314 580 3455 | Randy Dinwiddie The Story of the DealMaker Part 2 First Business Failure Kathryn | Dependable Brokers

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Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4

SECTION 2 - THE FIRST BUSINESS, FAILURE, AND KATHRYN

CHAPTER NINE: 1992 - COLLECTIONS 1

In 1992, I started my first real business. It was a collection agency and repossession company.

One of the first doors I walked through was Central Bank in Osage Beach. A young collector named Tony Halderman had recently started there. I got an opportunity to repossess a car for him.

It was one job. But one job can be the beginning of an entire life.

Another person who made a tremendous difference was B.J. Miller, a woman associated with the Phillips 66 operation around the Lake. She gave me an opportunity. She showed me an office in the back and basically said: "This office is yours."

And she meant it.

I bought a new telephone. I hooked it up. And suddenly: Collections 1 was alive.

No investors. No fancy corporate headquarters. No guaranteed salary. Just a room, a telephone, and somebody determined to make something happen.

For the first time in my life, I had something that belonged to me. That feeling was enormous. I finally had something nobody could simply take away from me or use to tell me how I was supposed to act. I had control over my own direction.

I felt secure for perhaps the first time in my life. Not because I was rich. I wasn't.

I still had to work nights at Fasco in Eldon, Missouri, because Collections 1 was not steady enough to pay all the bills.

During the day, I was building my business. At night, I was working to survive.

That was entrepreneurship.

CHAPTER TEN: THE LAKE TAUGHT ME ABOUT BUSINESS

The Lake of the Ozarks is beautiful. It can also be an unforgiving place to build a year-round business.

The Lake is seasonal. When summer arrives, businesses can explode. Tourists arrive. Money starts moving. Opportunities appear everywhere.

Then November arrives. And from approximately November through May, surviving can become exceptionally difficult.

I learned very early that being good at something is not enough. You have to understand cash flow. You have to understand cycles. You have to understand that the money you make today may not be there six months from now.

That lesson followed me through much of my business career.

When one income source dried up, I learned to look for another one. Adapt. Work. Survive. Keep moving.

That became part of my business DNA.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: A MINISTER WITHOUT MUCH OF A PULPIT

Something else important happened in 1992. I received my minister's license under Pastor Bill Johnson at Calvary Baptist Church.

I never spent much time behind pulpits. That did not seem to be where God intended most of my ministry to happen.

Instead, God kept bringing people across my path. People who were hurting. People who were lost. People who did not understand God. People who simply needed somebody willing to talk with them.

I began to understand something: A pulpit is not the only place a person can minister. Sometimes your life is the pulpit.

It is how you treat someone when there is nothing they can give you. It is what you say to somebody who thinks there is no way forward. It is remembering where you came from after you finally get somewhere.

Over my lifetime, I believe God repeatedly sent people into my path so I could share the Gospel with those who were hurting or simply did not know. And people were sent into my path to help me too.

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE LESSONS DIDN'T COME CHEAP

My first marriage lasted seven years. It did not work out. And I have to accept much of the responsibility.

I was an extreme workaholic. I had a wife. I had two boys. And I did not have enough time for any of them.

I was obsessed with keeping businesses alive, getting through slow seasons, chasing the next deal, and proving that I could succeed.

I learned something painful: People you love cannot live on your good intentions. They need your time.

When you never spend time with your wife, you create a space in your marriage. And eventually someone else may fill that space.

My businesses continued running hot and cold. Every year brought another lesson. The lessons were incredibly valuable. But they didn't come cheap.

By 2000, I felt like I had lost everything. My wife. My house. The daily life I had known with my children.

I was broken again. But this time something came with the pain.

Understanding.

I began to understand why things had happened. I could see where I had failed. I could see how work had gone from being something necessary to something that consumed nearly everything else.

That understanding was painful. But it was important.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: NINETY DAYS BROKEN

For about ninety days, I was deeply broken and sad.

I kept trying to salvage a marriage that I eventually came to understand was not supposed to continue. I kept trying to force open doors that seemed to keep closing.

And finally I felt God saying: Enough. Enough pain. Enough hurt. Enough instability. You have learned. You have listened. Now get up. There is still much more for you to do.

That was not the end of my life. It was the end of one chapter.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: JUNE 2001 - KATHRYN

Then came June 2001. God sent me Kathryn. And my life changed forever.

For twenty-five exciting years, Kathryn became far more than my partner. She was my best friend.

She pushed me. She stretched me. She encouraged me to learn things I never would have learned without her.

She did not simply accept the man I already was. She helped me grow into more.

Kathryn became one of the great prizes of my life.

After so much instability, I discovered what it meant to share life with somebody who was truly beside you. We learned together. We experienced things together. We grew together.

And she taught me something important: The right person does not merely make your life easier. The right person can make your life bigger.

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