Vision and Perseverance

As you follow my blog and my Facebook page, I hope to share with you our adventures along the way with Garden Anywhere Box.

Today we were invited to a luncheon with members of the Oklahoma Venture Forum. For those of you who have been with GAB this year, we were invited to be guests at  the OVF meeting at the Governor's mansion in April. We entered a contest for new small businesses. We did not win because our business was "too" small, but we were invited as honorary guests to be recognized. We were very humbled and excited. We got to listen to keynote speaker, Tom Love, owner of Love's Country Stores, see the mansion grounds and meet the governor.

Flash forward to today...We again met with member of the OVF for a luncheon at the Oklahoma Boathouse. We were hoping to find investors for our business. Because of Larry's macular degeneration, he has not been able to work at his job in the telecom business. We have relied only on the income from the boxes that we sell in order to live, pay bills and try to buy more supplies for our company. We counted on Larry's job and income from his telecom business to help us get established with GAB. Without that income, we have been thrown into the deep end of the business and are treading water.

This is no different than many other small businesses, but we have come to a point where we need help to get to the next step of building our business. We are hoping to find investors who can see our vision for the future of Garden Anywhere Box. We believe it is a bright one, and one that will allow everyone to be a successful gardener and grow at least some of their own food.

We met some people today that we hope will be able to help us advance our business. This will include our DIY GAB kit and get us in a position to be able to distribute GAB throughout the country on a larger scale than what we are doing now.

One of the speakers at the luncheon was Michael Knopp. He is the Executive Director of the OKC Devon Boathouse. He shared with us how the boathouse district came to be. It has been ten years in the making and is recognized world-wide as a state of the art facility. Someone asked him how he kept his dream alive during the tough times. He said "Perseverance." I think that is key to any small business with a dream. There will always be set-backs. If you have a dream and a vision, you can overcome the hard times.

After the luncheon, he took us on a tour of the OKC Boathouse District.  We got to see the workout room where the rowers train. There is also a room for high altitudes. Mr. Knopp told us about how a couple came to the high altitude room to train for two months before their trip to climb Mt. Kilamanjaro.  This room is specially designed to draw oxygen out of the room to simulate a change in altitude. Very cool! 

The Oklahoma River is an Olympic-class training ground for Olympic competitors. Athlete's from around the world come to the Oklahoma River to train. Something unique to Oklahoma are statues of painted buffalo around the state. The boathouse is no exception.  This buffalo has signatures from the many athletes from around the world who have come to train at the boathouse.

We also got to see where the athletes train for their races. 

This glass room is where people can gather to watch the boat races. It is also where the auditions for American Idol were held. 

This will be the future home of the new Whitewater Park.  There is also a video of what went into designing the park. 

These are some of the boats at the boathouse. There are different colors for different schools. The blue one just happens to represent Oklahoma City University, my alma mater.

One of the things that Mr, Knopp mentioned was that the boathouse is for all ages and degrees of ability. Eight year old's train in the same area as Olympic-class athletes. There are no barriers. The younger children get to mingle with and learn from their elders. I think that is a great thing.

I hope that you've enjoyed this little tour of the Oklahoma Boat District. The area has come a long way from the boggy ditch that it used to be. It took vision and perseverance to turn it into something that the whole community and really the world can enjoy. If you ever make a trip to Oklahoma, take a cruise along the Oklahoma River, check out Bricktown, watch a Thunder basketball game and ,,,visit Garden Anywhere Box. We'd be happy to show you around.