Supporting Your Husband (Even When You Think He’s a Little Crazy)

Excited to have my very first blog post written by my husband on the blog today! I hope that you enjoy his post and his funny sense of humor!

My name is Jonathan and I am married to the woman that you all love and adore- Kathryn. I am not a writer and by this point my wife has probably found at least 45 errors in this post, but I had something that I wanted to pass on to all her readers.

All my life I have been an entrepreneur making money in the most interesting ways I could think of. In high school, I spent half of each day at a vocational school so in the cafeteria I was able to cut in line to get food. It was a pretty sweet deal, but what made it even better is that I would charge other kids a small fee to go and wait in line and get their food for them. Needless, to say I ate for free most days due to the money I earned.

Then I went off to college. Pensacola Christian College had stringent dress codes and all kinds of rules about life in general. Believe it or not, a lot of people would show up and had done little research into the rules. The result was a thriving market for clothing that was in regulations, the other half of this equation was that the senior class was leaving and wanted nothing to do with shirts and ties. This combination allowed me to buy the clothes at a really low price and then sell them to incoming freshmen and double my money or more with minimal effort.

After that, I started fencing (I sold things for other people for a small fee) electronics. Once people knew I could get certain things for them, they asked me to keep an eye out for specific items. I would get a price they were willing to pay and then obtain that item, anything less than the asking price I got to keep and vice-versa. Needless to say I had a nice little system going.

Some of this took place after Kathryn and I started dating. In fact, most of it never really came up until the day I found out what I was going to do when I went home over the summer: clean dryer vents. Somehow someone had an uncle’s, father’s, friend that did well for himself cleaning dryer vents and I was interested in doing it too. There was a website and everything, and it only cost me around $250 to get started. Kathryn gave me a strange look and told me that it was probably not a good idea, but did I listen? Nope, I got my bucket, brush, hose, and instruction book and went on my merry way. Kathryn graciously did not make fun of me, just smirked and encouraged me.

This, of course repeated itself a couple times with things I tried to get into later like nutrition sales and giving plasma. Kathryn just supported me with that “I told you so” smirk, not actually saying “I told you so” until years later after the sting of failure had passed.

This has been a huge blessing to me in our marriage, because one of the most important things for me is providing for my family. In the military, pay is based purely on rank and outside of that some people need to seek extra sources of income. In this, supporting your husband is huge. Of course your opinion matters, but we are guys we won’t listen. The key is not to throw it in our face when it falls apart. My wife is right more often than wrong (Shhhhh don’t tell her I said that), but she supports my decisions no matter what.

Out of all my hair-brained ideas one finally seems to have the potential to pay off- my newest venture that I named, “Nomad Development.” I spent years talking about making apps for IOS and Android and I sold most of my extra “toys” to fund my first app. Guess what? I have barely made a tenth back of what I put into my first app – “The Traveler.”

To be fair, I was disappointed. I never thought I was going to be rich, but after almost a year of making that first app I was at least hoping to break even. Now almost a year later, I am getting ready to launch my new game, “NovaDrive” on Android in October, and I have three more projects in the works for 2014. All thanks to the loving support of my wife! Will I make the next Angry Birds? I guess we will see, but even if it flops completely, I know that my wife will be sitting next to me smirking telling me, “I’ll get them next time.”