2. The idea

Well, it all started one day when I was with a friend shooting in Cordoba for about the seventh year running and noticed that the dove population was starting to decline and I wondered if there was another province in Argentina that could support high volume bird shooting that was not already overly populated with hunting lodges. After discussing this possibility with a friend, we decided to explore the options of starting a lodge in Santa Fe province. I built a large financial model and the economics were sound so we both left our jobs and started the planning / architectural process of building a brand new lodge in 50 acres of pristine Argentine forest close to a number of well-established roosts that have been left alone for many years already purchased by our third business partner.

The idea was that I would spend 6 months a year in Argentina and the rest in various locations around the world working remotely. I would run the finance, IT, legal, sales & marketing functions while my other 2 partners would manage the lodge and field operations. Well that was the plan anyway as I thought we were each playing to our strengths and everything would work out great. After spending 25 years essentially following strict project management plans I expected everyone to automatically follow the same approach. How wrong could I be! More on that later, but with this general roles in place and one of my partners taking overall control of the construction phase, we started the project…