FreedomWorks

I have not found it easy to be an entrepreneur, but then no one promised me a rose garden.  Many people have tried to discourage me—to tell me that I should give up on what is surely an unsuccessful business endeavour.  They urge me to use the skills that I developed during >30 years of night school, where I finally earned my high school diploma and nine years of college credits.  I always reply, “There is no reason that I can’t do both!  I’ve always been able to multi-task, and being a senior citizen is no reason to stop.”

It is also hard for me to categorize my type of entrepreneurism, as that is the totality of who I am.  The entrepreneurial spirit, if it exists in a dedicated person, suffuses all levels of being.  It is part of an insatiable desire to grow, to learn, and to contribute—at least for me.  When I was 10-years-old, I decided that I would become a writer.  That was my goal, and I worked at it assiduously.  But that part of my life had to be compartmentalized.  At 16, I had to leave school to work and help my family financially.  When I married at 18, I had to continue to work in order to help my husband create a home of our own.  But that didn’t destroy my ambition.

Eventually, I was able to forward my goal by finding work in areas that kept me learning—as a proofreader for a newspaper, then as copywriter in their sister radio station.  During the following years—after we moved from Michigan to California—I changed direction.  I had two small children and was expecting a third, and I wanted to be with them during the day.  My priority at that time was to keep a good, Christian home and raise my children.  However, I had access to night schools in California, and was able to continue my education by attending two classes a semester.  But I also had to help support our family, as construction work did not give my husband steady employment.  So I became a night-shift repro typist of publications at a nearby defense contractor.

Becoming a mother also created a dichotomy as to my goal.  I decided that my real purpose in life was to protect children.  The question then was how to achieve both—the answer was to combine them.  I reasoned that when I was educated and skilled enough to write and be published, that I would make a difference by writing magazine articles or books about children and young people—and the ways their parents could protect them from danger.  I did not realize at the time how the world would change during the next 40 years.
In the following decade, my family grew (I had five children by age 30) and my children were enrolled in Parochial schools.  I had graduated from high school, was attending night classes for an A.A. Degree in English, and had become a technical editor on the same defense contractor’s day- shift.  We had a comfortable home in a nice neighborhood, and my husband was still working in the construction industry.  I had also written 50 short biographies of early California settlers that had been published in a set of five volumes on the History of California.  I thought that our lives were working.

Then some of my children became teenagers.  While I was contemplating how I could protect all American children, I could not seem to help my own.  They had all been transferred to public schools by then, where they were exposed to peers and temptations that I did not understand.  I had always been mature for my age; school had been easy for me, and I loved learning—it was entertainment as well as an escape.  I had never rebelled.

My children did—and at first they chose to do so through their education, which they knew was paramount with me.  They performed so poorly that I actually had their IQs tested, because I did not want to pressure them if they were unable to excel.  But they were all above normal.  Getting poor grades was simply a way to get my attention.  I had been helping them with homework and term projects, but after some of them reached middle-school, a principal counseled me to stop, and to not even ask about their grades or report cards.  Though it didn’t seem to make a big difference with them at the time, it did relieve the sense of overwhelm that buried me.  Then, by the time most of them reached 11th grade, their grades went and stayed up.

Some of my children resented my work; they didn’t feel that they should have chores their more affluent friends didn’t have.  However, in addition to contributing to our family security, I had always wanted to give them the advantages I didn’t have:  good medical and dental care, glasses; Scouts, and Little League; and lessons in swimming, dancing, and karate.  Those were in addition to bicycles, musical instruments, and summer camp.  I don’t know if they have ever compared the pros to the cons. 

I only know that I was too proud to accept Welfare when my husband was out of work.  Instead, I worked two jobs whenever necessary.  After 23 years, we finally divorced, but we remained good friends—enough for him to come for meals every weekend, and for me to handle his funeral arrangements six years later, when none of his family in Michigan offered to do it.

I did not understand the full weight of overwhelm until several of my children started using drugs—some to the point where it affected their lives.  This might seem to be irrelevant to my becoming a business entrepreneur, but it actually was the reason I did so.  With his consent and the aid of a loan on my home, I sent my oldest son to a private school in Provo, UT, that specialized in turning troubled boys around and helping them graduate in a short time.

He called it a reform school for rich kids, because though it had all the advantages of a nice school, psychotherapy sessions, and extended classes with only 10 students per teacher; it was a locked-down facility.  In a year he managed to make up two years of high school with grades of As and Bs, and graduated with a diploma from his original school, free from drug addiction. 
When his exposure to his brother’ and sisters’ drug-use threatened this freedom, I gave him a choice of getting a job and moving out, or going into the military.  He joined the Air Force, and both of us were overjoyed when he graduated from Boot Camp and flew home into my arms.  He was stationed at an Air Force Base close enough for him to come home on holidays.  This turned into disaster, however.  At age 20—18 months later—he was in a single car accident and died on Thanksgiving weekend.

My younger son eventually went to two different rehab facilities, but it was only the second, less expensive one, that made a difference—because he paid for it.  My two younger daughters didn’t accept or try to get help, but their lives weren’t affected as badly as the boys, and they have survived relatively intact.  Their drug problems focused my goal of protecting children toward finding and publicizing solutions to drug addiction.  Only later did I realize that I could do more.

During this period and entirely through night classes, I earned my A.A. Degree as well as a B.A. Degree in Communications.  I had also earned Certificates in Journalism and Public Relations, and was now studying in other areas—including real estate, computers and TV production.  I had changed employment to another defense contractor, and after a couple of years as a technical editor/writer there, I transferred to the Public Relations Dept. and became Senior Editor of the Division’s bi-weekly newsletter and Annual Report, and Contributing Editor to their corporate office in St. Louis.  I had moved my family closer to this Division—to a bigger home where they could have horses.  Unfortunately, the drug problems there were just as bad.

That is when I started my first entrepreneurial business, and I did it to assist some of my children.  One daughter lived in an apartment house several cities south, where a lone van came by every evening with an ice cream bell to alert residents that he was there with videos for them to rent.  He would always be surrounded by people who didn’t want to bother going to a store or getting the videos back to one.  (This was more than 12 years before NetFlix or Pay-per-View had appeared.)

He had a route in that city where he serviced apartment houses, and during the day he would stop in an alley behind businesses with at least 30 employees and rent videos to them.  My three younger kids thought that was a great way to be independent and make a living. None of them really wanted to work a nine-to-five job, especially behind a desk.  Besides, at that time not all of them had earned a high school diploma. 

I had access to used vans at my employer’s semi-annual auctions, and had received some military insurance when my son died, so I agreed to finance and help organize a startup business.  We agreed that if the business succeeded with one van and the first 600 videos, that we would use the profits to buy another, and then another, until the three who were interested in having their own video van and relocating to their favored location would be set up and on their own.  Once I got my investment back, I would have no responsibility or involvement, as I was still working extended hours for my employer.  Meanwhile, we contacted the guy that serviced my daughter’s apartment house and paid him to teach us his process and name his suppliers.  He also sold us a “copy-righted” name (which, it turned out, was already in use.)

Buying the van, setting it up with home-made shelves, buying new releases and older videos, and creating catalogs of the available videos took a lot of time and work for all of us.  At the same time I had checked with a lawyer, found that the “name” we had bought was already in use, and trademarked another name.  Then I hired a corporate lawyer and started a corporation, with the list of board members, etc.

We made and put magnetic signs on the van.  I ordered T-shirts with the corporate name on it for the drivers, as well as invoices, discount cards, etc.  I also arranged for MasterCard and Visa merchant cards for those customers who wanted to pay a bulk charge and not be bothered paying at every video delivery.  We had agreed to offer our service only within our 5-sq.-mile housing tract to start, as that would enable us to reach customers quickly when they called.  We never expected the phenomenal response our service received.

The Convenient Videos, Inc. van sign included “Mobile Video Pickup/Delivery” and our phone number on it.  We didn’t even have to advertise.  Wherever it appeared, the van drew new customers—some would chase the van instead of calling.  Within days we had hundreds of prospective clients, including, unfortunately, some in our city—miles away from the agreed-upon service area.  To serve them, we would have needed another van.  No. 1 Breakdown—we had to notify them that we could not service the city. 

I had learned that for every breakdown, there was a breakthrough—a possibility of better results.  So my strategy changed.  Instead of paying as we go, as planned (and as my husband and I had always done, except for our homes), I used the business as collateral to get a loan for three more identical white vans.  They were larger and had windows along the side, and we installed new blue carpeting in each one, as well as the shelves and exterior signs.  They each held about 750 videos in the shelves we made, so we had to buy more videos and make larger catalogs.  Again, we didn’t have to advertise.  Our local newspaper ran a nice feature story with a three-column photo of my daughter storing videos in a van’s shelves.

I bought more T-shirts and hired several part-time employees—most as drivers/service-people and one to be base radio operator to take orders from my home office.  Each van also had a two-way radio to receive orders.  We were set to go.  I even contacted my employer’s Human Resources office and negotiated a contract for Convenient Videos, Inc. to provide the service to their employees by going to two different facilities for the lunch hour and at change of shift. 
So our business was now active during weekdays as well as evenings and weekends.  That meant more employees.  By then I had 17 part-time employees, with the corresponding paperwork for insurance, taxes and Social Security, in addition to the vans’ maintenance and insurance. My son acted as Manager for the vans’ operations.  I had a great Base Radio operator who handled the videos and invoices going to the right customers.

Then a second, expanded, Breakdown popped up. When we went to pick up videos at the designated return time, many customers were not yet home, so it created late or no deliveries of those videos to the next customer.  In addition, many times when the vans stopped at a home, their neighbors would come out. If they were customers, they wanted to rent videos; if they weren’t, they wanted to sign up and then rent.  Not only did it cause delayed service, but our Base radio operator could no longer be sure which videos were still available. Our service income, which I had learned was already priced too low to make a profit, went down.

At first I was stumped.  Then I discovered the 2nd Breakthrough.  I saw a feature story in the L.A. Times about another guy delivering videos from a van in the Hollywood area.  But he had invented a video lockbox and door bracket that would facilitate delivery or pickup of two videos even when customers weren’t home.  They would leave the brackets on their doors with the lockbox attached.  The driver had the only key to release the lockbox, and he could then put videos in or take them out at the regular service time.  I contacted him, bought a hundred lockboxes and two hundred brackets, and we were back on track—that is, until I tried to buy more lockboxes from him.

This man also had a good day job, and he had received a big promotion.  He decided to stop his second job as a video delivery man.  We negotiated.  I bought the rest of his lockboxes, as well as his patent and marketing rights.  When I redesigned his steel lockboxes to hold four videos or games (and created a slim-line model that would fit behind a screen or storm door), I learned that he had a design patent—not a utility patent.  So I had to apply for a new patent. 

However, the more successful the business became, the more money it lost; because I had not known the correct percentage ratio of business cost/profit.  I should have been charging triple the amount that I was charging for the service.  In addition, my kids were tired of working hard and not seeing instant results in their pockets.  They were also tired of not having fun during their evenings and weekends.  They were used to seeing me work all the time, so they probably figured I didn’t mind.  They hadn’t invested anything but their time and work, and they wanted to stop.  I had invested everything I owned (and was) in the business.  How could I stop?  That was the Breakdown, but as is always possible, I found another way to go.

We notified our customers that we were stopping the delivery/pickup service, much to their dismay, and I kept the lockboxes.   With the help of new investors in the corporation, I bought a video store in a partially developed strip mall, and moved the videos there.  I retained the two employees already working in the store for weekdays, and I worked there during weekends.  I had discovered that the location of the store was not safe enough to have employees alone on the streets, so I also had to give notice to our employees and sell the vans.  (I learned the truth of this premise when I was held up at gunpoint twice, when I was alone in the store near closing time.)

As a Breakthrough I had already decided to promote video pickup/delivery services myself, as the concept had been so successful.  I wrote a 100-page manual for a turn-key operation for video stores; and hired a graphics coworker to design posters, banners, signs, and flyers (using my words) for video stores to display, as well as a polystyrene stand with pockets for sign-up flyers.  I asked him to produce 1ss00 of each.  I also wrote two marketing video scripts—one to accompany a sample lockbox for promotion to a store owner, and one to place in a store monitor that allowed continuous replay to enroll video store customers in the pickup/delivery service.  A friend and co-worker in the video department of my employer videotaped the videos, with the cooperation of my former customers. He edited them, and had 100 each of them reproduced.  I was ready to start promoting my newly created business—still called Convenient Videos, Inc.

One thing that made this promotion time possible, as well as mandatory, was that my employer had closed the two divisions I had worked for, as well as several others.  The economic downturn of those years had closed many defense contractors and other businesses.  I had been laid off, and needed to earn a living.  During every weekday I was available at home to take calls directed from our Yellow Pages ads and our full-page ads in several video store trade magazines.  I also had a booth at the annual VSDA Convention for video stores in Las Vegas.  While I had enough lockboxes at home to accompany videos in sample packages, I had a manufacturer in Texas that shipped lockboxes in bulk from his facility.  I also shipped the Marketing Package for new video store customers from my home.  That included the Operations/Marketing Manual, posters, a banner, signs, a video, and the polystyrene stand, as well as a software disk that I had created for maps and flyers that could be individualized by each store owner.
On weekends I worked 12 hours a day at the video store.  I survived two years of that routine, losing money every month.  The video store was not doing well, as the strip mall had never been completed, half the stores were empty, and the lighting was terrible.  California Corporation fees and taxes were bankrupting me.  I finally decided that the economy was destroying my business and my health.  I shut down my pickup/delivery promotions and sold the store; but I helped the buyers find a new location first, where they would have a chance of success.

I started working as an investigative reporter/photographer for a local business magazine, and eventually worked my way to becoming its editor, even though the salary was ridiculously low.

Eventually, I found a new job (though less prestigious) as a technical writer/public relations representative for an environmental firm that paid me triple my former salary.  Some months during the following year (when the publisher was in a bind because the current editor had resigned suddenly), I also worked after hours as editor of the magazine

All during the previous years, I had never stopped taking evening classes at local colleges or universities.  I now had four Certificates as well as two Degrees, had helped my two younger daughters buy homes so they could get out of apartments, and had published some poetry.  While I was at the magazine, I had also written a one-hour TV script for a documentary that our Publisher had contracted to produce for a local cable network.  It was about Health Care in the Inland Empire of California.  I had written an extensive article about the subject when I was editor of the magazine, in response to Hilary Clinton’s efforts to change our country’s health-care system.

Because I had been taking TV production classes at a college, I also became involved in this production—arranging interviews to be taped, going along on video-shoots to assist, and helping with editing the final product.  I was listed as Writer and Associate Producer in the credits.  The video was aired several times that year.  This experience turned my interest from print media to electronic—which I recognized as much more powerful, in that it reached millions of people.

My TV classes brought my focus back to making a difference with young people and drugs.  I wrote a TV movie script about an 18-year-old boy heading to college, and a 16-year-old girlfriend who was messed up by drugs.  The entire focus was how, because of her addiction, his future was jeopardized.  My team had to produce the first 10 minutes of the movie, and my professor complimented us, saying that it was ready to show to an agent.  Through availability of the technical equipment at the school studio, I was also able to learn to edit scripts on the computer, use cameras to film, and set up lighting and microphones.  We also learned set design.  I used the equipment to write and direct a some 30-minute programs about teens, drugs and gangs.

Then I became an Intern for the Ontario, CA, police and fire departments and directed and edited some of their programs on the same subjects.  I also bought a used motor home to use as a mobile studio for my future projects as an independent producer.  I had wanted to make the type of TV movies that could make a difference with kids and drugs.  Knowing the cost of filming in California, with all their permits, fees and taxes, I knew that meant traveling; and a motor home could hold cast, crew and equipment, as well as provide a kitchen, bathroom, and changing area.

Then I had to stop.  I had a couple of strokes caused by taking Vioxx for arthritis pain for a year.

I was only disabled for a few months before I could live alone again, but I no longer had the energy of a 30-year-old.  I could not work even one full-time job.  Therefore, I couldn’t afford to live in California.  My home had already been sold to pay debts, and my senior apartment cost almost $850 a month.  I couldn’t live there on Social Security and a small pension.

I considered moving into my motor home, but my family was afraid of my independence, and didn’t want me to have the ability to go wherever I wanted.  Instead, my twin sister offered the use of a 700-sq.-ft. place in Eureka, NV,  that a priest had lived in free of charge for 28 years and was now leaving.  She had never seen the place, as Eureka is a town of 400 population, and her husband won it in a poker game. But the priest had added a kitchen and bathroom to the 110-year-old house, and I only had to have electricity installed in the living room and two bedrooms.

There, I took advantage of another Breakthrough—one initiated by the series of Breakdowns.  I still had my original goals of protecting children from drugs and danger.  Though I couldn’t work long hours and was in an isolated area, I still had the Internet.  I also still had the lockboxes, which I had already redesigned to serve as security lockboxes by simply designing new brackets that could be bolted to solid surfaces such as wall studs.  They would now protect children of all ages as well as young people by preventing access to drugs, guns, toxic cleaners, and medications.  They would also protect weapons, valuables and money.  The target market was infinite, and the Internet was the vehicle.

During my college years I had taken web design and html classes, as well as graphic design.  I had learned hard lessons as a business woman.  And Nevada was the ideal place to incorporate and run a business.  I incorporated as a one-person corporation, and got a Federal ID tax number.  I bought a fictitious name permit in the county, and I found a manufacturer that would drop-ship from his facilities.  I arranged for a server to place a web site on, and had the web master assist me in designing the site.  After several checks and corrections, he finally told me it was online and ready to go as http://www.keep-safelockbox.com.

I have what I consider an attractive site, and have added affiliates and AdWords.  Then nothing!!  For months!!  My manufacturer lost faith because of no sales, and I had to find another one and transfer existing inventory.  Only after 15 months did I discover—when I decided to add PayPal to my existing merchant cards—that the original web master had not activated those merchant cards nor my shipper—UPS!  Later I learned that the tech rep who then activated them, did not take my processor, Authorize.net, out of Test Mode, so my site still could not process orders!  I checked through the back door of the server and discovered that more than 400 orders had been abandoned.  That could mean that I lost between $35,000 to $75,000 in orders.

In the meantime, I got a loan on this house, which is now mine, for $30,000.  Half of it was to buy more inventory, and half was used to sign up with a marketing program that includes a TV commercial aired 100 times in cities of my choice, a page on their website, and—after the commercial starts running, a series of 500,000 emails promoting the lockboxes.  In the meantime, I still owe money for the inventory to be released, I need to order more combination locks that now cost triple their original cost, and I’m still spending one/third of my Social Security and pension for business and corporate expenses.  I need another Breakthrough soon!

I’ve diverted myself from my personal problems by signing up with about 10 Conservative websites to vent about the fact that America’s Constitution has been ignored, our country’s freedoms are being eroded at warp speed, our economy has been destroyed, and our politicians all seem to be Socialists.  I’ve signed onto the Marketing Team of www.icaucus.com to serve as a writer/editor/proofreader for their flyers, letters and websites.  Maybe there I can make a difference.