We are so happy that you have stopped by.  We really appreciate your being here.  Once you have read this short biography you will understand why we are so passionate about everyone having multiple sources of income.

Before they met, they each had successful careers.  Chuck knew from the very beginning of his working career that he wanted to have his own business.  He learned the value of leveraging his efforts.  Chuck’s father was a dentist and Chuck realized that anytime his father wasn’t seeing patients he wasn’t earning money.  His Dad was a respected professional but he still traded time for dollars.  Because he worked for himself, he didn’t get paid vacations or sick leave.  He only earned income while he was with a patient.  While he was in college Chuck interviewed the owner of a plastic bag manufacturing plant.  The owner explained to Chuck that he chose to be involved in a consumable product because he wanted to sell to the same customers over and over.  Every time his customer sold a loaf of bread they would need a new bag in which to put the next loaf.  Chuck took that lesson used it to evaluate opportunities with which he was presented.

Deandra’s dad operated a wholesale and vending business in western Kansas and she grew up with business discussions being a common topic of dinner conversations.  She also grew up working in her father’s business.  When she graduated from college, Deandra went to work for the Federal Trade Commission as a Consumer Protection Specialist.  Her job was to ensure that lenders were complying with the Truth-In-Lending Act and that businesses were not engaged in unfair and deceptive practices.  That job in combination with her family’s business operations provides her with a unique perspective on business.  She believes that family-run businesses have an obligation to not only their owners and their employees but to the customers.  Businesses have a moral obligation to treat their customers fairly.  The Golden Rule for a business is the same as the Golden Rule for individuals, treat others the way you want to be treated.  After a few years at the FTC, Deandra was ready to get back to the business world.  She got involved with an Apple computer store, which she ended up owning.

Chuck and Deandra have been married for over 30 years and for all of that time have been involved in business together.  We enjoy working together and we enjoy the challenges of owning and operating a small business.  When we were first married Deandra owned a computer store and Chuck worked for her as sales manager.  After she sold the store, Deandra did computer consulting while Chuck started a new company selling juice to institutional accounts.  Soon that new company took over most of Deandra’s time and effort too.  In 1995 we were forced to sell that company because our bank pulled our line of credit.  That was a difficult time for us because we lost a business that we had spent 10 years building.  In the next phase of our careers Deandra went to work as an IT Manager in corporate America.  Chuck was certain that he was unemployable when really, he knew he would never be “happy” working for someone else.  So, he continued down the entrepreneurial path.

We are currently involved in two separate endeavors.  One, a holdover from our juice company days, we provide juice-based beverages to a major retailer under their own private labels.  In this endeavor Chuck teamed up with the company that bought our juice business.  This enables us to work effectively with very little fixed overhead and we bring incremental business to both our partners in the production of the products and our retailers by expanding their offerings.  He did a terrific job of making lemonade out of lemons.  Now, over 20 years later we have a profitable specialty business with no bricks or mortar.  We can concentrate on what we do best serving the customer.

Our other endeavor (for the past 24 years) is we’re part of the marketing team for a consumer products company with sales of over 2.5 billion dollars a year and growing at over 8% per year.

The one thing that we have learned thus far in our life journeys is:  It is important to have multiple sources of income.  Things happen in this life and what you thought was your ticket to financial security all of sudden is not.  When that happens, it’s better not to have all of your eggs in one basket.  We have been there, done that, and will never let that happen again.

Chuck and Deandra on Safari in Africa