Part One

The past 2 months have been a complete roller coaster. The highs and lows have been extreme at times and truthfully, our life as we have known it will forever be changed…for the good…I expect.
A couple of weeks before we found out about Mike’s layoff an amazingly unexpected thing happened. One afternoon I was looking online for some financial advice for Canaan. He was making some nice money selling marshmallows during the holiday season and Mike and I were wondering how we should be handling that for him. Savings? Money market? Disney stock? We had no clue.
Occasionally we watch, with the boys, The Suze Orman Show on CNBC. I headed to her website for some answers and found none. But what I did find was one of those “ask Suze” forms which I quickly filled out with a simple background story of Canaan’s company and my financial question. Less than an hour later, while eating lunch with Mike my phone rang and on the other end was a producer from the show calling about my submitted question. The funny thing was that as I was clicking the “submit” button I thought “I bet no one ever reads these things…they just end up somewhere in cyberspace.” Well sure enough, it was read and followed up with a phone call from Suzanne, Suze’s amazing producer.
At first it was simply a phone call to see if I would call in to the show and ask my question on air. I agreed, reluctantly (I am pretty shy about things like that) yet I was excited to get to talk to Suze! A couple of hours later I had a voice mail from Suzanne asking me to call the studio. After sharing the story of Canaan and his company with the executive producer, they wanted to do an entire segment about this young entrepreneur. It was crazy.astonishing.amazing. I mean, this is Suze Orman! Oprah’s financial guru~ a CNBC star~ Today’s Show money expert!
The next few weeks were a total blur. The news of Mike’s layoff, the holidays and this crazy opportunity that landed in our lap. The show decided to do a segment loosely titled “a day in the life of the marshmallow king” and wanted lots of footage of Canaan as the CEO running his company. We sent it off ~ they loved it. The segment which was slotted to air in January was then pushed to the highly anticipated 10th anniversary special airing in March.
Fast forward to last week when Canaan and I were picked up and taken to a studio in Louisville to do a satellite taping with Suze. Afterwards he spent the day saying “I just talked to a REAL FINANCIAL ADVISOR!!” This of course cracked me up and made me love him all the more. When I asked him if he’d tell his classmates (many who were off on nice holiday trips for the winter break) about his fancy car ride and TV appearance he said “no, I don’t want to brag and make them feel jealous.” I love that boy.
As much as I want to share the story of this journey we have been on as a family for the past 3 months, it is almost too overwhelming to do it any justice.
The realization that this opportunity The Marshmallows Company has been given may possibly catapult his business to a new level has caused us to have to get all our ducks in a row, quickly, before the show airs. In a way, Mike’s job loss has been a blessing because he has had ample time to get everything in order. Finding commercial kitchen space, getting the proper labeling for the marshmallows, local and state inspections on the packaging process, becoming an LLC… its been really time consuming.
The truly amazing thing is that although we have had no finances coming in for the past 2 months, we have seen no significant hit to our bank account. Sure, it is certainly dwindling with bills, groceries and such but we have seen God’s blessing on our finances throughout all of this.
So this is part one. I’ll share more in part 2 about our plans for the future. They’re big…and a bit scary…but really exciting.
But for now, go set your DVR’s to record The Suze Orman Show next Saturday night, March 5 at 9pm. If you don’t have cable, no worries. You can download a pod cast or watch it online.
Next week I will shamelessly be using this brilliant thing called social media to get the word out. Please help me, if you want. Canaan’s new website will be finished next week (its super cute). And you can “like” The Marshmallows Company on Facebook too.