Chapter 10: Affordable Dreams

By this time I had done a lot of different kinds of work so I was fairly confident, but I’ll have to admit the job at hand looked a little overwhelming to me. The building was about 20,000 square feet. It was a two story commercial building. They had blue prints and architects and engineers that needed everything to be exactly to specks. There were a lot of things we had to put in that I was unfamiliar with at the time. We had to install a dumbwaiter, which is like a mini-elevator. I had never done that before! We had to make a safe room with all kinds of tripwires and safeguards in the walls. We had to make a computer room with a raised floor. The room had to be airtight because it had a halon gas fire safety system. I wasn’t sure I could do it all, but I simply smiled and said, “Yes, we can do all that.”
They wanted to pay me hourly so I got $26 an hour and my guys got $8 an hour. I hired some friends of mine and we all got to work. Every other day something on the blueprints changed. We never had the proper resources or authority to just get the job done so it took forever! We were on that job for 8 months! I did other jobs in the meantime, but that is still way too long for me to be doing one thing. I learned a lot, as usual.

One of the things I learned is that there is a big myth among contractors. We seem to think that if the job is bigger than we can afford to cut the price per unit since there will be more work. The thought is that our costs stay basically the same for labor and tools, but we can make more money since the gross profit is higher. The truth is that with increased gross profit there are increased expenses and liability, so the cost per unit should stay the same. If there isn’t enough money in the job to make it worth while then let it go. There will be other jobs.

I also learned how to ask for huge orders and huge amounts of money without blinking an eye. That sounds easy, but most people can’t do it with confidence. When you are building something that costs several hundred thousand or several million dollars than you have to get the resources you need to do such a thing or else it is time to move on. I learned how to argue with people that had a lot more clout than I did and I learned to shut up when it wasn’t worth the fight. I learned how to run a big crew. I learned how to delegate instead of doing everything myself all the time. I learned that a good leader leads by example, not by force.

My guys knew that I wouldn’t ask them to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself, and that I always had their safety and best interests at heart. I also learned by watching some of the sub-contractors on that job that you don’t have to be anything special to do big jobs. I am convinced that I could pay a few hundred dollars to put an ad in the yellow pages for ANY service in the world. I could have no training, no credentials, no experience, and no references and I could get work right away doing whatever I choose to do.

Look around you right now. Do you see all the little things? Do you see the toothpicks, or the screws that hold something together, or the shoes on your feet, or the CD you are listening to, or the chair you are sitting in? Every little thing has a crew of people that put them together and sell them. The guy that actually made the toothpick or the screw is barely scraping by. The guy that owns the company that made these things is rich! Working doesn’t make you money. Money makes you money! So, how do you make money if you don’t have it? How do you make money if you weren’t born with it? If you were like most people and didn’t have a perfect life with a huge trust fund… then how do you get ahead?

Let me ask you this: if you had the choice to work for one month and you could either make $100 an hour with all the over time you wanted, OR you could work the same month, 31 days, and on your first day you would make a penny, on the second day that penny would double, on the third day that would double and so on for thirty one days. Which would you choose? Obviously, it won’t be laid out for you like that in real life. Or is it? If you choose the $100 an hour and work really hard, let’s say 100 hours a week for 4 and a half weeks then you make pretty good money. It works out like this:

40 hours a week at $100 an hour equals $4,000 straight pay
PLUS
60 hours a week at $150 an hour (overtime) equals $9,000
Times 4.5 weeks is $13,000 x 4.5 equals $58,500

Now there aren’t many people who would turn down sixty grand for a month’s worth of work even if you did have to work 100 hours a week for a month, but what if we took the penny?

Day 1: one cent
Day 2: 2 cents
Day 3: 4 cents
Day 4: 8 cents
Day 5: 16 cents
Day 6: 32 cents
Day 7: 64 cents

Week one seems puny at best. Most people give up here. They aren’t getting the payoff they expected. They are unappreciated and underpaid in the worst way. That is less than minimum wage! But, stick around for a little while and watch what happens.

Day 8: $1.28
Day 9: $2.56
Day 10: $5.12
Day 11: $10.24
Day 12: $20.48
Day 13: $40.96
Day 14: $81.92

You know what, maybe I was wrong to think this could work. It is a lot better than last week, but look around. Fast food workers are making more money!

Day 15: $163.84
Day 16: $327.68
Day 17: $655.36
Day 18: $1,310.72
Day 19: $2,621.44
Day 20: $5,242.88
Day 21: $10,485.76

Well, that’s finally something. But, you have worked for 3 weeks and made less than if you had worked for one week the other way.

Day 22: $20,971.52
Day 23: $41,943.04
Day 24: $83,886.08
Day 25: $167,772.16
Day 26: $335,544.32
Day 27: $671,088.64
Day 28: $1,342,177.28

Holy Monkey! I mean what else can you say?


Day 29: $2,684,354.46
Day 30: $5,368,708.82
Day 31: $10,737,417.64

Now that is a chunk of change. Overtime wasn’t even discussed, was it? That is 40 hour work weeks for one month! I’d do that, wouldn’t you? Now, I know you are thinking no one will give you that opportunity. And you are right. No one probably will. The truth is that you can work for an individual or a company for 40 years and you will never make that kind of money. The guy at the top is the guy with the money. He took the risk. He made the investment. He assumes responsibility if it fails or if it succeeds. So, he gets the reward if he sticks with it. The owner will always keep the profit and so he should. You would if it was your company, wouldn’t you? Even if you make a lot of money working for someone else it is only because you are making them more money. If you weren’t, they would get rid of you.

If you want to live like everyone else, then please do. Enjoy your life, watch TV, watch your kids grow, and enjoy weekends and holidays. But don’t kid yourself into thinking you will one day win the lottery and it will all be good for you. Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of contentment in being middle class or even in being poor. You can sleep at night. When you leave work, you don’t have to think about it any more until you get there again. Life is a lot simpler. I think if I had it to do over again I wouldn’t have chosen to chase money. It is never enough. Regardless of what I would do now, I am writing about what I actually did.

I always wanted to be something more. My mother told me that when I was about 4 years old that I was in a cardboard box in the floorboard of our old beater of a car with River and Ann in the box with me. I looked up at her and I said “This being poor thing might be fun for you, but I am going to be rich when I grow up.” I don’t remember actually saying that, but my mom told me that I did, later after I had made some money. I didn’t really care about the things money could buy. I just didn’t want to be poor. I always hated bills that were late and making excuses and borrowing money from people. I just wanted to be able to live in peace without worrying about money. I have never cared what kind of car I drove or what kind of house I lived in or what kind of clothes I wore or what kind of food I ate. I just wanted to have my needs covered.

After the television evangelist job I got a new plan. Up until that time I had always just said “ I’ll do this one thing and then after that I’ll get a real job.” I had been saying that for years when I finally realized I am making a pretty good living off of this. Maybe this is a real job. Maybe Doug was right and this would one day turn into a profitable company for me. Maybe if I stuck with it long enough my penny would double until I was a millionaire. I thought if I could just save one million dollars I could live off the interest for the rest of my life. Then I wouldn’t have to work any more and I could be with my family all the time.

I still owed money on the house I had built. I figured that I would pay off the house and then start saving money until I reached a million dollars and then I would retire by the time I was thirty. Everyone thought it was impossible. Everyone thought I was an idiot for even believing such a foolish thing. Maybe I was, but I did the math and it worked out so I tried. I made a plan to pay off large amounts of money on the principal part of my loan instead of just interest.

Did you know that if you make minimum payments on your home on a standard 30 year loan that you will pay 3 and a half times the original value of your house? It is true. Look at your contract. If you make one extra payment per year you will knock 15 years off of your loan. If you double your payments you will pay it off in 5 years. If you triple your payments you will pay off in 4 years, and if you quadruple you will pay off in 3 years. I paid off my house in 3 years and 3 months! They said it couldn’t be done, but while they were talking about all the reasons it couldn’t be done, I just did it! You can do anything you set your mind to. Make a plan, do the math, stick with it, and it will pay off. Forty percent of homeowners own their homes outright? They don’t owe anyone anything. It is theirs.

Granted, most of them are older, but I joined their ranks at age 25! Don’t tell me I can’t do something!
Back to the story. I was very fast at construction and so I could do it for a fair price. I wasn’t afraid to do anything, so we could basically do everything that anyone wanted. Everything I did was custom so I didn’t charge extra for custom work. I really enjoyed making people’s dreams come true. I was a problem solver. If there was a way to do something I would find it for them and I would help them find a way to pay for it.

There is always money if you know where to look for it. One night I was laying in bed talking to my wife about what we did for people and I said, “I make people’s dreams come true for an affordable price. It is very satisfying. I feel like I have made their homes better and their lives better. Wow, that is a cool name. Affordable Dreams. Affordable Dreams Construction, I like that.” And so it was born. I got a DBA as John Tunnell Doing Business As Affordable Dreams Construction for $11 at the courthouse and it was official.

Speaking of being born, while all this was happening my daughter was born. I have never had medical insurance, partly because I don’t really get sick and if I do I don’t go to the doctor. Lana’s pregnancy was kind of a surprise. You know what they call people who use the rhythm method? Parents!
We started looking into alternatives to having our baby in a hospital since it would be so expensive. I mentioned that I had been born at home. We talked to my mother and then we found a mid-wife. It was a lot cheaper and really better in a lot of ways. Lana was a trooper. She was in labor for 11 hours. She had Lily at home in our bedroom with no medication and she only cried out once. I was proud of her.

It is a helpless feeling to see someone you love in pain and not really be able to do anything to help except tell her it will be ok soon (you hope?). Lily Joy Tunnell was born on July 28th, 1996. I got to help deliver her into this world. I got to cut the cord. It was an amazing experience, a little scary, but amazing none the less. She was so beautiful! She was so tiny and perfect. Her fingers were so small and delicate. Children are miracles. All of the sudden you get a real life object lesson of how God must love us. Once you have kids you realize that there is really nothing they can do to make you stop loving them. Even if they are really bad, you still love them. If they keep you up all night, or crap on you, or throw up on you, if they break things, or cost a lot of money it still doesn’t matter. You come running if you hear them cry. Of course they will mess up. They are babies. Of course they will do things that are wrong. Of course they will be selfish and shortsighted. Of course they won’t understand the big picture, but you don’t love them any less.

It takes years for a child to grow into an adult, but you love them every step of the way. And then it makes sense how God can love us even though we are imperfect and we fall. All of the sudden you realize that we are all just children in the sight of God. Even if we get to be 100 years old we are still just children to him, but we are his children! And he loves us, not because of what we can do for him. He loves us just because.

Having children is also a huge responsibility. You think you give up a lot of freedom when you get married, but it doesn’t hold a candle to having children. They are always on your mind. As the sole bread winner in the house I felt a tremendous responsibility to hurry up and make my money so I could retire and be with my family. I figured Lily wouldn’t remember being an infant anyway; so I could work real hard now and then spend time with her later when she could remember.

I guess I’m an idiot. Lana was a great mother. She did so much research into every possible technique of child rearing and nutrition it was unbelievable. She was always thinking of Lily’s welfare. She was good at that. I was not. I was good at making money. I wasn’t a bad father, but I guess I wasn’t as good of a father as I could have been. I regret that a lot. In all fairness to me I was under a great deal of stress and I had more responsibility than almost anyone I knew. I had grown the company quite a bit.
When Lily was fourteen months old I got a card to the “Best Dad in the World”, which apparently was me. Inside was a positive pregnancy test. We wanted Lily to have a friend to grow up with, so nine months later Benjamin William Tunnell was born in the second bedroom of our house. We used a midwife again and Ben came out much easier. Once again Lana was a trooper. And once again she was a great mother. And once again I ended up feeling overwhelmed and ended up working even more. Ben was born on May 8th, 1998. Both of my children look exactly like me, the boy and girl versions of me. They are fun, cute, smart, innocent, loving, forgiving, and full of energy. I love them more than words can say.

I worked a lot, but all of my free time was spent with my family. We had a lot of fun. I think I feel worse about my qualities as a dad because of the way that Lana talked to me all the time. Nothing I ever did was good enough for her. We had more money and financial freedom than anyone I knew, especially as young as we were. I never hit her or the kids. I didn’t drink, smoke, do drugs, cuss, or sleep around. I never raised my voice to them. I always tried my very best to be the best father and husband I could be, but I guess it wasn’t good enough for her. Kids don’t know the difference. You are their dad and they love you no matter what. I love that about kids. If only adults could learn to be as forgiving and innocent as children the world would be a lot better place. Why does everyone always have to be so hard on each other?

Everyone thinks that their kids are the best kids in the world. So, I won’t bore you with all the details of what my children did at every single stage of their lives. I, of course, love them and think they are the best kids in the world. We did all the normal kid and dad things. So just fill in the blanks for yourself, unless we talk in person one day.

Every year Affordable Dreams grossed lots of money, but somehow it never netted out that much. Every year I got just a little bit more tired of listening to whiny women complain about the smallest details as if they were monumental. Every year I got a little more jaded by people who didn’t pay for work that I had done in good faith. I got tired of people lying and stopping payments on checks. I got tired of working over a hundred hours a week for a lot of thankless people who wanted something for nothing. SO, every year I would raise my prices. My thought was that I would get less work, but make more money per job. The exact opposite happened every single time. Every time I would raise my prices I would get more work, I would get more respect, I would have less hassle, and more referrals. It was so crazy!

I would think that I could spend more time at home with my family if I just raised my prices. I thought I would scare away customers and I didn’t really care if I did. But people want someone who believes in himself. People want someone who is confident that the price they are giving is the lowest price possible... if you care about quality at all. People want to know that there are no hidden costs because you were just up front with them from the beginning instead of selling a job at a low price and then raising the price later. So every year our numbers doubled. It was just like the penny doubling. You work hard for a long time for what seems like nothing and no reward and then if you stick with it, it pays off.

I paid off my house like I already said. I started saving all the extra money. I worked all the time so I didn’t have time to spend it except on business expenses. I wanted to get out of customer service so I started buying junk houses with the extra money I had saved. I got a line of credit from the bank for $35,000 and I used that as a cushion financially in between buying a house and selling it. I also got a business credit card because the amount of cash I was carrying with me every day was getting ridiculous. They gave me a $20,000 limit on my credit card. I got frequent flyer miles on the card so I would get a free trip every $20,000 I spent on the card. I would pay it off at the end of every month so I never paid interest. I have spent over $380,000 on that card in the last few years. So, I have flown to a lot of places for free.

I bought a house that had a huge fire in it for $24,000. I just treated it like it was any other job. We went in and remodeled everything. By the time we were done the original owners bought it back from me for $62,000. They said they loved the house and it was the best house they could get for the price. Plus, we did it so fast they never had to change their address. I had some expenses in the house so I didn’t actually clear all that money, but it is still a nice feeling to get a check for that much money with your name on it! I never get tired of that feeling. It is like you are being rewarded for a job well done.

After that, I bought a house for $34,000. It wasn’t as bad as the burned house, but it was still disgusting! It got nicknamed the “Egg Sandwich House”. We had nicknames for a lot of the jobs we did. It helped us remember them and it was funny to laugh about. Mark was one of the guys who worked for me. He went to look at the house with me before I bought it. It stunk! There was trash everywhere. It was unlivable, but there were people living in it.

While we were walking through the house and trying to act professional about the horrible living conditions in there, a fat two year old kid came around the corner. He was the poster child for white trash babies everywhere. And he was eating an egg sandwich. Part of it fell on the filthy floor. He didn’t skip a beat. He reached down and ate it as quickly as it fell. We were pretty grossed out by it, so later we called it “the egg sandwich house”. It fit so well. It was so disgusting!

Anyway, we got it all cleaned up and fixed everything in it. By the time it sold it was the best house in the neighborhood. It was beautiful. I sold it for $63,000. Getting the check was also beautiful. It makes the whole thing worth while. It is so nasty cleaning a place like that, but knowing there is hope and a payoff at the end will keep you going. People are the same way. I look at the filthiest, most vile people and I know God can make them “the nicest one on the block”... with a little work. That is what he does. He takes that which is broken and makes everything new. Behold the old is gone. It is a new creation. You wouldn’t even recognize the finished product from the original. That is what he has done for me and so many others like me.

Have you noticed that Jesus never condemned anyone for being a sinner? He never accused the prostitute or the tax collector or the drunk or the thief. He never even addressed the fact that they had done any of that stuff. They already knew. Everyone knew. It went without saying. He looked at the woman who had been caught in adultery and simply said “Woman where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you? Then neither do I condemn you...Go now and leave your life of sin.” -John 8
He never denies the fact that we are in sin, nor does he simply dismiss it as if we will be all right if it we keep going the direction we are going. But he never seems to bring it up either. He looks on us with compassion and says, “I can fix that if you will let me.” The question is will we let him fix us? Do we believe he can? Does he own us yet? Is there enough evidence to convince us that he has dealt with someone as bad as us and succeeded? Yes, he has and yes he can, but will YOU let him? You could be the best one on the block, or the neighborhood. It will take some work. Are you willing to go through the remodeling and the interior re-design? It is a little painful at times. Sometimes you feel like everything is hopeless, but that is right when everything is about to come together. Stick with God and he will see you through. It is worth it.

Every year the gross profit doubled for Affordable Dreams Construction. I was well on my way to reaching my retirement goal of saving a million dollars by the time I was thirty years old. We were right in the middle of an extended economic boom. In fact, it was the biggest construction boom in recorded history. Everyone was talking about it. Money was flowing like water. The company was making about $15,000 a week. We had a $2,000 a day minimum for our crew of 8 guys. If you wanted us to do a job for you, you would have to wait for a few days for me to even call you back. Then it would be about 6 weeks until I could look at the job to give you a price. Then it would be about 4 months until I could get to it. That wasn’t because we were lazy. We were just that busy! I was working well over 100 hours a week.

In 2000 I estimated that the company should gross about $750,000 and the next year we could get closer to $1,000,000! It wouldn’t be long now. I could spend time with my family and do what I wanted to do. Half way through the year we were right on schedule. We had grossed around $400,000. We might even beat my goal. Then for no reason at all I started asking the people around me some important questions. At first it was just curiosity. I was thinking I could retire soon and so I wanted to know what other people dreamed of. I wanted to be well informed and have a plan based on sound advice and well-rounded council.

Here are the questions I asked:

1) What would you change about your life if you knew for a fact that you would die tomorrow at this time? If you are in school, would you still go? If you worked, would you go to work on the last day of your life? Would you make peace with your enemies? Would you tell your family that you loved them? Would you make peace with God? Would you ask for forgiveness or would you let your heart stay hard? Is there anything you would want to squeeze out of your last day of life that you haven’t done yet? What would you do? I want to know.

2) What if you had a week to live? What other things could you do in a week? Would you get your house in order? Would you make a will? Would you tie up loose ends? Would you make a last chance attempt at something you believe in? Would you beg for your life? Would you bargain and grovel? Or would you be at peace? Would you be proud or ashamed of the life you had lived? When you had to give an account for your life in just one week, is there anything you would try to do to make it right while you still had the chance?

3) What if you had exactly one year until you died? That is enough time to get everything that is undone in your life in order. It is even enough time to make a change that is legitimate and maybe even make a difference. So, what would you do? Would you be fearless? Would you go skydiving or bungee jumping or scuba diving? Would you cherish every moment, knowing all the while that you were living on borrowed time?

4) Finally, what would you do if you knew for a fact that you had 5 years to live? If it was no question. It wasn’t the way we think now where it could be today or it could be 80 years. What if you knew you had exactly 5 years? In five years you could change the world if you tried hard enough. You could leave a permanent mark. You could be remembered forever. It might not be in your time or on your terms or even in your lifetime, but if you tried hard enough you could do it. So, what is it that you believe in enough to live and die for? What do you feel so passionately about that you would sacrifice everything for it? Is there anything like that for you? Anything at all?

The answers I got were so disheartening that I could hardly stand it. Almost everyone wanted to get as many loans as possible since they wouldn’t have to pay them back because they would be dead already. They all wanted to party. It was almost all selfish wants and ambitions. It was all emptiness. Sadder than that was the fact that not one person, not even one, was doing what they wanted to do with their life! We had all just let life happen to us. We had made excuses. We had gone astray. We had lost our first love! We had all “grown up”. So, I asked more people because I thought that maybe it was just in my circle of influence that hopelessness reined. I found that life is what happens while we are making plans. The amazing thing is that we remain blind to our own shortcomings.

So then I turned the questions on myself. What was at first casual curiosity became deep self exploration. What would I do? What will I do? All I ever wanted to do was help people and put a smile on God’s face. Is that really what I was doing? I mean I wasn’t bad. I meant well. I was honest. I worked hard. I did all the right things and avoided all the wrong things. I was disciplined. I was talented and I was using the only talents I had to do the best job possible. I had tried to get a job as a missionary and as a pastor. They wouldn’t take me. I did share my faith all the time with my employees and my customers. I tried to set a good example. I tried to be a good father and husband. I tried to keep my life balanced.

But, had I missed the mark? Was I just like everyone else? Did I want to be remembered as a man who could fix homes and who made a lot of money? Was that really all I wanted to be? And what if it didn’t happen the way I planned? What if it took another ten years before I could retire? What if I became spoiled with all the money and couldn’t live without spending thousands of dollars a week? Had I become what I hated?

And then I thought further. What can I do? How can I make a difference? Not in another world or another lifetime, not if I were born a king or if I were rich and powerful, not if I was a saint, but what can I do right here and now with the resources that I have? What can I, John Tunnell, do as a 27-year-old husband and father of two with limited resources and limited talents? What do I even want to do? I was tired of doing service work. I didn’t want to break my back for money anymore. I was already feeling the pain of that. I had about two years where I couldn’t feel the back of my legs or my lower back. They were just numb. I still worked, but it was only by pure will power. I didn’t want to do sales. I was good at it, but I was tired of pleasing customers. They can be so petty and cruel. Even the nicest people will stab you in the back and verbally abuse you if it will save them a few dollars.

(I want to interject here and say just be kind to the people who work for you. Tip your waitress. She only makes $2.13 an hour. Remember her name, she remembers yours. The guys putting your roof on will work ten times harder for you if you make then something to drink or buy them lunch. It is hot up there, and it is hard work! The guy working on your car will be less likely to take advantage of you if are polite to him and treat him like a professional. He knows things about your car that you can’t even pronounce! If you don’t think that service people deserve your money, then go and do it yourself. Oh wait! First of all, you probably can’t. But even if you can, you don’t. So pay them and be nice. You will be happier. They will be happier. You will have better service. And the blessing will pass on to others until it comes back to you again... just when you need it the most.)

I didn’t know anything about computers. I didn’t want to go back to school. I didn’t have a degree. I didn’t want to manufacture anything. I have done that and it is hard work. I didn’t want to sit in an office and die inside. I didn’t want to manage something for someone else. Being self-employed will spoil you. You make your own rules and your own hours. Granted that translates to the fact that you work all the time and answer to everyone, but you still know that the final decision is yours. I thought long and hard. I would like to not have to work at all (wouldn’t we all), but I had a family to support. I had to make money somehow, but I wanted it to be something worthwhile. If it was any of the stuff I just mentioned I might as well keep doing construction and just make the money I was used to making.

On the 4th of July 2000 I figured out what I wanted to do. I had always loved music. I had always loved working with young people. I had always loved preaching the gospel. I was really good with people. Everyone that worked for me were in bands. I had been in bands. I was always giving business advice to them on what contracts to take and not to take. I saw the fields ripe and ready for harvest. I felt that the average person wanted to do the right thing and that if it was convenient for them to do the right thing, they would. However, if it were convenient and acceptable to do the wrong thing, they would do that as well. The average music venue or club is a bar that has bands play so that people will come and drink alcohol. What if I had a place that was all about the music? What if I had a place that had a good influence on the youth of the city? What if the music was uplifting and the atmosphere was uplifting?

You see, musicians these days are more powerful than presidents and politicians and preachers. Whatever the bands do, the people follow. If they dye their hair and tattoo their bodies so do the people. If they protest the war, so do the masses. If they do drugs, or drink, or smoke... well you get the point. What if I could do my part to change that? What if I had the opportunity to meet and rub shoulders with the bands that influence the world? If I could let them see some light, maybe they would share that light with the world. Now, I knew this would take time. I knew it would be hard. I knew that I wouldn’t get any credit for it. I didn’t want to do it for the credit. Someone had to be the guy that shared his faith with Billy Graham. Who was that guy? I don’t know. But God does and I’m grateful that he did.

My brother, River and I came up with an idea for a club that would be all ages, all the time. We would have no alcohol or smoking. We would be anti-drug. We would help the youth of America to grow up and be better than we had been. We could have band rehearsal rooms and a recording studio. We would leave room to expand so that we could eventually have a record label for bands that we believed in and possibly other ventures as well. We researched and looked at other clubs. We made some rough sketches of what we needed. I called my realtor and told her my plan on July 4th, 2000. I told everyone I was going to build this club. Almost no one believed me. Most people laughed at me to my face, but some had the decency to do it behind my back. Everyone thought I was crazy.

I started looking at commercial property. I had no idea it was so expensive! I looked at a broken down building in downtown Arlington. All the windows were broken out. Nothing worked. It was condemned. It was like one of the junk houses I was so used to fixing up. I thought I could just write a check and then fix it up and be open within a few months. They wouldn’t sell it to me because they wanted someone to buy it that had very “deep pockets”. It was a two-story building, but they wanted me to make it into a three-story building. They wanted the bottom floor to be retail, the second floor to be office spaces, and the third floor to be loft apartments. I would have had to do extensive asbestos abatement that would be VERY expensive. And to top it off they wanted $539,000 for it!

The next place was about the same except they wanted $975,000 for it! So, I looked at building the building from the ground up. First of all the city wouldn’t let me have the zoning that I needed anywhere I looked. They just didn’t want it in their city. I looked at a 3 acre patch of grass. It was $1,500,000! I was about ready to give up. I had been looking at leasing a building, but even that would have been about $20,000 a month just for the lease!

Then one day, my realtor (who always works miracles for me) found a building on Division Street that would be perfect. It was a little over an acre of land. It had a parking lot, kind of. It had a building that was 12,500 square feet. The zoning was right. It was under contract to be a porn store, the biggest around I heard. The neighbors protested and the realtor backed out to save her reputation since it was in the papers as a scandal. The owner just wanted to dump it quickly. I looked at it on Saturday, August 26th. I thought about it over the weekend. She wanted $325,000 for it, but she was willing to owner finance $200,000 of it for seven years. On Monday I said yes. We closed on Thursday. It was unbelievable! I had saved up $139,000 and I wrote a check for $125,000 as a down payment. My bank account hadn’t been that low in years, but I owned a huge building. I didn’t have any time to waste. I started work right away.

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