The hardest year of my life. My wife (Bec) and I started the year off great! We spent the first 12 weeks of the year ticking off bucket list items, we were about to launch our first company and were pretty comfortable financially. In April everything changed....... We officially launched our first company! Being young and ambitious, in my mind it was going to explode from day 1. I even stepped away from a 6 figure PT business because I was so confident that it would work straight away. I had convinced everyone! People were talking of my success before I had even launched it. I even remember speaking with the bank about a feature for the company and them telling me so next time we see you, you will probably be a millionaire. The complete opposite happened. It didn’t explode and because we were having to spend money on the marketing side and living expenses we were going backwards financially real fast; maxed out credit cards, personal loans and all savings! But being the optimist it was all going to be ok it was just a matter of time so I stuck to it. The reality was a little different. By time we got to June, we were becoming financially ‘rooted’. I remember going on a cruise that my parents had paid for, Bec and I had literally less than $100 for the whole 7 Day cruise. Most weeks we would get paid and within 30 mins already be back to a few dollars in the account with bills remaining. There were many days that we had negative in our account that left us unsure how we were going to buy food that week, I had to sell half of our house hold things to put food on the table. We had debt collectors calling us 10-20 times every day asking when they are going to be paid. Bankruptcy was at the front of our mind and things seemed to be getting worse real fast. We had weeks where all we could afford was a loaf of bread and some peanut butter. One week, our phones and internet were cut off and we couldn’t afford to get it re connected for a little over a week. Because most of my work is online, I needed to use the internet! I couldn’t even afford a coffee to get the free coffee shop wifi passwords so I had to sit in the Bunnings car park each night and access their free wifi which is 4 hours by the way! Our marriage became very tense we would fight about everything. We even spent periods in separate rooms and a few times spoke about going separate ways. This went on for 3-4 months before the last straw was drawn. If I didn’t change something fast I was going to lose my wife and be forced to declare bankruptcy. In August I went back to Personal Training to try and create some order again and focus on rebuilding our life from the financial damage. The quote ‘Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life’ was as real as it could get. We have not given up, in fact I would say we are actually going harder at our dream life now. We are smarter, clearer and much more disciplined from the experience. We could have quit, we could have thrown in the towel, we could have said that it’s all to hard but we didn’t and we wont. I am so proud of my wife through all of this. She has really been my rock and only she truly knows and has seen what we went through. Bec has grown so much and is an absolute inspiration to me, I could seriously not have continued with out her support. The funny thing is I am confident that both of us would agree we wouldn’t change a thing from last year. The lessons we learnt, the knowledge we gained and the experiences we had together through 2014 are priceless and will be with us forever. This sticks with me moving forward ‘Its not failure, its unfinished success’. To be Continued............. #Realtalk https://freeby25.wordpress/2015/01/12/the-hardest-year-of-my-life/
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 05:28:58 +0000