Ask HN: Has anyone here dabbled in non-tech entrepreneurship?

I built and owned a nightclub, if you have anything specific--business related only-- feel free to ask away

I launched a seasonal product to ship necessities to college-bound freshmen called Dorm Duffle. You can see the flyer for it here: http://hirevito.com/oldportfolio/dormduffle/

Flyers were sent "to the parents of" over 15,000 incoming freshmen students for several universities in the southwest. We had one order.

Not one percent. Just one.

Market research might have told us that we might have been able to launch such a thing in NYC, but perhaps that in the southwest, people like shopping for their kids.

I don't see my entrepreneurship activities as tech or non-tech. They're all curiosity and problem-solving.

I run a couple of CEO roundtables so have worked with around 25 people that run non tech companies. What are you looking for more specifically?

One more interesting one is a guy who had a company in china make free samples of 10 types of products. He put them all on amazon forsale and one of them took off so he made more of that one. His net profit is around 300K/year after just one year.

Another one uses prison labor to manufacture electronic components. The recidivism rate among the inmates who go through the program is much lower than the average. Other industries include:

pet products, doggie day care, health insurance, HR consulting, hair salon, convenience store, restaurants etc. Most of them were never in tech, but some were and just wanted something more traditional. For example, the hair salon netted about 50K/year. One wouldnt make a living but 5 or 6 would.

I am an optimist, so I may have a skewed view; I put X amount of my own money into the project, which I sold after 2 years, I sold my end for X, so I made my initial investment back. During the time I actually operated the place I worked 60-100 hours a week I made roughly 50k/ year, which is obviously a loss because I could have worked a "normal" job, and made the same for much less hours, but imo I came out ahead because I learned more than a lot of people who pay 6 figures for their college degrees.

I first ran an apparel business that sold streetwear and skateboarding clothing to shops in Illinois called Kerosin (http://kerosinclothing.com ) and then we bought screen printing equipment to mass produce printed apparel and we printed for the University of Illinois departments, frats, clubs, etc. It was called Wooden Cotton http://woodencotton.net and we had a physical location aka rent and all that other good stuff. Just sold that business and now we're onto software to manage screen printers http://printavo.com