In the fall of 2018, I began to think about what was coming next in my life.  As I sat on the side of a mountain above Rosita, Colorado looking across the trees changing colors in early October the ideas flowed freely.  Expand my consulting business. Accelerate the pace of software development on a project I was pursuing.  Shift gears and try something different.

Then a thought slowly crept into my mind.  What about the conversation you had with your sisters about renovating a homestead cabin in the Rocky Mountains? It really was more of a joke; just kidding around trying to figure out how to create more bed space for a growing family to retreat to in the Rocky Mountains.  The conversation was more like “Why don’t you do a remodel show on television and fix up the Wagon Wheel? You could be the next Ty Pennington.”

The longer that initial conversation went on, the more absurd (and humorous) it became.  But in the moment, the idea grew larger and larger.  Was it even possible?  Could I create a show that gave a homestead cabin new life?  Could I sell the idea?  Where do you start?  After all, my “production” experience was in podcast productions and post-production work.

Then the idea was gone.

As I continued on my journey that week throughout the Wet Mountain Valley, the idea never crossed my mind again.

But good ideas are hard to keep hidden away.  Somehow they always come back around.  A little over two years later in the middle of the COVID-19 lockdown I once again was thinking about the future.  This time I was back home in Oklahoma.  After a conversation with a neighbor, I was sitting on my deck drinking a glass of wine and contemplating what was next in my life.  The pandemic had brought my consulting business to a complete standstill; hard to assist companies with process and quality improvement efforts when you can’t be onsite.  My business model had been build on the premise that you can make employees lives easier; you can truly help people in the workplace which in turn makes their whole lives easier and less stressful.  But the concept relied on being onsite working hand-in-hand with management and employees to find the waste in their jobs/processes and eliminate it.  This is part of who I am; helping people.  It stems from my faith as a Christian.  And all I had going for me during the lockdown was helping my church helps others during those stressful days.

 And then out of nowhere, the Wagon Wheel cabin came back into my mind.  You need to diversify.  You need to find a new path forward.  What can it be that still helps people and creates a new path forward.  Could a show focused on saving a single cabin be a reality.  No.  Of course not.  But what about if you built a show around restoring homestead cabins, houses, barns, buildings, and other historic and/or legacy structures? 

And so the idea was out there.  Can it be turned into reality?