We were lucky to catch up with Adam & Lexy She recently and have shared our conversation below.
Adam & Lexy , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How do you think about spending on things like coffee when times are tough?
Like many children growing up, I was made well aware of the Ben Franklin quote, “a penny saved is a penny earned”. My parents and just about any other well meaning adult concurred with this notion. As I matured from youth to adolescence to adulthood, I felt I had conformed well to this concept of saving money. I felt I had a decent amount of savings in correlation to my income level and what it took to financially sustain my growing family.
Yet, as the years went by throughout my tenure as Directors of Operations for a fairly large small business, I began to realize there seemed to be very little correlation between saving money and accumulating wealth. I was reminded of a core lesson I was taught in an insurance class I took in my early 20’s while in between jobs. Putting your saved money in the bank in the form of a traditional saving account guarantees money loss when you add in inflation. It was simply math! If the bank guarantees you .05% annual yield on the money you leave with them and inflation turns out to be an average of 2%, you just lost 1.5% of the money you ‘saved’ that year!
So, you could say, ‘a penny saved is penny earned’. But, here’s the reality is, a penny saved in a bank for a year is worth less than the penny you put in at the beginning of the year. And, if you save all your money in the bank long enough, your money will end of nearly worthless. However, the bank will have accumulated even more wealth because they would have utilized the money you gave them to accumulate wealth for themselves all the while guaranteeing you long term money loss.
The moral of this story, Ben was wrong. Maybe he owned stock on a bank?
One of my main rules of business: Don’t save money. Use money wisely to give yourself and your money the best opportunity to accumulate wealth.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
“The Restaurant”… this wasn’t just our own Chinese/Taiwanese mom and pop small business rooting up during the mid 80’s in the fast growing South Atlanta suburb of Peachtree City. It was life. All was connected to it. And…,”the restaurant” was what I knew I would do with my life.
That is… until, as a confused, hard-headed 21-year old seeking purpose and vocation, I met Lexy. My folks were getting up into their 60’s. Many years going on 7 days a week/363 days a year schedule left them tired and unprepared in transitioning their business model into the future. The family business was failing after sustaining nearly 20 years of up and down success.
Lexy’s family ran their own business as well. It was a talent development company that specialized in recruiting, training and industry placement for actors, models, singers and dancers nationwide. They were in the midst of a major transition and needed help with the move.
So…this hard headed 21-year-old started began his new vocation and purpose which did not at all resemble what he, ‘knew he would do with his life’. Lexy and I married a couple years later as we were well into help to run her family’s business in talent development.
As the years past, we continually faced many challenges as we sought to sustain and grow the family business I married into. The recession of 2008 was hard on us. 14 years after beginning the career I had never planned for, I found myself back in a similar place I was when I was 21. The family business I married into was now failing. My mother in-law was approaching her 60’s. She and her 30 year old business model was tired and worn. It was an ironic deja-vu of sorts.
So…I was faced with starting over completely at the age of 35 seeking new vocation and purpose. However, Lexy and I already knew what we needed to do; what I always thought I would do, ’the restaurant’. And, this is when She Craft Co. came to be.
We went into this new venture with every desire to run a successful small family business. Yet, with family of 2 growing boys ages 6 and 3 and a baby girl not yet 1 year old, we wanted to be certain our family life would not be neglected for business sake.
Lexy would be the head chef as she had the artistic vision for the food and the palette and passion to create recipes that would not only set us apart from others but, most importantly, represent our family’s deep southern, eastern and western traditions. We understood this would be an odd mix that would not typically work as a restaurant concept. However, it was exactly who we were as a family pursing what we believed was what we were supposed to do.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Like many children growing up, I was made well aware of the Ben Franklin quote, “a penny saved is a penny earned”. My parents and just about any other well meaning adult concurred with this notion. As I matured from youth to adolescence to adulthood, I felt I had conformed well to this concept of saving money. I felt I had a decent amount of savings in correlation to my income level and what it took to financially sustain my growing family.
Yet, as the years went by throughout my tenure as Directors of Operations for a fairly large small business, I began to realize there seemed to be very little correlation between saving money and accumulating wealth. I was reminded of a core lesson I was taught in an insurance class I took in my early 20’s while in between jobs. Putting your saved money in the bank in the form of a traditional saving account guarantees money loss when you add in inflation. It was simply math! If the bank guarantees you .05% annual yield on the money you leave with them and inflation turns out to be an average of 2%, you just lost 1.5% of the money you ‘saved’ that year!
So, you could say, ‘a penny saved is penny earned’. But, here’s the reality is, a penny saved in a bank for a year is worth less than the penny you put in at the beginning of the year. And, if you save all your money in the bank long enough, your money will end of nearly worthless. However, the bank will have accumulated even more wealth because they would have utilized the money you gave them to accumulate wealth for themselves all the while guaranteeing you long term money loss.
The moral of this story, Ben was wrong. Maybe he owned stock on a bank?
One of my main rules of business: Don’t save money. Use money wisely to give yourself and your money the best opportunity to accumulate wealth.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Because of my preconceptions with regards to banks, getting a traditional bank loan to start my business was not much of a consideration.
We had a some personal funds set aside, retired parents and a fairly wealthy aunt and very wealth uncle. We had planned for a $50k shoe string budget to complete a 3-4 month build out and get open so we could quickly pay off the family debt.
We had $20k of personal funds set aside, the remaining $30K would come from 3 family members at $10k each. Not only would we be saving money in bank closing cost and higher interest rates, we would be gaining financial and moral support from close family who had a personal stake in what we were doing.
It seemed like a great plan until, we ran out of money 3 months into an incomplete build. We came to realize we had underestimate budgetary needs and time to build. We could write of novel on all the, set backs, challenges and struggles it took to get open. The short of it is, we carry on with a lot of help, fortitude, ingenuity and short time credit card debt!
What we thought would take $50k and 3-4 months ended up costing us closer to $130k. It took about 9 months for us to get our certificate of occupancy. Looking back, it was not only a miracle we were able do what we did in the time we did, it was a series of miracles and we are most grateful.
Contact Info:
- Website: shecraftco.com
- Instagram: shecraftco