The Risk of Being Vulnerable

This may be a mistake, but I'm going to be brutally honest and tell you that I'm struggling with fear and faith and the possibility of failure.

First, let me share that this week our church bid farewell to George Lawson and his family. George was the youth pastor at our church the past two years. The kids loved him. In his final sermon he said that when the church invited him to join the staff and lead its student ministry, he asked, "They do know I'm black, don't they?"

The mostly white church did embrace this young black man. Our family was fortunate to get to know him and his family when we started attending their community/care group in January. We didn't know it, but soon George was struggling with leaving the security of a job with a salary to pursue the calling he felt to go plant a church in inner-city Baltimore.

We helped the Lawsons pack their truck Friday, and they departed today for an uncertain future-- uncertain in that they don't know what the future holds. But they are stepping out in faith, hoping to reach a struggling community and establish a new church. They have faith that their new church will grow enough to pay him a salary before too long.

Another member of our community/care group whose business is not doing well is facing a similar challenge, and I think of other friends who have struggled in recent years to put food on their families' kitchen tables.

I got laid off from my last job at the end of August 2011. While I have searched earnestly for a new job since then, I also have worked to pursue the American dream of opening our own business. Right now I feel like I'm walking through molasses on both fronts. I haven't earned a living to feed my family these past eight months, and that makes me feel like a word I'm not supposed to use. I think we have a really good business idea, but having to beg people to give us money to pursue our dream is very humbling.

Some days are very tough. Just getting out of bed. Just facing my wife and children, or worse our neighbors and fellow church members. Writing this blog is easier because I don't have to face you. I don't even know who reads this blog, and today I'm glad I don't.

One of the purposes of this blog is to give tips to other budding entrepreneurs, and today my encouragement (to you and to myself) is to not give up. Even when things seem hopeless, keep the faith. Better days are coming. When I was growing up, my dad loved to quote Winston Churchill's famous graduation speech, "Never, never, never give up." I love Teddy Roosevelt's famous speech about the man in the arena:

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause, who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Why we need the ADMA Part Two

I like being able to get news quickly on the Internet, but I love holding a newspaper in my hands, studying pictures, reading interesting articles and turning pages. It's hard to imagine the day when printed newspapers will go the way of the eight-track tape. How will junior high kids make money if they don't have newspaper routes?

Anyway, in a previous post we mentioned two recent newspaper articles on the growing problem of obesity in this country. Another article appeared recently about a new book titled Working Out Sucks! Robyn hates that last word,--she won't let Diamond in the Rough use it--but it is in the title.

The new book by "fitness expert" and Anytime Fitness franchise co-founder Chuck Runyon offers practical advice on exercising. It is hard work, Runyon admits in the Chicago Tribune article. "It may suck, but the alternative sucks so much worse. Your fitness level affects every nook and cranny of your life."

Doctors and "fitness experts" say that regular exercise helps you feel better, think better, make more money, look better, have more energy and be more productive at work. (They say it also improves your sex life, but this is a family oriented blog, so let's move on.) On the other hand, those in the know say obesity costs employers, insurance companies and taxpayers tens of billions of dollars every year.

Hmmmm. Workout 30 minutes a day four or five times a week and enjoy a better life vs. sitting all day, eating delicious Krispy Kreme doughnuts and calling in sick every three or four months. Seems like a pretty easy choice to us.

We're hoping the Arkansas Diamond Mine Adventure will become a reality soon and will be a popular choice for people of all ages to get a couple hours of good exercise in a fun way one day a week. Go to our website and buy a golf shirt to help us realize our American dream. Then in six months, bring your friends and push each other to get healthier at our family attraction.

The Warrior Dash

We never have had a doubt that people would want to participate in obstacle course challenges ... and pay for it. We found more proof of that in the newspaper just a few days ago.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that 5,000 people paid to participate in the Warrior Dash held at Timber Lodge Ranch in Amity, Ark., May 12. The 3.41-mile obstacle course included 14 barriers, the newspaper reported, that "required crawling: under barricades, in long trenches, up walls (with ropes or net), atop rope webs, and through a muddy pool."

(Sounds like a great opportunity to us, wink wink.)

The article also reported that the Warrior Dash website was already accepting registrations for the May 11, 2013 race. Entry costs were $50 through May 25 and will go up to $75 per person for late registration.

We won't be able to offer a 3.41-mile obstacle course, but we plan to build the finest, funnest obstacle course on four acres that you can find. And it won't cost you $50 to come play on ours.

Our adrenaline gets pumping just thinking about it. Please go to the Arkansas Diamond Mine Adventure website and buy a shirt to help us make this dream a reality.

While you're at it, if you have participated in a Warrior Dash, we'd love to know which obstacles were your favorites. Share yours on our Facebook page.

'Running a small business is 3 x more stressful than ...'

Last week Bank of America released its inaugural "Small Business Owner Report," and the survey provided some interesting results.

The new study explored "the concerns, aspirations and perspectives of small business owners" in the U.S. Small business owners reported optimism about the future of their businesses--which just proves that you have to be an optimist to open your own business--but said that managing their businesses created more stress than any other part of their lives.

Respondents said maintaining a small business caused twice as much stress as maintaining a healthy relationship with a spouse, three times as much stress as raising children and more than four times as much stress as managing their own personal finances. In addition, small business owners reported regularly giving up free time (57 percent) and exercise (37 percent).

"We know how much small business owners give up to make their businesses successful, but despite their sacrifices, they are still optimistic about the future," said Dean Athanasia, Preferred and Small Business executive at Bank of America.

Yet Americans continue to defy the odds, take risks and open small businesses. The U.S. Dept. of Commerce reports that small businesses represent 99.7 percent of all "employer firms" and employ about half of all private sector employees. Small businesses generated 65 percent of new jobs over the past 17 years.

For budding entrepreneurs, the report should not discourage us from pursuing the American dream, but it should remind us that opening a small business is not for the faint of heart. Our friend Mike who runs his Bennett Design Group here in Little Rock would say that small business owners only have to work half a day every day, and it's completely up to them which 12 hours of the day they want to work.

That is one of the many decisions you have to make if you want to pursue the American dream of owning your own business. Then of course you have to choose hoodie vs. button-down.

Why we need the ADMA

We want to spotlight several articles that came out in recent days on the need for physical fitness and opportunities such as the Arkansas Diamond Mine Adventure (ADMA).

RTI International released a forecast on obesity in early May warning that 42 percent of Americans may be obese by 2030, which is up six percent from the number in 2010. The new forecast, USA Today reported in a front-page story May 8, "has health experts fearing a dramatic jump in health care costs if nothing is done to bring it under control."

At its Weight of the Nation meeting, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the increase would mean 32 million MORE obese people in the U.S. in two decades. The nation's obesity rate remained around 15 percent from 1960 to 1980, but in the 80s and 90s the rate soared reaching 32 percent in 2000. It is interesting to note that ESPN, MTV and cable television took off in this country around 1980. The CDC now estimates that two thirds of adults and one third of children in the U.S.--fully 64 percent of all Americans--are overweight or obese.

In another USA Today article May 9 on strategies needed to fight obesity, Dan Glickman with the Institute of Medicine said, "If we don't address this comprehensively, it will basically take us down as a society." In the article, a professional "health economist" said the problem would get much worse without a major "public health intervention."

We would like to bypass that and suggest that the ADMA would be a better way to fight the problem. Our unique family recreation attraction will offer fun ways to get people of all ages more physically active. We are raising funds to build a ropes course, an obstacle course and a children's play area. We believe many people, like us, will want to participate in challenges such as these.

As an added bonus, we anticipate hiring a dozen young people to staff our operation. So our business dream will help fight obesity and help the economy by creating more jobs. You can't beat that with a TV remote control. So please go to our website and buy a T-shirt. You will feel better helping us help the country.

A piece of advice

This month $24.90 was charged to our bank account from a company with initials that stand for who knows what. In working to establish our business dream, we've signed up with several organizations and had to give banking information that we usually guard very closely. If you start a business, we have one piece of advice: Take meticulous notes.

When we established our website with Ipage, they said we needed to establish accounts with iPayment and Merchant Resource in order to sell T-shirts and accept credit card payments. Before the website was ready, Merchant Resource (or was it iPayment?) had already charged us $19.95, though the charge on our bank account was from "MTOT." In early May we had the $24.90 charge from MTOT.

Once Ipage said we didn't need these firms to sell items on our website and to accept credit card payments (through PayPal), we sent emails and faxes closing our accounts. We found out today that we had forgotten that we opened a "gateway account" with Authorize.net. It is easy to confuse Merchant Resource and Authorize.net. For example, we have emails from Authorize.net that read, "Thank you for choosing Merchant Resource, a recognized leader in the online payments industry." Merchant Resource, they told us today, is a separate "merchant service provider." Or something like that.

We remain confused. If not for the bill in today's mail from iPayment for $24.90, we wouldn't have been certain who took the money from our bank account. And their bill, by the way, was for the original $19.95 plus an additional $4.95 "regulatory fee." We are sure they mentioned that charge in the fine print when we signed up for their service.

When we called to ask for a refund today, the kind lady said the charge was for the previous month. Of course she didn't know that we just signed up with them in early April and never were able to set up credit card payments through them on our PrestaShop website, but that's water under the bridge, right? Besides, our faxes and emails must have gone to iPayment and not to them. Wait a minute, who were we talking to?

Which brings us back to our tip for budding entrepreneurs: take meticulous notes ... and don't sign up with companies for the ability to accept credit card payments until you are absolutely sure you need them.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette tour

I took Diamond in the Rough to see the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newsroom a few days ago. I had hoped we could meet Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor Paul Greenberg. He was, unfortunately, out that day, but his friendly secretary Paula volunteered to give us a tour.

On our tour of the newsroom, she introduced us to editorial cartoonist John Deering, who was in the middle of drawing his "Zack Hill" comic strip for the May 27 funny papers, but he put his pencil down and graciously visited with us for about 15 minutes. He explained how he draws his comic strips in pencil and then how they get colored.

Here's a photo of Mr. Deering showing his cartoon for the May 27 comics to Diamond in the Rough during our recent tour of the newsroom.

But that's not all. Mr. Deering offered to draw a caricature of myself and Diamond in the Rough. It took him perhaps five minutes to sketch us. Wow, I wish I had that talent, which he said was mostly self taught. Here is the drawing. (That is my camera strap around my neck.) Thank you, John, for the wonderful gift. We will frame it and proudly hang it in our office.

I hope we get the opportunity to meet Mr. Greenberg. Paula wrote a detailed message for us. He's a very good writer. It was his "Redemption" editorial on Chuck Colson in the May 2 edition of the paper that prompted me to take our son down to meet him. Chuck Colson died recently, leaving a big hole in the American evangelical landscape. Mr. Greenberg's editorial is a nice tribute to a great American.

Thanks, Paula, for your wonderful hospitality.

A Weekend to Remember

Our website is up and running, and now we are trying to generate some publicity to drive people to our site to buy T-shirts and golf shirts. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

Speaking of T-shirts, we bought a Ford Focus last July, and the dealership gave us a blue Ford T-shirt. The back of the shirt says "Built Without Your Tax Dollars" below the Ford logo. Neither of us recall ever wearing a shirt that prompted strangers to stop us and say, "Hey, I love your shirt. Where can I get one?" We hope our Arkansas Diamond Mine Adventure T-shirts will generate the same reaction. Apparently a lot of people think the federal government wasted a lot of our money bailing out financial institutions and General Motors a few years ago.

This past weekend we attended a "Weekend to Remember" marriage conference by Family Life. We highly recommend that you and your spouse go to one of these, no matter what shape your marriage is in or how long you've been married. We met couples whose marriages seemed to be in good shape, and we met some and heard of others who admitted that they were on the brink of filing for divorce.

Ford refused outside help, and they're doing fine. GM didn't, and now they've emerged from bankruptcy apparently in much better condition. While we may argue about "too big to fail" and government intervention, we feel compelled to say that it is not a sign of weakness to admit that you and your spouse could use some outside help. Every married couple knows that relationships are tough, and everyone can use some help every now and then.

We are grateful to friends from church--the Lapps and the Spoons--for making this weekend getaway possible. Our two conference speakers, Bruce and Dan, made the sessions interesting and even entertaining. They were very good at weaving personal stories and illustrations with the Family Life conference material to instruct and encourage the 400+ attendees to not give up and to work at improving their marriages. Some of the assignments are not easy, but they are worth it, because if anything in this country is too big to fail, it is our families and our marriages.