Last night I sat down to have a 3 1/2 hour video conference with all the full members of Nest of Vipers Airsoft. We hashed out a lot of details for the quickly approaching season of Airsoft, it was probably one of the most productive meetings we have ever had. Seeing our growth from last year is making everyone antsy to expand to a bigger plot of land which we cannot afford yet, so we were looking into creating a value proposition for some Venture Capitalists or getting a small business loan. With two members possibly leaving the area in the coming months (one being myself), making a killer VC presentation that we could really execute is a bit out of the question for this year. A similar conclusion was made about the business loan, but we did want to sit down with a counselor and at least see what we could get quoted for because a small business loan is the faster route for us to go.
As the meeting went on we started giving birth to bigger picture ideas, primarily, do we have what it takes to not only revitalize airsoft in Michigan but make a livable income from it? For the time being, we concluded that having members from 27-20 years old, who are breaking into their career’s and desired fields puts the whole team in a very transitional period. This does not mean that we are stuck (aside from being in the same location), we can expand our skills and learn how to be a better team all together even though we will all be branching off into other careers.
I also brought up that I would consider using my experiences with the team, along with what I’m doing in praxis, to become a sales representative for one of the bigger airsoft companies. I did not want to seem like I was abandoning anything, but I did make mention of it because I believe if everyone wanted to go a similar route they could. Ultimately, meeting the goals we have as a business would be far better to anything we could do as individuals working in separate parts of the same industry (perhaps this will be the topic of my next blog).
The way we look at it is once we get out of this time of so many unknowns and transition, that we can better operate from those places to build something incredible. This season will be a time of refining our skills as individuals, businessmen, and a team.