Memoir: The Start of A Business

Coming home from my cult year in Indy, I was broke. Well, truthfully I had 28 dollars to my name and I was exhausted. My family had sent me money all year, but many of us working in Indy had schemed to find ways to make enough to live on. That 28 dollars was what was left from working twelve hours at the polls for a primary election in the inner city of Indianapolis. I was not going to spend it on just anything after working that hard to earn it.

So I knew I needed to find work. I had also been writing for some publications published by IBLP, and this experience had really stoked my interest in writing for a living. But I knew that to write was almost impossible for a 20-year-old without a college degree, so I decided I wanted to work in publishing somehow; to learn the industry from the inside out. I was praying that I could find a job in publishing before I even left Indy.

Within two weeks of returning home, my prayer was answered. I applied for a job in the local paper that my Mom found for me. It was a start-up publishing company who were scanning old public domain books into text for digital publication (yes, in 1995!). The rest is history.

My Mom gave me her sewing room (a small 8 x 6 room with windows overlooking the valley below) to use as my office. I had a wooden desk, a Costco office chair, a metal filing cabinet, and an electric typewriter. No computer. No Internet. And 28 dollars.

From that small office, real/brilliant, inc. has become a small corporation, a powerhouse brand that I’ve lived on for the past 15 years. Yes, this August will be my 15-year anniversary. I still can’t believe it.

And of course, very little of it was because of me. Sure, I showed up and did the ordinary marketing and the ordinary work, but all the extraordinary things that have happened the past 15 years are God’s work. He is a very good manager, in case you’d like to hire Him.

The first day after Ages Software hired me, I needed a computer. A very dear friend heard about my plight and drove her personal computer out to our house. Diana’s computer got me through the first three months of my new job until I had saved enough for my own, albeit, used computer. Dave S., our trusted neighbor and friend, went with me to look at a used laptop in a nearby town. He ran the initial diagnostic tests to make sure it worked okay. Suddenly, I was in business! Dave’s son, Nathan, helped me sign up for my first Internet account, Juno, and didn’t laugh too much when I chose sensibility as my user name. And my friend, Russ, helped me fix that computer a few times when I really needed it to work and it wouldn’t. And Gary L., another friend already in publishing, introduced me to my next freelance client, Harvest House Publishers, soon after I had started work for Ages Software. And everything I have done since those first two years would NEVER have happened had it not been for the help those people gave me.

I used my Mom’s sewing room as my office until 2002, when I moved into my own townhouse with a spare bedroom for an office. And then once I got married, my office space has expanded exponentially (as have all my books and files and cabinets and tables and computers!). I still miss that small office, stacked full of tables and computer equipment. I miss the view of the Willamette valley from its windows. I miss opening those windows on a cool spring day and listening to the sounds of the outdoors while I worked.

It was a Good Thing. I am still reaping the benefits today. God is there for those who seek Him.

Tagged as: brilliant, Good Things, memoir