campos-ter. The branding was complete and on point and I found it funny too. I still think the Campos-ter was ahead of its time.
Sally ended up telling all of her organic gardening and farm share friends about the Campos-ter and orders started coming in. All in all I probably made five or six Campos-ters, which I think I sold for fifty bucks each. Those details I can’t really remember, but the larger story lives on like a legend in my mind.
Just writing this post is getting me all excited like I used to get when I thought about business. I’m more jaded now because of how hard and unforgiving the adult business world can be, but deep inside I still love it. Because to me, serving people well is a true pleasure, and it can be absolute magic when the stars align, just like they did for a young boy with the St. James Place block sale hot dog stand and the Campos-ter.