Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Being "self-employed" is like be unemployed.

....according to the banks and job applications anyway. If you are planning to be an entrepreneur there are a few things you should know about "living the American dream" (and by that I mean owning a house.) I've never had a JOB in my life. And by JOB I mean J-ust O-ver B-roke, where you work just hard enough so you don't get fired and they pay you just enough so that you don't quit. (thanks Mike Ferro for that quote) Growing up I could never picture myself in a job role. I never wanted to do anything except for be my own boss, creating my own future. I greatly underestimated the strength and perseverance it would take to make it a reality. Jeremie happens to be the same way, with both of us full-time entrepreneurs it makes it close to impossible to buy a house the "traditional" way. Here's the truth guys, right now in the crazy world of borrowing $$ you have to show 5 years of taxes returns on a business for it to be considered as income for the banks to approve you for a mortgage. Even if you have those 5 years to show, most businesses are not profitable enough in their first years to even qualify for a loan. I wouldn't recommend even trying to live off of a new business before 5 years. Most of  you probably have a day job or two to fill in the gaps while your getting your businesses off the ground. Mine is lululemon. I love that it gives me the flexibility to build my business and matches my values, but it's not enough income to qualify for a loan. Here were our options:

1. Find a house for $25,000 or less so that we could buy it in cash.
2. Find a family member or friend that would co-sign for us.
3. Find a family member or friend that would mortgage the house for us.
4. Find a place to rent.

We so blessed to have a family that supports our entrepreneur lifestyle. They are going to mortgage the house for us. Over that past six months we have looked at so many houses, we lost three in the bidding war and with Baby T on its way we were getting anxious. Last post I put it out there that we would own our new house by June 30th.  Never under estimate the power of writing out SMART GOALS, we got our house!! YES YES YES!!!


Perfect little project house for us, wait until you see the inside.... Lots of work but we think we can have it liveable in 2 months.  Since this is a short sale we are also estimating that it will take 3x longer to close...so up to 3months!  You know how we like time pressure. hahahahaha! That will put our move date right around the time Baby T arrives. YIKES! I'll be updating our progress. It's going to be a fun adventure!

On another note, our gym is rockin!! Mostly because of all the hard work that Jeremie has been putting into it....I've been pretty useless the last couple of months. We hit a few bumps in the beginning but are continually adding 5-10 members each month. During the transition of Jeremie and I taking over we lost a few members. Normal when any business goes through a huge change. We were kind of anticipating it. When we got to The Box it was a hobby, a hangout and the members got use to treating it like their home gym. Jeremie and I knew that if we were going to make it a profitable business we needed to treat it like one. That was what the owner wanted as well, so that's what we did, we structured it. Jeremie also does all the programing and has a very different style than what the members were use to. Our goal with programing is to develop nonspecializing athletes, we cater to athletes, we attract athletes that want to push themselves and constantly get better.  The people that create our gym family are amazingly inspiring people to be around. We love them and can't wait to keep growing the family. 

Again, with the baby coming we're on a tight schedule to make the gym work. The truth is, the gym barely brings in enough income to put gas in our cars right now. AdvoCare supplements our income, but these past two months have been rough with my pregnancy, I've been slacking big time and our numbers are reflecting that. We know that with AdvoCare and the Box we will both be full-time trainers/stay at home parents soon. We also have a lot faith, specific goals and a lot of perseverance, in the past that has been a perfect combination.
Yoga at the CrossFit Box, totally my creation! (the one thing I can take credit for at the gym) Makes my heart smile. Laura from Yoga 101 Rocked our world!
I'll be re-doing my goals this week since it's the half-way mark on the year and we've accomplished the three biggies for this year already! I'm so inspired to create the next adventure of our lives!

and just so you know.....
I've stuck to my Goal of crossfitting at least 3X a week during pregnancy. This is at 16.5 weeks.