A wonderful addition....

As we continue on...

     After pulling myself up I wasn't content with where I was so I set off to work towards a goal. My end goal is to open a business (preferably a restaurant) and prosper. I do this goal to not only help further myself but also those around me that have helped me during this great journey we call life. I never forget those who help me even if it is just giving me a compliment, because sometimes that's all I need.

    I began my next semester of college and started working more diligently towards opening a bakery with my friends Tiffany and Stephanie, they would prove to be two of my closest friends during college. We worked through the nights and weekends, doing everything from sketching out possible bakery layouts and signage, to building menus, to writing the business plan. We traveled around Oak Ridge, TN (where they live), looking for the perfect place to open up shop. We finally found somewhere that was somewhat affordable, the only downside being it was previously a finance office and didn't have even the slightest inkling of restaurant readiness.

     So we began the build out needed, we were fairly broke during this time and therefore did a majority of the work ourselves with the help of friends and family. This took almost a month to complete but in the end it was worth it. We opened up on April Fools Day of 2012. It was no joke. This would begin a very important chapter in my life and would provide me with more hands on learning than college would ever come close to teaching me.

     to be continued....


If anyone has any comments or wants to share a story of there on, I invite you to do so! I am always on the look for others who wish to share their experiences and lessons.

Thanks,

~Ben

Working Through It

    Today I want to talk about a situation that happened to a young man as he was nearing graduation and didn't know quite what to do.

    This young man didn't particularly know what he wanted to do with his new degree or what path he would take. He had tried in the past to make strides in his part time job and perhaps even form a niche role that he could fill post graduation, thus turning his job into a career. This didn't look like it would quite pan out for him so he decided to band together with two of his close friends from college and start to form an idea for a business that they could start up. The first idea they had was to start a restaurant, well this idea seemed to be in the distant future as they were all pretty broke (as most college students are). So they started doing what any good entrepreneur would do and they shifted their focus.

     With their focus now shifted they started to work on the idea that maybe they could start up a new business that would fulfill some of their wants to have a restaurant and be successful. That's when they began work on a bakery/cafe concept. They worked tirelessly through the nights both after school and on the weekends. All the while they were working on internships for their respective degrees. The young man quit his part time job, and decided to work more at his internship as it was paid and showed promise. Then tragedy struck and without notice the young man's internship was told to lay off some new hires in preparation for a shift in management. In a blink of an eye the young man was jobless.

The young man mentioned here was me, I faced these very real and very common problems that an upwards of 53% of college age people and college graduates face in these hard times. I would like to elaborate more tomorrow on how you can pull yourself up from a seemingly bottomless pit of problems and negativity.

~Ben