Pinned to the Floor

Last modified on 2010-02-01 05:38:58 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Sunday, Jan 31 1:03am.

It’s one year now since Pete and I decided to slam the foot to the floor of the Faceplant machine, pressing the throttle full speed ahead. With no cash backing us, no team of consultants or staff… Nothing, but a purpose. The economy was tanking and things were looking terrible for people working hard to earn a living. What better time to put everything on the table, with three little kids and a wife, mortgage payments and a dog…To risk it all in order to create a business with the purpose of offering something for everyone to prosper from. There may not have been a better time. Jobs slipped month after month here in the States. People and the media became more uneasy with the direction of their lives, their business. So we risked it all.

I closed my martial art school, moved to a small location and sunk all we had, every resource, every bit of credit, whatever Pete and I could get our hands on to start the Faceplant.com project. I sold almost everything I had acquired over nine super successful years in business as a martial art school owner.

Why?

Well, last year we had a vision that was clear. It’s changed a hell of a lot since then, but a year ago today, my website Budohall.com was the first fully interactive martial arts school on the internet. It was (and still is) totally rocking! I was making more money from teaching students all over the world than I was from a five mile radius and more importantly it was helping people who wanted to learn from me but couldn’t because of where they lived. I then realized something; If I could recreate this at a large scale, I could offer it to everyone on the internet. Not sell it, but make it accessible for everyone to profit from and help their business or household. For people who were having tough times or not.

You see, there is something amazing about teaching a class to 10 students who show up at your place to learn. But when on any given night, you have students from all over the States, Brazil, Indonesia, Australia, Mexico and some Marines on an oil platform in the Persian Gulf – each of them online to learn from you, training and communicating with you during your class – It’s pretty awesome. It’s pure honesty that can’t be bought or faked – it’s the reality of, “You can do it” and these good people are a testament to that…. Tough to explain, but knowing there were people all over the world participating in my jujutsu classes while I was teaching at my Dojo, I was speaking with them from my floor, watching them and taking care of them… It was feeling of value that shielded me from that bad-economy-mental-media garbage that was everywhere. That was a year ago.

The capital recruitment phase of Faceplant worked. We’re still amazed. We generated a ton of cash in early/mid 09 to for development. Not by asking for it, but by working for it and dedicating those funds to Faceplant’s development. We created kick ass websites for business consultants and elearning pages for entrepreneurs by simply using the Budohall script. We got paid pretty well, enough to fulfill the development costs up to September 09. But it dragged to a point beyond where we anticipated.

I know that the concept of creating an elearning website for EVERYONE to use, is a simple but powerful concept. It’s easy and it can do a lot of great things for many, many people. We will make this happen and this blog is going to document the final stretch of the struggle to the end – to see Faceplant to the launch.

How we are going to get there, I don’t have a clue. But we do have a purpose. Our feet are still pinned to the floor as we fight on full speed ahead.

Welcome to the blog.
Adam