To Him Be The Glory
So picture this. Its 1995 and my newlywed wife Glyn Ann & I just sunk our entire life savings, just shy of $1,000, looking at you Dave Ramsey, into a 100-year-old, outdated, concrete slab of a building and the 57 student martial arts students that came with it. The same old building I stumbled into as a lanky 13 year old who just wanted to box. Safe to say, we literally were young, dumb (by everyone else’s estimates), and broke. With too few brain cells to have formulated a back up plan and barely scraping in $20,000 a year between the two of us. I’ll never forget the midnights in the garage of our tiny house running a window-tint business just to get food on the table and keep the electric bill paid while Glyn Ann worked nights as a pharmacy tech and spent the days in nursing school. Working 25 hours a day and eating beans and rice was just what we had to do.
In 2011, we decided it was time to open our 2nd corporate location 90 miles from our hometown. I’ll add here for the record books that Glyn Ann is a saint. While she held down the fort in Abilene, keeping the business and our 3 kids thriving there, I spent Monday through Thursdays camped out in the 10x10 office space, sleeping on a Walmart foldout futon, and taking ice cold sink baths. Every other week, I’d take one of our kids, then 2, 3, & 11, with me to camp in the office while I taught classes. We went from 0-100 students that first year. Also got iced into the office with my 2 year old for a week, but that’s besides the point. Those days are fondly remembered by our kids as the sandwich-on-the-floor days.
Flash forward to December 2022 and Glyn Ann & I are just getting off of the monthly Zoom meeting with our CPA. It’s confirmed. Our first million dollar year. 27 years later. Over 1,000 students, 2 corporate locations, 4 affiliates, 4 states, hundreds of failures, setbacks, DIY midnight renovations, throwing out a well-loved, but obsolete curriculum, and a few world titles between the two of us sprinkled in there. How kind of God to take two love-struck dumb kids with no money and a big dream from a small town business that no one saw the big picture in, to a life of abundance that not only supports us, but many families around the country.
To Him be the Glory.
- Chip