One Year.

One year ago we committed to being self employed.
It is our one year anniversary of being on our own.
We are celebrating!

We had big plans to take ourselves on a trip to Cancun.
But you know how we are about never actually doing things like that.
Instead we have an afternoon date with the kids, to see Santa, go to dinner and let them pick out a gift for one another.
It will be fun, and funny and a perfect representation of what the entire year has been like.

I can remember the day well. The 1st day Jake didn't "go" to work.
I'll admit, although I had all the faith in the world that my husband could do it, it seemed insane to leave a paying job as an attorney with benefits for the unknown world in this economy.
We had lived a simple life on only a few hundred dollars a month our 1st year of marriage, but that seemed like a different life, one where we didn't have two small children relying on us and our mortgage was 10 times less. The only thing that kept me confident was that we had saved 6 months of expenses and I thought it we really scrimped we could likely make it to 9 months on it. It was without question the most stress we had been under in our entire marriage. And it was Christmas. We had already purchase over the last few months quite the plush Christmas for our little family. I remember I considered taking back all the presents before they were opened and replacing them with smaller, less expensive items from the Dollar Store. After all the children would not have known any different. I didn't but in retrospect maybe I should have.
We quickly learned what a volatile world being self employed was.

Jake started his internet advertising company about one year out of law school (2007). It didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary. He is the king of everything, in case you didn't know. He had been into stocks and day trading a bit though law school, and it just seemed like another one of these things that would be more fun and small profit.
Our 1st goal had been to make $30 a day with it. It was a means to paying off our law school loans faster.
Then.
It grew and grew.

In the fall of 2009 we realized that the internet business had grown enough it might be able to support us completely. We started talking almost every night as we would fall asleep, every dinner time, every drive in the car, about how we could make it happen.

It meant insecurity- but we decided that no job was really that secure in 2009.
It meant private health insurance- which no matter how much you pay is horrible.
It meant cutting back and saving more- but we can never spend our money anyway.
It also meant freedom.
Freedom to go on vacation when ever we wanted.
Freedom to arrange our days how we wanted.
It meant that we could be at home together, all together, while our children were still home.
It meant Jake would turn his hobby into work, and who doesn't want to get paid to do their hobby?
So we went for it.

One year later, we are confident we made the right choice.
Jake managed to earn 30% more than he did working at the law firm alone.
With about 21 more vacation days, shorter work days, and too many mid afternoon play dates with his family.
And the firm he might still have been working for has almost collapsed, with most of his old co- workers being forced to leave for more work elsewhere.

One surprise is that he has been able to work as an attorney still and works for somebody in town about 10 hours a week too. It does still interest him, keeps doors open for the future, and makes all that schooling not seem to irrelevant.

Not surprising is how many people have asked Jake to show them how to make a living from home. It is not as easy as he makes it seem. It was almost a year- working two to six hours a night before he was making anything worth taking to the bank, and we put up thousands of dollars month after month to grow our company.

Another surprise is how much the flexibility has made it easier to serve in our callings and ward. Without the flexibility I don't know how we would manage two time consuming callings and two small children.
What surprises me most it how well I have adjusted to the ups and downs. And how little it all stresses me out on a daily bases now. It has helped me have more faith... in many things.

Not surprising we compliment each other well when making decisions and analyzing how things are going with the business. Jake does 97% of the work of course. But I spend a few hours a week doing the accounting, billing, and taxes. Jake- although he thinks he is being realistic, is completely overly optimistic. It works well when combined with my critical realism. Turns out sometimes a spouse is the perfect business partner.

Before we married, we talked about some things we wanted that we felt would make our family stronger. One of those things included not having more than a 10 minute commute. We said it was important to work were we lived, for our family and our community. "Work were we live". We laugh at this now, we didn't know how literally we would meet this goal. We only hope we can meet all of our goals this literally.

Of course the internet is always changing. We hope to be able to change with it and live this life for ever. Things are going better than almost ever, and we even hired our 1st employee this month so we fully intent to.

But if in the future, we have to return to the normal life, of day jobs, bosses, and pay stubs, we will always remember what a blessing this golden year all together with our young children has been.
It has been without a doubt our favorite year ever.
We are so grateful to our Heavenly Father for blessing us in this incredible way.

I joke that He knows Jake is the better parent and has helped to make this work for us to our children can learn from their better parent more. I joke. But I am dead serious.

Here is to one year.
And many more exactly like it to follow.