Retired! A civilian again.

I retired from the Air Force on the first of August, 1991. I had served my country a few months over twenty years. The obvious big question was, “What’s next?”

I knew I loved teaching so I thought it would be great if I could find a job or a career as a teacher of some sort. I had planned to be a preacher or missionary for many years. I first got out of the military in 1978 to finish my college education at Lubbock Christian College in the area of Biblical Studies. My goal was to become a preacher. I decided to go back into the military through the Officers Training School (OTS) soon after receiving my BA degree because of our growing family and lack of preaching job offers. Now I was faced with the decision again of what to do to support my family outside the military.

My grandfather Firestone passed away several months before I retired from the military. I received a little over $10,000 as my inheritance. At about the same time I heard of an organization called Leadership Management Institute (LMI) our of Waco, TX. They were founded by a man named Paul J. Meyer. Their business was to sell business and personal leadership training courses and materials. The company offered franchises to people wanting to start their own business using LMI materials and coaching. As my wife had indicated she really didn’t want to be a preacher’s wife I thought LMI might be a good opportunity. My last two and a half years in the Air Force had been teaching third-year AFROTC students at Texas Tech University. The third-year courses were all about leadership and management training for prospective Air Force officer students. It seemed to be a good match. I invested my entire inheritance as a down payment for a franchise in the Lubbock, TX, area. There were no other LMI franchises in the Texas Panhandle region at the time so I thought this would really work for us.

We rented an office in the newly developed Business Incubator in Lubbock. We received our materials and began to set up our business. As part of the franchise deal we received an inventory of LMI materials. These consisted of packets of cassette tapes and study books on many leadership topics, both for business and personal leadership development. It was good material but probably over-priced. I still have some of the materials stored in my garage.

If I was a good teacher and instructor, I wasn’t a good salesman! The purpose of the business was to market the training courses to businesses. We were to contact area businesses and sell them on the idea of our company providing training to their employees. As a part of the deal the business would buy the training materials and we would provide an instructor (that would be me) to conduct the training, either at their place of business or in the conference room at the Business Incubator where we had our office. Whether I was just a terrible salesman or the business climate of the early 1990s was poor, our business did not succeed. After several months of frustration and failure I worked a deal with LMI to cancel my franchise at the forfeiture of my entire down payment. I was allowed to keep all the training courses we had already received. So I had a garage full of training courses, no inheritance, and no job. Back to square one!