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ULMMAGAZINE SPRING 2017
COLLEGE OF HEALTH & LEGACIES PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES
“ULM HELPED ME UNDERSTAND HOW TO RUN A BUSINESS. WITH THE LSBDC, I LEARNED ALL ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF CASH FLOW. THIS IS WHAT KILLS MOST BUSINESSES BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO KEEP CASH FLOW GOING.”
JEFF DONALD DONALD FARMS, OWNER BY BRICE C. JONES
Growing up in the Sportsman’s Paradise, JEFF DONALD, like any other boy in Louisiana, loved the outdoors. Little did he know, the swamps and rivers of Louisiana would become the source of his livelihood.
harvested three years later, and then their hides and meats were sold. Jeff achieved business success quickly, so he began to look into various opportunities for even more growth.
In 1987, one year after graduating from ULM (formerly NLU) with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting degree, Jeff started an alligator farm. He converted an old barn, designed for hogfarming, into an insulated alligator barn.
In 2001, Jeff and his wife attended a FastTrac™ New Venture class offered by the Louisiana Small Business Development Center (LSBDC) at ULM. He graduated from the class and began using the LSBDC as a sounding board for his ideas. As his operations grew, Jeff continued to expand his facilities.
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“I graduated from NLU in accounting and knew I didn’t want to sit behind a desk all day. So, I began to look for areas in the farming industry,” Donald said. “We were already hunting wild alligators and the alligator industry was just starting so I decided to try my hand in that. Everything I’ve learned in the alligator industry has been from trial and error, since no one had attempted to farm alligators commercially before.” After becoming a licensed alligator hunter, Jeff started robbing nests in the swamps. The alligators were farmed,
But he wasn’t happy with the quality of his hides. In 2002, Jeff came up with a “million dollar” idea to improve the gator hides by creating a “pod” for each gator. In 2005, Jeff was counseled by a registered patent agent, retained by the LSBDC, about his “pod” idea. He subsequently filed a patent for the “pod” and identified a contract manufacturer to make the pods from plastic. After Jeff developed the “pod” into a useable tool for gator farming, the LSBDC at ULM assisted him with a business plan to implement the pods into
his operation. That plan led to a $500,000 loan. Jeff’s new gator farming technology nearly doubled the prices for his gator hides because of the improved quality. Jeff attributes much of his success to his ULM experiences. “ULM helped me understand how to run a business. With the LSBDC, I learned all about the importance of cash flow. This is what kills most businesses because they don’t know how to keep cash flow going,” he said. Today, Jeff operates two alligator farms (located in West Monroe and Columbia) and provides alligator skins for luxury brands, mainly purses and high dollar leather goods. “We use helicopters to locate alligator nests in the wild. We mark them with GPS and then return to those locations with airboats to pick up the eggs. I bought a helicopter for this purpose, and that is by far my favorite part,” Donald said. Jeff lives in West Monroe with his wife Denise and their two children Skylar (14) and Wolf (10).
