Navy veteran · Pilot · Trucker · Fifty-year entrepreneur

Failure is always an option.

I have started companies, lost companies, flown my own airplane into places most people avoid, driven an 18-wheeler for six years, and at 76 I am building again. This is where I keep the story — and the lessons that came with it.

Read my story The book, free

— Barry Rickert

Barry Rickert at the controls of a small aircraft, wearing a headset and smiling
Still flying

From the road

Fifty years, a few pictures.

Six prints

A twin-engine propeller plane on a wet airport ramp at dawn, mountains behind it
The Piper Navajo This wasn’t luxury. This was logistics.
A dark passenger van on a forest road with Mount Rainier in golden light
SuperVan The vacation should start when you land.
Glowing canvas tents in a meadow at dusk
Camp Easy Coming soon.
Camping gear laid out on a wooden deck in morning light
Everything handled Fly in with nothing but clothes.
An evening supper table set beside an open van in the woods
Supper Clubs A hosted supper club on wheels.
An empty campfire ring and camp chairs under a starry fir forest
The extra seat Fill that extra seat. Take a foster kid camping.

01Why this site exists

Entrepreneurship is not a personality trait. It is a condition.

It behaves like something living inside you. It keeps you awake at night. It whispers ideas you didn’t ask for. It refuses to let you settle. And when it goes quiet, you don’t feel peace — you feel lost.

Most people think entrepreneurs start companies because they have a great idea. The truth is simpler: we start companies because we can’t help ourselves. I have spent fifty years proving it — in engineering plants, printing presses, a Times Square apartment, a truck stop in Montana, and now a fifteen-passenger van in the Pacific Northwest.

This site is not here to inspire you. It is here to prepare you. The story is true, the failures are mine, and the lessons cost more than I would like to admit.

02The story so far

From a nuclear submarine to a SuperVan — by way of everything in between.

Dayton to the Navy, to Ohio, Louisiana, Atlanta, California, New York City, back to Atlanta, then Las Vegas and Washington State. A pattern of leaping into the unknown, succeeding just long enough to fail in a new way, and rebuilding from scratch.

  1. Age 18 · U.S. Navy · nuclear submarine

    The Navy, noise, and the birth of a skill

    A captain handed me a job I had never heard of: vibration analysis. Find the machines that could give away our position. I wrote handwritten letters to American manufacturers; one shipped me a $15,000…

    Read this chapter

  2. Age 25 · Columbus & Worthington, Ohio

    Vibranalysis — the first company, the first failure

    No degree, no mentor, no roadmap. My grandmother — a church organist for forty years — handed me $10,000 as a gift. It bought my first analyzer. The company failed quietly, like a machine…

    Read this chapter

  3. Louisiana · Sulphur, Louisiana

    BMR Associates, the RV lab and the suitcase kid

    We packed a newborn and a set of analyzers into an RV and drove to the Gulf Coast. The RV was our first mobile laboratory; our daughter slept in a suitcase in the loft.…

    Read this chapter

  4. The Mac era · Georgia → California → New York

    CatTrax — reinventing catalogs one pixel at a time

    One $2,500 Mac, one $4,000 scanner, and a $60,000 check handed to me in church for a 500-page catalog I had no idea how to make. “Absolutely.” We cut Harbor Freight’s art department from…

    Read this chapter

  5. September 2001 · Times Square, New York

    The day the world stopped — and so did my businesses

    I was reading the newspaper in my apartment when Terri called from Atlanta. “Are you watching the TV?” Within weeks, both CatTrax and BMR Associates were gone. Thirty years of relationships, momentum and reputation…

    Read this chapter

  6. Six years · An 18-wheeler, forty-eight states

    The road, the fall, and clarity

    A friend said: “Why don’t you drive a truck?” CDL school in Virginia, then six years of sunrises in Wyoming and blizzards in Montana. No employees, no emergencies, predictable income — one of the…

    Read this chapter

  7. Now · Pacific Northwest

    The SuperVan, and a seat for a foster kid

    I ordered a Ford Transit and waited three years for COVID-era Ford to deliver it, then built it into an RV, rented it on Turo, and watched my daughter give up a cross-country camping…

    Read this chapter

The whole route, stop by stop

03What it cost to learn

I’m offering history, not hope.

No theories, no formulas, no “three steps to success.” Just the uncomfortable kind of truth — the kind you only admit after you’ve survived it.

01

Partners can be more dangerous than competitors.

A partner is not a bandage for uncertainty. A partner is a magnifier of whatever problem already exists. If you accept someone’s money, they become part of your business — wanted or not.

02

Say yes. Then learn fast.

Entrepreneurial rule #17. A stranger handed me a $60,000 check for a 500-page catalog. Inside: “I have no idea if I can pull this off.” Outside: “Absolutely.”

03

Hire someone smarter than you.

The MIT engineer gave BMR Associates instant legitimacy and gave me bandwidth. Bandwidth is dangerous for an entrepreneur — it means something new is coming.

04

Never hand off your taxes, payroll or financial reporting.

One bookkeeper, one unpaid year of wage taxes, one $250,000 liability. From that day on my CPA reviewed every quarter.

05

Good times hide your weaknesses. Crises expose them brutally.

Unchecked optimism can quietly sink your ship. Business is easy — until people enter the picture. Employees can save you or destroy you, sometimes in the same week.

06

Failure doesn’t kill entrepreneurs. Complacency does.

Success inflates; failure grounds. Success blinds; failure reveals. If success is a reward, failure is a curriculum. You are not ready for real success until you have taken a few beatings and kept going anyway.

Part One Failure Is Always an Option Fifty years of starting, losing and rebuilding Barry Rickert

04The book

Failure Is Always an Option

Nine chapters and an epilogue. The Navy, the first company, the partner who wanted his money back, the airplanes, the catalog revolution, 9/11, the trucking years and the van that became a mission. Read it, or let me read it to you.

Download the PDF 407.0 KB Chapters & excerpts
Voice-over

“Failure Is Always an Option” — read aloud

An empty campfire and camp chairs under stars in a fir forest
The empty seat is the whole point.

05The vision

The vacation should start when you land, not when you recover.

My daughter tried to drive her kids from Virginia to Washington for a real tent-camping trip. She surrendered in Yellowstone. That was the ignition: people want adventure, camping, mountains and firelight — they do not want the logistics nightmare.

So I am building the answer, in three parts. SuperVan Adventures provides everything — van, gear, tents, heaters, kayaks, setup and teardown — so a family can fly in with nothing but clothes. Camp Easy is coming soon. SuperVan Supper Clubs takes the same idea to a night out: a hosted evening on wheels.

Fill that extra seat… take a foster kid camping. Not for their benefit — but for yours.

Not every family fills fifteen seats. The empty ones bothered me — not financially, philosophically. One weekend of stability, routine, hot chocolate and belonging can change the trajectory of a foster kid’s life, and it changes the adult as much as the child. That seat program is not charity. It is the core of the business.

06What I’m building

Three companies, one idea: take the logistics off people’s shoulders.

A dark passenger van parked on a forest pullout, Mount Rainier lit by the evening sun

SuperVan Adventures

Fly in with nothing but clothes. We handle every other detail.

Turnkey tent-camping expeditions in the Pacific Northwest. The van, the gear, the tents, the heaters, the kayaks, the maps, the setup and the teardown — all waiting when you land. And a mission at its heart: every empty seat is a seat for a foster kid.

  • 15-passenger Ford Transit turned mobile basecamp
  • Four-season gear, tested on real family trips
  • Foster-family seat program at the core
Visit SuperVan Adventures (opens in a new tab)
Canvas bell tents glowing at dusk beneath a snow-covered mountain

Camp Easy

Coming soon.

Camp Easy is coming soon. A basecamp you show up to, unpack once, and spend the trip outside — ski days in winter, trail days in summer.

  • Coming soon
  • Heated stays
  • Ski days in winter, trail days in summer
Visit Camp Easy (opens in a new tab)
A passenger van with its door open beside a supper table in a forest clearing at blue hour

SuperVan Supper Clubs

A hosted supper club on wheels.

A great night out shouldn’t feel like logistics. A professional driver, a professional host, intimate groups and curated routes to the Pacific Northwest’s best dining, casinos, concerts and private celebrations. You board the SuperVan and leave the planning to us.

  • Private group excursions, hosted end to end
  • Boarding in Chehalis and Tacoma
  • Birthdays, bachelorettes, corporate nights
Visit SuperVan Supper Clubs (opens in a new tab)

07Living chapters

The book, chapter by chapter.

All entries

09Say hello

From one entrepreneur to another.

If you see yourself anywhere in these pages — if any part of it feels uncomfortably familiar — write to me. Questions about the book, a podcast or a talk, a foster family who should be in the van, or a business you are not sure you should start.

I read every one. Expect a reply from a human.