What’s in your wheelhouse?

“Stop following the path of least resistance. Life isn’t always going to be easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile. Don’t take the easy way out. Do something extraordinary”

Well, the good thing about the name Wheelhouse is that your business plan can be framed around whatever is right in your wheelhouse. I remember it like it was yesterday. Trevor and I had just gotten settled into our 1st house and our entrepreneurial minds were racing one night over a bottle of wine when the words “we should start a high end sports bar with a rooftop” came out of one of our mouths. To give a little background behind this thought, Trevor and I had both worked in the restaurant/bar industry through college and we knew the ropes and people who would probably be interested in working with us to pull this off. So, operation “find/build a rooftop bar and start on the business plan” was underway. I focus on this specific business idea out of all of the crazy ones we’ve had because the name Wheelhouse actually came from a baseball phrase I stumbled upon when I was searching for a name for this potential endeavor – the example was something like “that ball was right in his wheelhouse”, and I thought to myself “that’s it. It’s perfect!”. Of course, then I started hearing it used all the time at work and, every time, I smiled to myself thinking “one day…”

Long story short, the high end sports bar dream was short-lived. We quickly started realizing what kind of cost and liability we would be looking at and, as time went on, we also realized that this may not really be what we wanted to do long term (Garth Brook’s Unanswered Prayers comes to mind lol).

Then, we stumbled upon the show Fixer Upper and immediately fell in love with Chip and JoJo – their love for one another and what they did together, for others! “We should probably find a way to go be their best friends and shadow them” came out of my mouth…every time they were on the tv. Needless to say, the dream for the real Wheelhouse began.

Trevor was a construction management major with a minor in business and had been my handy, wood-working man for as long as I could remember. I graduated with a major in communications/PR and loved interacting with people, marketing, photography…and Pinterest/home projects! So, where would we start? I could get my real estate license, Trevor could get his contractor’s license and we could find a fixer upper and get our feet wet in that space.

Fast forward to our trip to Austin, TX in February 2016. We made the road trip up to Waco for the day and went to Magnolia Market @ The Silos. Oh, my heart was so full. Trevor and I sat on a bench outside with the “Trust Your Crazy Ideas” notebook that I had just bought at the market, as I wrote “Make Wheelhouse Happen. L+T @ Magnolia Market 2/12/16” on the cover page. Now, I’m not saying our adventure will be exactly like Chip and Joanna’s, but here’s to hoping it will be a beautiful story of our own about how we lived out a dream and a passion as a family, with our own business.

SO – Step 1, as you know, was getting my real estate license! And now, we wait patiently until God opens up the rest of the doors and directs our next steps. Trevor recently landed an amazing job and has no intention of leaving. Renos would be something we would do on the side but, at the end of the day, we took a leap of faith and have started the journey that we started dreaming about years ago in some shape or form…And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

If you’re a reader, I HIGHLY recommend The Magnolia Story and Cure for the Common Life. Those books, along with the Wife After God devotional and a few Andy Stanley sermons, gave me the extra push I needed to take the step toward making our dream a reality. Do you have any self help books that have changed your life? Please share them below. I’m always looking for a good read ?

{Colossians 3:23 – Whatever you do, do it with all your heart as doing it for the Lord not for man}