Building a Dream Together
Heroes Remember
Building a Dream Together
Back in 2015 that was when Arthur got
formally diagnosed with PTSD and
at the time we didn’t really know a
whole lot about all of the amazing
services and programs and everything
that is available to Veterans
to kind of help them out of their
transition out of the military.
At that point we knew I was leaving the
military and we knew that was probably
going to be the end state for Arthur.
So we were kind of freaking out in the
sense of like what are we going to do?
What’s next for us and like we had no
idea and you know at the time I had this
thought that I was going to become
a police officer but Arthur was still a big
question mark and at the time his way
of kind of coping with his PTSD
symptoms was he would go to the
gym and he would be there for
eight hours a day. Any spare moment
he had he was in the gym and
I was totally cool with that because
I knew he was somewhere healthy,
he wasn’t somewhere like in a bar or in a
basement. He was moving his body and
getting his aggression and his anger and
his frustration and his feelings out
through fitness and I was like cool!
And he was actually, originally he just
kind of like sat up in bed one night in
the middle of the night; kind of like
something you would see out of a movie.
And he’s like, “I know what we are
going to do!” And I was like,
“Okay, what?” And he’s like,
“I want to start a clothing line so
that like I can reach people
that are kind of going through
the same thing that I am
going through.” And I was like,
“That’s great, awesome, let’s do it!”
And then that whole idea kind of
spit-balled into like okay that’s great,
the clothing line is awesome but we
didn’t know anything about business,
about anything really.
And then the gym was just kind
of like born out of his brain.
He just was like we are going to open
a gym and I was like,
“Okay, cool, next step,
alright let’s open a gym, cool!”
And then I was like, “Okay so what’s
the goal with the gym,
are we going to be Goodlife,
what are we trying to do here?”
And he was like, “No let’s do this for
people who are dealing with the
same thing I am dealing with,
let’s give them a place to go!”
And I was like, “Okay, cool,
let’s do it, awesome, I’ll help, great!”
And in the beginning I wasn’t very involved.
We had just had our youngest son.
He was an infant so I was kind of
tied up on that end but eventually
I think about six months in to this
place being opened I kind of took over
the role as CEO, COO of the company.
I did do three years in OPS at 2 PPCLI
and I am very grateful for that experience
because it has helped me a lot in trying
to navigate the enormous learning
curve it is to run a business so I
am grateful for that experience.
And then the gym was born and
we really didn’t know how
it was going to go. We were just
kind of like well we’ll give it
one hundred and fifty percent
every single day and if it’s one of
those days we have to close our
doors at least we know that
we tried really hard, like really
hard and we would be okay with
that and we promised each other that.
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