What the Cook's are up to in 09

If you have ever been around Eric very long you know that he is very entrepreneurial minded. Since we have been together he has always dreamed of owning his own business. Over the years his desire has grown. He loves working for United and that will not change, but he definitely has the drive to own his own business. For the past 5 years we have been researching and praying, basically trying to decide what exactly God has in store for us in this area. I am usually the one that is more hesitant and Eric sees the big picture and the rewards. After reading our pastor's book, "The Blessed Life", I really felt God telling me that it would be okay and it was time to expand our horizons. We have looked at several different franchise opportunities and there was one that we kept coming back to, however, the initial investment for that one is larger than we are comfortable with at this point in our lives. We could go in with partners, but that is always scary too. We for sure would not want to risk any friendships by going into business. That brings us to where we are now. For the past year Eric has been talking about buying some DVD rental machines...kind of like the Redbox machines that you have probably seen at grocery stores or Walgreens. Eric has a good friend that owns his own grocery store in a small town in TX and they have discussed it on many occasions. A few months ago Eric got in touch with a company that we can purchase the DVD kiosks from. We just needed a location. We would love to put them in Market Street since they have such a huge guest count daily. We went further and attended an online seminar to learn more about the company and how everything worked. It enticed us more to proceed. Eric talked to his RVP and got approval to place the kiosks in a couple of the DFW Market Streets. In order for him to have one in his store I would have to be the main contact, which is not a problem at all. We were so excited and because of Eric's affiliation in the grocery biz they can get us an enterprise rate on the machines. Great News! Since there are already a few kiosks in Amarillo and Lubbock stores Eric was advised to check with another person in the corporate office to make sure that there were no contracts in place preventing anyone else to place the DVD rental machines in the stores. This is where we receive our first bump in the road. Apparently, they are now looking at going with someone that can service the stores company wide. Our question now is: do we try to expand our vision to be the ones to service all of the stores or do we look elsewhere? The thing is we were okay with purchasing 2 and then getting more as we got a feel for it and made sure it was going to work out for us. Doing more is scarier and not to mention...a lot more money upfront. We would also need help because we sure would not be able to go to Lubbock or Amarillo weekly to maintain our videos. Please pray for us to hear God's voice and help us to decide where to go from here. We are just not sure how to proceed, however, when we were told no...or what sounded like no, we both wanted it that much more. That tells us that we are not going to give up, but the good news is...we are in this together :)