With an amazing skate park coming to town it only makes sense to have an awesome shop to match it and I'm the only guy in town for the job. I've dedicated my entire life to skateboarding. It's not just a hobby or a fun way to blow off steam anymore. It grew beyond that long ago and has since become a way of life for myself and my friends. We eat, sleep, and breathe skateboarding. It's all we think of 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and we want to make Lexington's youth just as passionate about it. If you spend all of your spare time focused on skateboarding you don't have time to get into trouble and I'm living proof of that. I've been given many opportunities to mess my life up but because of skateboarding I was always too busy to bother.
I've been skateboarding for as long as I can remember and I realize how cliche that sounds but it's the truth. I honestly can't remember a time before skateboarding and it wasn't long after I discovered it that I realized I wanted to one day run my own skate shop. Everything about my life seems to draw me closer and closer to my passion. I want to run a successful business and this one has the potential to be something great but there's more to it than just that. Skateboarding saved me. It kept me out of trouble and gives me a reason to wake up every morning. I want to share my passion for skateboarding with a broader audience and that's why I started my YouTube channel (SkateSpeech) but it's still not enough. The digital connection with my subscribers is fantastic and I love interacting with them, giving them advice, and listening to their stories, but I crave something deeper and even more meaningful. I need real human interaction. I need to be able to see the way my advice affects people in real time. I want to help young skaters by providing them with a positive place to hang out, meet up with their friends, learn about skateboarding news and history, and buy quality skateboarding products from real skateboarders that respect their lifestyle.
With a skate park built by Team Pain coming to Lexington next year there's no doubt in my mind that if I don't open up my shop soon someone else will open up their idea of a skate shop. I can't bear to think of what some suburban soccer mom looking for an afternoon job would bring to town so it's vital that I make this happen. I've made connections throughout my lengthy skateboarding and YouTubing careers that will allow for me to do great things for our community as a whole, not just the skateboarding community. There are several charitable organizations such as A.Skate an organization that uses skateboarding to help children with Autism that I'd like to work with as well as contests and demonstrations at the skate park when it opens. We fought for years to get this park built and the city has finally listened to us but free parks don't generate revenue. Skate shops on the other hand... do generate taxable income. For those that aren't aware Team Pain builds some of the best parks in the country and simply having one of their parks in your city makes it an instant road trip destination for skaters statewide, not just in our little city. It doesn't make sense to have such an amazing park without an equally awesome shop to keep the skaters on board.
That's where you come in. I jumped into this project feet first with a solid plan and plenty of money two years ago but things fell apart at the finish line. All I lack at this point is the inventory. I have literally everything else I need to open the doors tomorrow but because of some bad investments my money dried up and I got behind financially. Now I'm stuck in a lease and paying $400 a month on top of my personal bills and expenses and that makes it difficult to save enough money to buy what I need for the shop. I was hit and run literally days before selling the car to pay for my inventory. That left me with a totaled car that insurance wouldn't cover because highway patrol refused to follow up on the information I gave them AND a severe concussion. I lost all hope and quickly descended into a deep depression which was only worsened by a stressful living situation and roommates that could never pay their bills. The last straw was when I was unexpectedly fired from my job for standing up to a workplace bully in a respectful way. They claimed that I quit and because of that I wasn't able to collect unemployment. I searched for a job for 6 months scraping together what little money I could working odd jobs to get by and with the help from some amazing friends and my loving family I was able to get through it all without being homeless or missing too many meals, although many of them were just noodles. All the while I was uploading videos to YouTube in an effort to grow my audience because I knew this day was going to come eventually. I've got a good job now and I'm making decent money but I've dug my hole too deep and I can't afford to keep digging it deeper. I have a $500 loan to pay off which will come out of my tax money and then I'm officially back in the green, but with nothing to show for it because I've been paying $400 a month for the lease for 2 years and haven't made a penny yet. I can't afford to give up the location because it's perfect for what I'm doing. The size is right. The lease is right. The location is PERFECT. With $4,000 I could get my utilities turned on and stock the shop with enough product to get the ball rolling. This may be my last chance to make this happen. I'm getting discouraged after putting as much effort into this as I have. I know it will work because I have people contacting me about it on a regular basis. The kids want a shop and right now I'm letting them down which is breaking my heart. If you have the means to help get a small business up and running I urge you to contribute. If you can't contribute financially PLEASE take the time to share my campaign anywhere you think interested parties may be exposed to it. You can also check out my YouTube channel (SkateSpeech). Simply watching the videos helps me tremendously because I'm a YouTube partner (which means I make money off of the ads on my videos) and all of that money is going towards the shop as well.
Whether or not I meet the goal of $4,000 every penny will be going towards the shop. It's my main focus and I wont let anything stand in the way of getting it open. If I get more than $4,000 in contributions I'll simply buy more inventory or use the money to help me pay the lease. It's all going into my business account and 100% of it will be used to help me achieve my dream.
I haven't set up any perks yet but I do welcome you to suggest some to me. I'm just not feeling very creative after telling my story.
Feel free to provide feedback and help me make this campaign more effective.
