A Baby Boomer from Finland! This is my introductory post. This is a very short story about what I have done. More to follow. 
I was born in 1945, graduated from Kauhajoki high school in spring1964 and in fall 1964 I went to the Finnish Army. Soon after completing my 11 months of military service, I flew to the USA. I worked the summer season on a farm in southwestern Minnesota and then in the winter, I studied in St. Paul Campus in Minneapolis.
After that, I moved to southwestern Oregon and worked with a high lead logging group as a choker setter for several months before returning to Finland. During my first 18 months stay in America I visited over half of the states of the USA, from Florida to the state of Washington.
The time in the U.S.A – time to study and work – the University of Minnesota - The Institute of Export - Helsinki
I returned to Finland and continued my commercial studies in Vaasa and then worked in Pietarsaari for Wartsila, which at that time had a factory there. Then I was accepted to study at the Institute of Export located in Helsinki. The studying included a one-year work period abroad and I got the possibility to go to New York and work for the commercial department of the Consulate General of Finland in Manhattan as an assistant commercial secretary. The Consulate General was located on the East 42nd street quite near the United Nations buildings in Manhattan.
Work as an export consultant and marketing manager – The Finnish Foreign Trade Association - MackFinn
After the year in New York, I got a job in the Finnish Foreign Trade Association in Helsinki as an export consultant and then after four years I was appointed as Marketing Manager of Jouko Makinen Oy furniture manufacturing company in Jurva, later their trademark was MackFinn, which was created during my time with the company. Jurva was and still is one of Finland’s main furniture manufacturing hubs. I personally took care of exports, actual sales to Sweden and Norway, and at the same time was responsible for the whole marketing of MackFinn furniture manufacturing company.
MackFinn became the biggest and the best-known wall unit producer in Finland at that time in the late seventies. A lot of Swedish furniture stores became familiar to me in addition to customers in Finland. A lot of miles by car in Sweden and Norway during those interesting years. Our team worked hard, and the team got really good results.
Time to start on my own – waterbeds and Land and Sky mattresses
Then was time to start my own business, which included sales of waterbeds and manufacturing of waterbed frames. Mattresses were imported from Land and Sky, Lincoln, Nebraska. The financial depression was very deep in the early 1990’ies and waterbed sales stopped totally in Finland and in the whole of Scandinavia. That was a really hard time for me and my family. I had to find new work and new products to sell. I had to restart the business.
I have been running this company since 1992 till my retirement, which took place officially about ten years ago. All the time I have related to traditional international trade, furniture, and different consumer products. So, I have been working in the international furniture trade for several decades, and export marketing is my field of expertise.
Time to retire
Officially retired about ten years ago, but never stopped working and being active. I hate being without anything to do, so I became active with local politics. I was then elected to public offices, e.g., the chairman of the board of directors of SEK, which was the business development agency for the Suupohja region. And today I am the chairman of the board Kauhajoki local branch of Finnish Pensioners' Federation, which is the biggest pensioner organization in Finland, with nearly 120 000 members.
Family
The family is very dear and important to me. My wife Liisa is a retired teacher from the college of applied sciences. She taught nursing. Our son is the ICT manager of MSK Group, and our daughter is a teacher in Helsinki. And we lost our third child, a baby boy in 1983, he lived only 3 months.
Online business – learning and testing
I started online as a hobby, but soon I realized that it is not the right way to do things. Either you do it properly or leave it. You are not able to succeed if you keep it just as a hobby. As soon as I realized that I started to spend more time to find out how online business really works, and how it differs from traditional marketing and principles – alternative ways to work.
Online business is very interesting, with online home business growing very strongly, and I expect it to be the top market segment in coming years. There is also likely to be a healthy additional income from this business.
Quote of the Day
“Put your goals in writing. If you can’t put it on a sheet of paper, you probably can’t do what it takes to achieve the goal.” -Unknown