Happily in Debt... Sunday, June 9

This week we’ll be approaching the one month mark since we launched our soft opening but we’ve decided to not make a big deal of any kind of month-mark until the one month from our grand opening. 

Business is doing good, great actually, but there’s still very much a long paper trail of bills to be paid, people and companies demanding their due fees and of course WOW Motors to payback for his more gracious than gracious amazing loan. 

After work today, Snickers and I headed out for our weekly dinner out, just the two of us, to discuss this past week’s business and the upcoming week of work. It gave us a chance to go over the club’s facts and figures. It was very interesting to note that we’ve only actually had our club’s building since about February and then three months later we opened its doors for training. Pretty amazing but so is the price tag to do so… woozers. We figure that if you add up all the start-up fees (renovations, equipment, etc) and all the monthly fees to date, like rent and hydro, our grand total comes just short of becoming a six digit figure… double woozers! Did we have that money to start our club? No. Do we have that money yet to keep our club? Hell no. But are we going to continue to bust our butt and make this club the best dang club we can and continue to put all our heart, mind and soul into it? Hell yes!!!

It’s a strange thing, to owe so much money but to be so happily in debt. This is the first real time in my life I’ve ever actually been in debt. Even when I was in university I wasn’t in debt. I went through a bit of a harsh reality check with a credit card once but it wasn’t something that a couple of months of scrapping by couldn’t fix. I was living on my own and paying my way through university but I also was pulling crazy hours at my part time job. At first, it meant me traveling home on the weekends to work at a landscape supply place, then it meant touching up on my French so I could work the customers at a French bistro for better tips. It wasn’t until I took up a bartending job at a club that I started really rolling in the cash. I was making over a grand in three nights work – the most money I’ve ever made still to date. In between the French Bistro and the club though, I reached a rough spot where I struggled with money but I managed. One of my friends worked at the school library so he snuck me in at night to let me sleep. I ran away from the house where I was renting a bedroom, slept in the library, rented two lockers at university to stash my clothes in, and stole a couple of my school texts and supplies. Thankfully this only lasted about two months but it was a rough two months. Desperation had kicked in and I knew I had put myself in this mess so I had to get myself out – it’s called being responsible, or so I told myself. Perhaps it was I had too much pride to ask my family and friends to help me. Anyways, I remember I stole a red wig, slapped that nasty thing on my head and walked into the shadiest club I knew. I introduced myself as Mercedez, yes with a “z”, and then two days later I started working there. It was a strip club run by Hells Angels and Foundation but for the next three years it was where I worked as the head bartender. I was one of few girls actually paying their way through school and not snorting it up their nose, so my boss – leader of one of the Foundation chapters – was sure to keep a close eye on me and label me “untouchable”. I respected him for that and have always been thankful to him. Still to this day I keep in touch with him and I often visit him when I visit Canada. He kept me safe for those three years I worked for him. 

It’s funny when I think back at my university days, when I thought I had it rough. I really did have it good. When I was 22, I could afford a three bedroom downtown apartment with a friend, training with a silver medalist (boxer, Egerton Marcus) and had a driver to drive me to work a couple of days a week, a cleaning lady, and at one point I even was paying someone to cook and drop me off meals every couple of days. 

Now, eleven years later, and life is so different. I will probably be working for the next year to pay off all the money I owe to make our boxing club but I feel so much happier and richer than ever. I’m rich with great health, a beautiful husband, an adorable fusion family of four-legged babies, a cool home, and a dream-come-true job – coaching at my very own boxing club. 

I did an interview the other day and they asked me, “What’s next?” and I asked myself that very same question. Next on my list is to pay off this debt. To show everyone that we did what many labeled as impossible and so far-fetched. To prove that dreams do come true if you believe and if you want it bad enough.