A Radical Change

Well, yesterday was an interesting day. We finally got the funds together to do some really cool things – High speed internet is coming in on Thursday, a laser printer has been ordered along with Quickbooks Pro (to manage the corporate finances), and we started the paperwork yesterday to incorporate. It should be done by next week, if not sooner.

Just hours after all this, I learned that Kevin had been laid off. He went to work that day, and got blown out of the water by that. So he filed today for unemployment.

I find the timing of this all very interesting. I believe the Lord is in control, and I can see that we were actually well prepared for this. We have been talking for several weeks about Kevin coming home full time to work as my office, finance manager, customer service rep, and technical assistant. But this is not quite how we thought it would come about!

My first instinct was to pull back – I mean, those things that I put in motion were about $1200 – we can live on that for two weeks or more. But then, I really started thinking about our needs. We NEED the printer if we are to produce the promotional materials we need to promote our business (we have a new service line that requires mailers, but not enough to justify professional printing). We NEED the high speed internet, or I cannot develop the two service lines that I feel have the best potential for ongoing income. And for complex financial reasons, we need the incorporation if Kevin is also going to work from home – besides which, that Inc on the end of the business name really does help inspire more confidence than the name without it. It will also force us to be better business managers.

So now Kevin is having to make the transition to working at home. And it is different than he imagined. He has to be self-directed. Sure, I give him a lot of his assignments, but as far as managing the office and finances, he has to do it without me telling him how or when. He has to learn to do payroll, and he has to decide to keep up with it (he will, he is very well suited to this job). He cannot have any down time because there is nothing to do – when you are self employed, you do not wait for someone to tell you, every minute has to be spent doing something that benefits the business. If you do not have tasks that earn money right now, you do things that get you more money later. If you have a sense of ownership in your business, you do these things. If you do not, you just slack and never make it. It is a change for him, but it is a cool one.

The next few months are going to undoubtedly be hard as we all learn a new way of working together. But for me, this is the realization of a long hoped for dream, though I’d have preferred to choose my timing! I sort of feel like I am flying without a net.

But the bills are caught up, we have contracts progressing, and we have a property management contract that we can work on when there is no paying work from anywhere else, so I think it will be hard, but we’ll weather the storm. And I can really see the potential of our business coming into realization.