Funny how things work out

Ever since we can remember, my two best friends and I, or "The Triangle" as we're known to our families, have dreamed of working together in the professional world. Oak has always been interested in financial fields, Rob has certainly found his niche in the world of computers, and I’ve always gravitated to the visual side of life. Although I’ve been working in the drafting and engineering industries for all my working life, I’ve always wanted to step out on my own creative pathway. Rob has done a few different things but has always had a brilliantly sharp mind which he has, until now (in my estimation anyway), never really been challenged. I’ve always thought of Rob as being more intelligent than I am. He’s quick-witted and very determined when he WANTS to be. He’s been involved in customer service (phones), restaurant management, and even pizza delivery. Oak, as his nickname implies, is steady, sturdy, and well rooted. He’s very practical, very loyal, and very conservative. By way of contrast, I’ve always judged myself to be short-fused, emotionally driven, and passionate about just about everything I do. I’m always either way up or way down. I’m a go-getter, yes, but I’m often only half cocked. For me, this combination usually translates into lots of new beginning projects and few actual accomplishments. Between the three of us, though, we’ve got drive & motivation, longevity & perseverance and of course intelligence & education. What a great combination of traits to begin a business venture! Combine these attributes with a GREAT business idea, and a couple of unbreakable friendships and what have you got? You have the ingredients necessary to realize our life-long dream. If we really wanted to, I think the 3 of us really could quit working for the man…any man. We could become the MEN. We could be partners and support each other like a well balanced tripod.

The closest we ever came to this in the past was when I first returned from Portugal in 1997. Rob had returned from Russia 2 months earlier and was working for a medical supply delivery company. When I got back, he helped me to get a job there too. While we spent the majority of our working hours in separate delivery vehicles, we spent a LOT of time messing around on company phones, sneaking out on joint deliveries, and taking lunches together. If nothing else, we received our paychecks from the same employer. That was good enough at the time. Although short-lived, it was fun while it lasted. Oak, at this time was still in South Africa. Oak and I have also had brushes with “the dream”, as he has used his marketing skills from his years of experience in trade shows to help me with my own trade show booths for LittleLDS. Those are some of the most fun “working” experiences I’ve ever had.

When Oak got back from South Africa, we all fanaticized over the idea of working together…just the three of us, on our OWN business venture, but none of us were ambitious enough at the time to really do anything about it. Instead, we all did what everyone else does. We did what is natural to do in our society. We spent our spare time hanging out together and the other 2/3 of our lives sleeping or working to make someone else rich. I’ve been fighting that ever since. I’ve always hated working FOR someone else. I’ve always done it, however, because that’s just what you do. It’s responsible…especially as a husband and father. I’ve brought the dream up a few times to the guys over the years, but mostly just in passing or in jest. I think over the past 10 years I’ve probably had about a million different hair-brained ideas of how we could all work together on our own, but none of those ideas have really been serious enough to merit any real devotion.

So, independently, the three of us have pursued our respective paths. Oak has used his education to specialize in selling and marketing of insurances, securities and some financial planning. He has recently, through some unforeseen opportunities, discovered an interest and knack in property management. Rob has not only climbed a corporate ladder from a customer service tech to a world-traveling computer programming instructor, but has pushed himself to become multi-certified, and technologically creative. Through necessity in his work, he has taught himself to invent solutions to problems with the computer skills he has acquired.

Busy with our respective lives, the three of us don’t have a whole lot of regular contact with one another. Oak makes fairly regular visits down to Vegas, usually between 2 and 3 times per year. Contact with Rob tends to be more cyclical, and we’ve been in the “out of contact” stage of the cycle for the last several months. I recently called him to see how things were going and as we were catching up, the subject of Tyed Art and LittleLDS came up. After hearing him describe some of the programs that he has designed for himself in his own work, I thought I might probe a bit to find out what types of programming he’s capable of. If I didn’t know Rob, this might have sounded like a job interview, where I’m looking for an independent contractor to work on my project. That’s exactly what it turned out to be. It turns out that Rob knows a ton about the very stuff my program is made to do. Although Charles did a fantastic job designing the LittleLDS original software, there are many things that I’ve wanted to improve and/or change from the very beginning. Charles is a brilliant programmer, but he’s extremely busy, and a bit difficult to work with. He talks over me when I’m trying to give him an idea of what I’m looking for creatively and artistically. He tends to try to talk me out of functionalities that I think would be beneficial for the user, when I think it is in HIS best interest to do so. I may be misreading that part of his personality. Charles has been a great instructor, and friend, but it’s time that I took a bit more control of MY project. I want to be able to meet eye-to-eye with my programmer. I want to have greater creative license and I want to be able to make things happen on a better time table. Rob seems to offer those options better. Charles, not being LDS, also seems to lack a bit of real-world practical knowledge of the LDS community which may be part of the reason he resists many of my modification suggestions. I want my software to be MAC-compatible so I can reach more customers. I want some of the functions to run more smoothly than they do now. I would like to change the overall development process for the development of each new CD so that it’s not so cumbersome and time-consuming. I think Rob will be just the man for the job.

Rob is going to be coming down in the next week or so as a “business trip” so we can work out the details of our new working relationship (if in fact we can do it). I’m VERY excited to finally be able to work with one of my very best friends. Now I’ve just go to work to get Oak involved or develop a new idea that we can all work on together. Shouldn’t really be too tough, right? I mean, I’ve got million ideas rollin’ around up there.