Crazy Things Happen in Mexico

You'd think it all started with a plate of nachos in a tree house in Mexico, but really it started before that.  A few days prior we had boarded a cruise ship, leaving from Long Beach, CA, bound for Mexico.  We boarded around lunch time.  We're old cruise pros now, having been on a few in the past two years.  We know that on the first day of the cruise, if you head to the very back of the boat, you have total peace and quiet.  No one else has yet made it back that far.  Usually, we hit the hot tubs and have them all to ourselves, but not this year, as baby is in embryo and hot tubs and embryos aren't so hot together.

We grabbed some long chairs and spent the afternoon reading, working crossword puzzles, and wondering why an adjacent boat "The Queen Anne" was walled in.  That still remains a mystery.  In between all of that, we were discussing what we were going to do with our future.

We had involved Ryan's parents in the business with us as they needed a more stable financial footing.  Ryan's dad had lost his job a few years back and done different things, but the money wasn't as predictable or as substantial as they would have liked.  They were a huge help in getting the business going and more profitable, but they also put some strain on us, both financially and time wise.

We felt it time for a change, but what.  Ryan had thought of some other entrepreneurial endeavors, but had some hesitations and fears on those.  He had also contemplated going back to corporate America, but felt that would be both a step backwards in salary and responsibility. Ryan suffocates in corporate America though and I can't ever force him to go back to something that drains him that way.

We were hoping that tropical sunset off the boat might provide some inspiration.  No such luck.

So we decided to revisit it later.  The next morning arrived bright and early and we debarked to Catalina Island, famous for salad dressing and tandem bicycles.  We took option 2 as Ryan is a Ranch man.  We rented a tandem bike for all of $15 and proceeded to cruise around the island.  Along the way, we rode past a museum, a casino, an Amish ice cream store, and a really cool, former aviary that has been converted into an apartment complex. Although it's a little creepy I think to live in a former bird zoo.

After our epic bike expedition, which also included a jaunt up the hill, where Ryan's heart almost exploded, it was time for lunch.  A tandem bike and a steep hill burn a lot of calories.  So we found lunch in this cool diner, where the waitress had spent her entire life there, living in a 5 mile square radius and everyone, literally everyone, drives a golf cart.  Catalina Island speed of life = 7 1/2 miles per hour.

Then we set sail for Mexico.  The next day, we hooked up with the rest of the Five Star crew to go see "La Bufadora", which is Spanish for The Blowhole.  Although we had high hopes it was a beached whale, it was in fact, a naturally occurring water spout off some cliffs near a Mexican sea.  Think Old Faithful, but probably not that old and not real faithful, as the geyser explosions were small and random.  After all 5 minutes of fun were had, it was time for some new adventures.

La Bufadora, in action

Squinty shot in Ensenada Mexico

And so we wound up in a restaurant that looked like a tree house eating a gigantic plate of nachos.  And then our lives changed forever.

As we sat there making small talk with one of our fellow franchisees, Tom from Ohio, it turned out that he was looking to sell his business.  He was looking to pursue other opportunities and was looking to find another Five Star franchisee that might be willing to take over his territories in Ohio.

These were the life changing nachos that would set us on the path to Ohio

The more he talked, the more compelling it became.  This might be the answer we were looking for.  Ryan's parents could continue running the business in Virginia, and we could move to Ohio and run Five Star there, which we know can provide for us.

So we talked with the Five Star corporate leadership, started working out details, and then two weeks later were in Ohio for a 3 day visit.  We found ourselves a cute little townhouse, and set a move out date a few weeks later.

The adventures continue.

Our Business Baby

Summer is flying by so fast! Mostly I think that's due to this crazy adventure we've set out on of owning a painting company. What a job! I have to say it has been harder and so much more work than we ever bargained for. The potential in this is great, but so is the price that must be paid. Many days we wake up to the buzz of text messages or phone calls right around 7 am. Just like a charm. Customers and painters alike are looking to the head honcho for answers to their questions. Days are spent running logistics and solving everyone's problems, not to mention trying to meet new customers and make sales for the next week. As the evening approaches there's finally time to start answering emails and returning other phone calls. Dinner at 9, try to clean up the house a bit, and then back to bed. It's a grind, no doubt.

There are days I feel like we must have been crazy to have bought this thing. The pressure can just crush you. I am continually amazed at Ryan's ability to press forward. I can't say how many times I've thought to myself that this just isn't going to work. But I have more faith than that. We both felt confirmations that buying the business was the right course of action, so I went into the whole thing pretty calmly, and actually excited about what we were doing. The business has definitely taught both of us a lot about our strengths and our weaknesses as we are often pushed to our limits. The best thing in the world is that we are doing this together and can help each other through the hard days. Luckily we don't usually both feel discouraged on the same days. What I love most about working this company is that I get to see or at least talk to Ryan frequently throughout the day. It's great to feel so connected on something like that.

Ryan has some natural gifts with running a business and we've definitely seen the effects of that. We are making sales like crazy! I'm keeping the books and it's incredible to see how much money has flowed in and out of the bank account this year. We've had a lot of struggles, but I'm happy to say that July was our most profitable month thus far, and I think August is on track to be really good as well. When people say we have so much free time because we don't have any kids yet, I just tell them that we do have a baby. Our baby is a painting company. It takes all our money and all our time. :)

No job, New job

The painting company has gone gangbusters and is growing like crazy. We can hardly keep up. Every night Ryan and I are working til 10:30 or 11:00 and falling into bed exhausted, just to do it again the next day. And still, we were missing things, making mistakes, and having problems. We decided we needed to make a scheduling change. For the last year, I've been teaching ESL at a school about 25 minutes from our place. I'd teach 9-1:30, then most days I had 2-4 piano lessons in the afternoon, then I'd work the painting company with Ryan in the evenings. It was just too much.

At the beginning of June, I left my teaching job to have more time to work on the business with Ryan. It was sad to leave my students and some of my co-workers. I've never had such a great set of co-workers as I did at Columbia College. I loved talking with them and hanging out during our break time. And the students all work so hard and I got such validation from them. I'll miss that too. There's something great about being told by your class full of Asians that you are the beautiful teacher and that you are their favorite. (I've always loved being the favorite!)

The painting company is a LOT of work, but what I love most is that I get to spend most everyday just working with Ryan. We love that aspect of owning our own business! I'm getting a hands-on business education as we discuss marketing ideas, operations problems and solutions, finance, profitability, sales, and on and on. Although it was a leap of faith for me to leave my job, we felt like it was the right thing to do. Since my job was only part time, it wasn't that much income and we decided that working together we could probably produce enough of an improvement in leads and profitability to make up for what I would no longer bring in. It's a challenge, but we're learning together!

What's Your Color?

Color says a lot about a person. How a person uses color in their home can reflect their personality and affect their mood. That's one reason I believe in our company! Last weekend we did our first home show for our painting company! It was a huge crunch getting it pulled together, but it worked. Friday at 3 pm the location for the show opened for vendors to begin setting up, and we still didn't have a booth display. We'd ordered it 3 weeks before, and we'd been told it would arrive probably Wednesday or Thursday. Then we had a crazy snowstorm on Wednesday. The "snowquester" as it was named here in DC. Well, Virginia freaks out at the mention of a weather problem. So they closed schools preemptively on Wednesday and started 2 hours late on Thursday. I think they probably grounded the planes too. Anyways, we were getting nervous about our booth getting in. We got a tracking number at last and found it was on the truck to be delivered, so I was a little nervous all day to leave the apartment because I didn't want to miss it! Finally about 4:30 our booth arrived! We were at last able to get over to the center and get set up. It turned out looking great. Here it is.

All kinds of awesome brochures on popular paint color trends and palettes. It was fun discussing color with our future customers!

The proud owner in his booth

Not only did we have great success off the show, we had a great time talking with people and our good friend Rachel even came out both days to see us. On Sunday afternoon she even brought us the most delightful homemade cookies. And they were even still warm. They were super incredible, just like she is.

Entrepreneurship has been an exciting ride. It's fun to work on the business. It's something we are both really proud of. But it's also a lot of work with a lot of challenges and road blocks.

Five Star Painting Training and Family Time

Putting this painting company together has been a lot of work! Before the training, the company sent Ryan all kinds of training materials that he worked through. Lucky for him he doesn't have a job right now, so it's given him a lot of time to do it. The training was Dec. 3-7. Ryan went out for the whole week, but I couldn't take all the time off work, so I flew out Tuesday after work and joined him for the last 3 days. The great thing about all this---the training was in Utah. Can you believe it? The company happens to be located in Spanish Fork, UT, of all places. The guys who started it are all LDS, which we found out during our validation process, and they are all great. We were lucky because we had family to stay with, so we didn't have to pay a hotel, my brother Matt let us borrow a car, and we flew out on plane vouchers from when we got bumped on the flight to Cameron's wedding in AZ in August. So for us, it was a low cost trip, which was great because we are totally in budget mode right now.

The training was great. We learned TONS! All about paint, setting up the business, how to estimate a job, how to present the sale. And that's just for starters. Ryan's got another training he'll go to in January to fine tune the estimating and sales training. I think learning the estimating was the most fun part of the training for me. We went to Scott's house, the CEO, and Chad's, another exec. and put together interior and exterior quotes for painting their homes. There were 3 other guys out there for training also, so we'd all compare quotes and usually we were within about $100 or less of each other on price.

Here's one of my favorite aspects of the training. So like I said, almost all of the guys at Five Star are LDS. On Monday one of them told the crew (none of them LDS), "Hey tomorrow night at my church a bunch of guys are getting together to play basketball. You should come!" One guy spoke up and said he'd read about Mormon church ball on the internet (no way!) and he understood it could get pretty brutal. Haha! Well, I think most of them went and played. (Ryan did not as he was picking me up from the airport that night.) Wednesday night, the company took us to dinner at Tucano's. Oh, I love it. Well, of course none of these guys drink, plus we're in Utah, so no one even asks really. All the execs order lemonades, as do Ryan and I, so the other guys mostly follow suit. Later the one that didn't order lemonade and just had a coke or something, asked if there was alcohol in the drinks. The CEO was like, "Nah, of course not. It's lemonade!" Then after dinner, the CEO invited everyone over to his house to watch a movie in his theatre room in the basement. Ryan and I passed because we were seeing family that night, but the other three guys went. The next day we asked them how the movie was. One guy said, it was great, but they started late because on the way over, Scott (CEO) remembered he needed to set up chairs for the church Christmas party, which was the next night. So he just took everyone with him and put them to work for an hour setting up all the tables and chairs for the party! And then of course, the next night everyone was invited to the party. I love how natural it was to just involve all the guys in church stuff on this 5 day trip they were in Utah. So funny. Welcome to the Kingdom.

The trip was also great because we got to spend time with may family and also see Ryan's brother Cameron and his wife. It was so fun to have my parents come down since we were so close. We all had some time to spend with Matt's family and with Grandma Stewart. Jason is such a cute little man. He was pretty excited about his "Neeeuuuwww Uncle Rynan!" I think he loved playing with Ryan. We were only missing Dan at this get together, but we had fun with having as many as we did together. 

Miracles and a Painting Company

At the beginning of November Ryan lost his job, although I have to say, it was an experience full of miracles. I really feel like the Lord’s hand has been in this. Ryan hds been with NII for about 2 years. For about the last 8 months or so, he had really not been happy there and his discontent had been increasing. He felt his job just didn’t allow him to really utilize his talents or grow. Ever since college, he’s wanted to own his own business. He did some entrepreneurial ventures back then and since he tasted that experience, he’s never been fully satisfied at another job. So back in July we sat down and created some goals. We set a goal that he could be out of NII by January, we would save a certain amount of money by that point, and we could launch some kind of business if he would create a plan for what he wanted to do. Well, as time went by, it was very apparent we were nowhere near our savings goal. Although we had saved some money, it certainly wasn’t accumulating at the rate we had anticipated. We weren't even close. In September they announced that there would be layoffs in November, but Ryan really didn't think he’d be on the chopping block at that point. As things drew closer, more information came out and we learned the cuts would be much more severe than we had anticipated, though we also learned that there would be a nice severance package for those leaving. We began to feel that that would be a great blessing for us. The week of the layoffs Ryan found out he would be getting let go, and then when the actual day came we were surprised to find out that the severance money was nearly double what we were anticipating. What this ultimately meant was that we now had a clear slate to pursue a new career option, and we had the funds in our account that we had planned on. I attribute this blessing fully to the Lord and to paying tithing and fast offerings. I know that He blessed us for our faithfulness and it is He who made it possible to achieve our goals in this area. I’m so grateful for a knowledge of the gospel because it provides a key to blessings we so greatly need in our lives. When I think of this experience, I feel the hand of the Lord so greatly in our lives.

And that is just the beginning. Also in August or September, we started looking into various franchise options. We weren't even really think of doing it right then, just "someday in the future." We just wanted to see what was out there. Well, we found some that looked like they had potential, so we decided to talk to them a little bit and see what we thought. We started with four, and by the time my parents came had it down to two, but felt pretty good about one in particular. We still didn't know at that point if Ryan was going to be let go. When he did lose his job, I just had a peaceful feeling. We were prepared for that and we had a plan we could immediately get into action on. We decided to buy a painting company called Five Star Painting. We had a ton of criteria on any business we would buy in to, and this fit everything. It was incredible. More to come on how this all goes in the future. 

Unphotographed Events

I've not taken too many pictures lately, but that is not to say I have not done some fun things here. A couple weeks ago I went to Bethany Beach with a group of friends. It's in Delaware and is supposed to take about 3 1/2 hours to reach. The car I was in left about 6:15 am and we arrived at 11. The car that left about 7:30 pulled in the same time we did. There was a bad accident on the highway and they were routing everyone off it in the early morning, so we had major delays. Nonetheless, when we finally got there, it was a fabulous day! It was one of the most scorchingly hot weeks of the whole year and I think that Saturday the heat index was at about 112. Miserable, right? But yet, a great day to play in the ocean. I didn't get burned at all this time--perhaps part of that is because it was just too hot to lay out on a towel. I meant to take at least a few pictures, but when I got my camera out I found that the battery was dead. So unfortunately, the day went by enjoyed but undocumented.

To this point my blog mostly contains all the fun things I've done here, but I might as well put in a little about work too, since that's where I spend a lot of time. This may be the only post about my job though. I'm working at a corporate office for a company that does mobile health care, primarily dental. I'm working as the office administrator and fulfilling roles as the HR assistant as well. For the most part, its a good job. I sit at the front desk, answer phones, schedule appointments, keep the office supplies stocked, and assist with a lot of the paperwork involved in HR. Sometimes its a bit slow though, so I try to find productive ways to use my down time. Sometimes I read books or talks online, write in my journal, or update my blog. I really have no complaints about my work except that I've found I really miss teaching my ESL classes. I loved that job because I felt like I could really put my personality into it. Needless to say, while I am grateful for the job I have now, I think I would like to get back into the ESL/literacy/education field at some point.

As mentioned before, I do some reading while at work, but also during my lunch break. I love to go sit outside in this little park across the street and eat my lunch and read. Occasionally its been too hot to go out, but they keep this office so cold sometimes that I've usually got to warm up for at least a little while! As a Humanities major I think I was always reading something, but it has been really fun this summer to choose the things I read for myself and have time to read for pleasure. I'm even part of a small bookclub of some friends here. I've also joined Goodreads.com to help me keep track of the books I've read and the ones I want to read, but here's an overview of what I've read lately.

Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens: I hadn't read this since I was a sophmore in high school so there was a lot I didn't remember. It was a great read taking place during the middle of the French revolution. The end was one of the most exciting I've ever read in classic literature. Well done, Dickens! I originally checked this out from the library on CD because I have a fairly long commute to work each day (abt. 40 minutes) and I got so tired of listening to the same mindless music all the time. But I ended up actually reading it towards the end because I wanted to finish and not wait until I was in my car! I also started carpooling to work, so listening to a book on CD didn't work quite as well.

History of Love, by Nicole Krauss: This was a really interesting book. It's probably not something I would have picked up on my own, but it was chosen for book club this time. I enjoyed it, but I have a bit of a hard time saying what exactly it's about. Basically, there are three main characters and they all have ties to a book called The History of Love. Though separate and distinct, they all connect in a way too. I think some of the prevailing themes of the book are identity, lonliness, fulfillment, friendship and of course, love.

Over the last few weeks I've also read The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Atonement by Ian McEwan, The Alchemist by Paul Coelho, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. I've enjoyed each of them, each for different reasons.

Sorry, no pictures for this post. I know it will probably get skipped in reading. It's like a cookbook with no pictures. If you can't see how good something looks, you probably won't take the time to even look at the recipe.