Shortly after 9-11, I was laid off from an advertising agency where I was the studio manager. After several months of trying get rich quick in real estate investmening, I had to get another job and ended up at a small apparel company.  We made popular, screen printed, designer t-shirts. Without giving too much away, I found myself reading the bible every day at lunch to get through the workdays. Just coping.

I’m not sure if I was extremely paranoid back then, or if the atmosphere was oppressive, but eventually everyone left, so I have to imagine it was the latter. During the time I worked there, reading the bible, reading Andy Stanley’s book, coping, thinking up new ideas for shirts that were starting to get more and more offensive, being treated poorly and sacrificing my self-worth, this idea that I could do something positive and fun started germinating in my head. I even came up with a name, sketched the logo in the margins of Visioneering, and added a tagline to it. (scan will go here)

And then it was time for me to move on. Our kids had been going to Haven Fellowship Church near our house with my wife’s mother and her husband. The days that the owners of the company were gone were the worst. My mind would spiral out of control and I was not very healthy back then. I called on the pastor at Haven and we sat in his office and prayed for deliverance. A few days later I left the company, signed up with Aquent, a creative staffing company, and have never looked back.

The idea for almightees started back in those darkest of days and I couldn’t do a thing towards making it a reality. Except wait. And wait. And something wonderful happened during the waiting. I began to heal. God helped me help myself, I got into a recovery program and therapy for my troubled marraige, I started taking care of myself and things were going better in my career as a graphic designer. And every once in a while, the idea for almightees would creep back into my head and I would start thinking up cute taglines for the shirts. Or I’d sketch some more logo ideas. I was always looking for a company out there that was doing anything like what I had in mind. I never did find anything close.

One day I heard Dr. Dobson talking about an apparel company’s new catalog and the risque imagery they used in it. I knew it was time. I knew this idea was bigger than me right then. I started considering the business model I would pursue. I started concepting and researching. I found some sites that helped me write a business plan and a plan on what I wanted my life to be like. I got organized with help from my wife and her Franklin Covey training.

With her banking contacts we approached a local banker for a Small Business Loan of $20,000 and we were approved during lunch. A few months later, in August 2008, we started upgrading computers, purchasing new software, locating printers, signing agreements with apparel wholesalers and contracting a web developer.

Last Saturday we launched the website. That next Wednesday we sold our first three shirts to our dentist, Wayne Kerr! Monday we got our first sign up on the website for the newsletter and yesterday we got our first comment on the blog!

A friend of mine told me that the definition of a faith based business is: “Doing something so great that it is doomed to fail lest Christ be in it.” I just can’t imagine where I’d be if Christ wasn’t in this with me from the beginning.

So competition is either going away or it’s not growing. And that’s pretty good for us. And if we do the right things and really show people that we care about them in the tough times, that should translate to good things when times get better. And that should be easy, because that’s who we are.

I told someone at work today about the inspiration for almightees and where I was in my career when it all started. He said it was nice to hear someone talk about being in a bad place and digging themselves out of it. I think I’ll share some of that story tomorrow.

See you then.

This past Saturday we went live! Check us out at www.almightees.biz and start spreading the word. Our next printing date will be February 28th. Pre-order your shirts today!

We found Terence through Resource Nation, a resource center developed to help you find support for starting and running your own business. It’s from Jeff and Rich Sloan who founded Startup Nation and it has been a great resource for us.

We’ll be adding more good stuff to the blog here as we finalize all the systems and gear up for our marketing campaign. Come back soon and let us know what you think.

Welcome to almightees.

The whole idea for almightees started over 6 years ago. It’s taken a long time for things to get to where we are today. Starting a line of Christian apparel as an alternative to apparel out in the mainstream today seemed like a good idea, and it seemed a little crazy. We kept looking around and we noticed there wasn’t anything out there like what we have envisioned for almightees. This January we decided to get busy. You’ll see what we’ve done at www.almightees.biz -check it out!

It’s pretty simple actually, we sell t-shirts. But behind all that there’s a lot more we want to tell you about. You may have actually read our vision statement or our about us page. You may not have. What we want to do here is talk about where we’ve been, what gave us the idea, how we started our business and what happens along the way. We also want to inspire people: to come along with us, to start something for themselves that they’ve been thinking of doing, to find something that they’ve been missing, to overcome something they may be struggling with or to just start talking.

So we’re going to share our secrets here. We’ll tell you about doing paperwork, creating our logo, writing our business plan, finding people to help us with the website, getting startup funding, budgeting, upgrading our computers, going to trade shows, meeting people and all we’ve done so far and where we’re going. We’ll also tell you about great people we’ve met, great conversations we’ve had, wonderful things that have happened to us and struggles we’ve had and difficult decisions that we’ve had to make.

We hope it gets you thinking. And talking.

This is our passion. We want to help you find yours. We have big ideas and we want to share them with you. See you soon.