The Letter That Changed Our Family

Nine years ago I was feel­ing ready to take the leap into self-employment.

My wife, Nikkie — she wasn’t feel­ing so ready.

It was dif­fi­cult to talk about. It was lit­er­al­ly painful to dis­cuss. Our first child was about 18 months old. Nikkie and I were both work­ing. And I was con­vinced it was time for me to wave good­bye to my steady pay­check. Nat­u­ral­ly it wasn’t an easy con­ver­sa­tion for a cou­ple to have.

It’s com­mon to get stuck in cycles with dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions like this one. We were stuck. I was strug­gling to speak the words in my head and my heart. So I even­tu­al­ly took to paper, writ­ing Nikkie a short let­ter about why I felt ready to dive into entre­pre­neur­ship. This let­ter became some­thing spe­cial to us over the years.

Fast for­ward a num­ber of years. We had the let­ter in the glove box of one of our cars. The car got flood­ed and totaled. We lost near­ly every­thing in it. Includ­ing the letter.

It was real­ly tough know­ing some­thing this spe­cial to us as a cou­ple was lost. But over time we grew to accept this. 

Then — after years of think­ing this let­ter was lost — we found the letter.

We were so excit­ed to find it! We found it tucked away in a keep­sake box that we could have sworn we checked years ago.

I re-read it a few times. Nikkie read through it too. It felt great hav­ing it ​“back” once again. We were relieved to be wrong about where we had stored it!

Two things struck me as I re-read the let­ter for the first time in many years.

1. My writ­ing was ter­ri­ble! I’m glad I’m improv­ing on that front. 😁

2. My ​“why” for start­ing this thing called Focus Lab hasn’t budged. Below is an excerpt from the let­ter. I spent some time talk­ing through the num­bers show­ing we could pay our bills with the client work lined up. Then I went to this:

Last­ly there is some­thing that I think out­weighs all of the num­bers. I want this! I have a dri­ve to cre­ate some­thing (a busi­ness) and grow it into some­thing great. Great for you and our fam­i­ly. Great for employ­ees. Great for God’s King­dom. Great for Savannah.

As I write this nine years lat­er I can say this is still dri­ving me each day.

I’m so grate­ful for my bride who put her sup­port behind this crazy idea. This dream of build­ing some­thing great. This ​“dream of the world we’re gonna make.”