(Since you guys have expressed that you dont like suspense, I decided to post this whole) Just before the Olympics of 96, my twin Taiwo Lawrence and I fell in love with the host city, Atlanta, GA, ATL as we love to call it. This love affair started from the airport, on our first visit. We had been living in Los Angeles and Miami, yet the peace and serenity of Atlanta captured our attention. We decided to move there, a move that shocked our cousins and friends who thought we could never leave LA/Miami for the slow country type living of Atlanta. Well, we were tired of the decadence of those cities and needed something new; besides, LA and Babyface had set up shop there and music was flowing from the dirty south... Christmas of 94, we decided to visit a second time, this time to fact find, check out potential neighbourhoods that we could live in etc etc, it did not work out like that, instead of just checking things out, we decided to stay. We tossed a coin for who should go back to LA to grab our stuff and my brother was elected. We took only what could get on a plane and settled into a nice town house in Sandy Springs. After a few months, money became funny. Our cheque from a major publishing deal (for a Sony project we just completed) did not show up, after numerous calls, back and forth, we were unable to pay the rent for two months. We struck a deal with the landlord and asked that we should be released from the lease and make arrangements to pay what was owed to date, once we were back on our feet, he agreed. We packed our stuff into storage and moved into a close friends apartment. Our friend was rather nice and accommodating, but it was still an uncomfortable situation because we had no money. We had spent all our savings to facilitate the move and was now down to pennies. Some friends chipped in, but unfortunately this was not a good time for most of them, so still no real money in sight. We had called on our mother several times in the past and felt this time, we needed to fix this on our own. One morning, I walked across to a shopping plaza across from where we were staying, sat down by a water pond and just pondered. I heard a voice in my head say- look at all these dirty windows in this plaza, someone needs to clean them. So I sat up and looked at the windows and indeed, there were a bunch of them that needed cleaning. It was a fairly large plaza and I thought, hmm, if we could ask the shop owners to clean their windows, we could make a little change. I got up and ran back to meet my brother. I told him, GOD has told me we should wash windows. His response was, windows? I said yes, we will go into the shops and ask to clean their windows. He got up and we plotted out how we would do this. Our friend also stayed in Sandy Springs right on Roswell road, a very busy road, there were other businesses there, so we decided to split up, Taiwo was to walk up north on Roswell road and I was to prospect the shopping plaza. We had no money, nor any experience on how to clean windows, but hey, it was an inspired idea. I remember the excitement, the confidence and the zeal as I walked into the first shop in the plaza, with a huge smile- Good morning, hope you are well, was wondering if my brother and I could help with cleaning your window?. Shop owner- Oh sorry, we dont need that right now, thank you. Slightly disappointed, but not giving in, I walked into the next, and the next and the next, all with similar responses in different words. When I walked into the 10th shop, the owner nicely said to me, let me help you out son, we have a guy who has a deal to clean all the windows in this plaza, you might want to try another plaza. I thanked him. Now left with the dilemma of accepting what this man said or what GOD told me, no contest there, I walked into 5 more stores and the 6th one was a hairdressing salon. After my spill, the man there said to me, oh how nice, please come in, I have something to show you, he took me to the back of the shop and showed me this huge mirror and said if I could clean that too, I have the job. I smiled, told him we would be back the following day to clean, and as I was hastily walking out, he asked me how much?...Oops, I had no clue, I hadnt thought about that yet, as though to help me out, he said, we paid the old guy that did it, such and such, I will throw in an additional so and so for the mirror. I could not believe it, wow, our first client. I did not bother with the rest of the shops there, I ran home to share with Taiwo. Taiwo had experienced similar, but was able to bag an architectural firm and 2 other businesses. A friend of ours gave us a loan to buy the cleaning stuff, based on what we were anticipating in payments. We got the stuff and walked with the buckets et al to the plaza, and nearby businesses, then took a bus to the architects and cleaned. We did such a good job that the owner of the architectural firm invited us to clean his house. We did and unfortunately, accidentally broke one of his wives expensive china peacocks. They were so gracious, refused to take any money from us and we promised them we would come back and clean for free to make up for it. We made enough money to put a deposit on another apartment in Sandy Springs, pay off all our debts and had change, all within a week. We now went on to rent a car, make some fliers and started driving into other neighbourhoods. We did not get ONE single new client. We went back to clean the architects house for free, he was blown away, we had gotten our publishing cheques now and showed up in a Jaguar instead of a bus. The beauty of this story is *Because GOD said you should do it, does not always mean it will work at first try *Because GOD said you should do it now, does not always mean HE wants you to make a business out of it... *Because GOD said you should do it, always yields success, if you obey! ≈KDL®™©2014 #sorryitsabitlong
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 09:26:13 +0000
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