I've been more of a stranger than ever to our site as of late and just thought I would fill ya'll in on the reasons for that. For those that don't know, last August I finally "quit my day job". That's right, I gave up a 6 year stint at a well paying, stable, secure, flexible job with Stryker a global leader in the medical device market. I had been Stryker's in-house creative guy, making training videos, print materials, websites, and more. I learned a lot while there and it was in all honesty a great gig, but something was missing.

Over my years at Stryker, I met Josh Little. Josh is a brilliant educator, trainer, and salesman. He and I used to speak at length over lunch about "the future" and what it held for us. Josh and I worked together on an elearning initiative at Stryker. Well, Josh 95%, and me 5%. I basically just counseled Josh on the creative side of various agencies he was looking into as an elearning provider for Stryker. Josh could not find the right provider and thought that starting an elearning company with the right talent base could be just the thing to spawn his entrepreneurial dreams.

With his division moving to Dallas and his new position being out of his real passion of education, in April of 2007, Josh made the leap. He quit Stryker. He started Maestro eLearning with a goal of being the world class eLearning provider that he could never find while at Stryker. Josh's initial direction with Maestro was different than it is now, and I had my second child due in May anyway, so I had no reason to pull the plug on my income security just yet.

In July of last summer, I lost one of my very best friends, Jeremy Gordon, to a motorcycle accident. This only further cemented my inclination to move on from Stryker to bigger and better things. Life is short. We only get one chance at it and if I didn't do something about my unsettling situation while I could, I'd forever regret it. However, I knew I wouldn't leave Stryker just to go "work for the man" somewhere else.

Josh and I continued to talk. I did some contract work for him to help him out as he got things rolling a bit. In August, Josh offered me a share of ownership in Maestro. I would come on board and run the creative "wing" of the business. At that same time we also brought on Jim Bertolina as our VP of business development. Jim was another colleague of ours from Stryker. He has a PHD in medical physics and would bring even more medical expertise to Maestro. A few months later we brought a long-time friend and colleague of Josh's on as another partner and our VP of Sales. Jen Randall had been in sales at Johnson & Johnson for the past eight years or so and was just tearing it up there. We knew if anyone could help our cause in sales and fight through the long sales process involved with corporate elearning, it would be Jen.

These last several months have been tough. Little to no pay, scraping by off savings, LONG hours, watching every penny, and fighting to build a list of clients and a work process to keep them happy. We worked remotely from our home offices and gathered at Panera Bread (free Wireless internet) as needed for face to face meetings. This past February we hired our first full time employee. In March, we hired our second, then third, then fired our second. Stakes rose as we now had to make sure we could always pay our employees before any of us.

We quickly were reaching the point where home offices and Panera gatherings weren't cutting it. On April 1st, we moved into an office on the west side of Kalamazoo. We're now almost two months settled into our new office space. I have three designers working full time for me. We have another full time sales rep and also three instructional designers. Things are looking up but the work load is arduous. I haven't set foot in the woods yet to hunt turkeys this spring. It was all I could do to scout a few potential whitetail spots this spring. We see the big picture and are confident this company will eventually give us the financial freedom and time with our families and other passions that we originally quit our day jobs for, but until then, it is nose to the grindstone. I promise more hunting related reports ahead, but just wanted ya'll to know what I've been up to.

Jarrod