Guy Richards / Ordinary Life with a Brand Strategist

This is why you haven't heard from me

As I popped on to my blog today I tried not to get woozy when I scanned through the dates of my last posts…12 months ago…24 months ago. Ahhh, I could feel my gut hurt.

Anyway. Let me update you on what has been going on in my life over the last 2 years.

As most of you know I’m sort of an awkward person. What I mean, is that I like to get lost. Lost in the process of creating.

First comes the dream that seems to consume me. I sleep less, eat less and drink a whole lot of coffee. And then…before much calculation of the pain I will go through…I start running.

2 years ago my wife asked me if we could close in a screen porch we had on the back of our house to give her a little more room as a place to teach the kids. From there I convinced her we should add a large garage, second story, second story porch while we are at it, master bedroom, another bathroom and hey, lets gut our existing house. Plumbing, HVAC, sheetrock, flooring, roof, siding and the list goes on.

In the end we more than doubled the size of the house, the budget and quadrupled the time we planned to do it.

As the project started, we planned on me being the general contractor. My work would consist of selecting and scheduling the people to build the addition. After a few weeks in, I couldn’t help myself. I became the coffee guy, then the laborer, after that I started to learn how to frame. Soon I found myself hiring laborers to help me.

I got so lost in the joy of building that our 4-month project turned into a 18-month project. For the last year and a half I worked at the office (Abiah) and then grabbed a coffee and headed to the house until about 10:00pm.

At the house, by myself in a wood shell, I would think about you and this blog. How I wished I could get the time to bring something of value to you, my friends. I would think, here I am, a brand strategist and designer and all I can think about is carpentry.

I’m happy to say that we have moved back into the house some weeks back, but still moonlighting as a carpenter…6 days a week.

This was a longer process than I wanted or planned, but through this process I learned that I have to create. And that I need problems to solve. Whether it is building with wood, color, metal or bushes. I’m sure a few of you are identifying with me.

NOTE: 2 years before this project I just completed a 5-year project of building a 12,500 square foot, concrete skatepark at our church, as a volunteer.

As a person who gets lost in chasing dreams, through this process I realized how important my role as a husband and father is. My next big goal is to be around a bit more for my wife and 2 little ones. Since we moved back to the house, the kids and I have been catching lizards, frogs, even caught a chipmunk (check my Facebook for the release video) and a bug my daughter calls “Leafy” who is her first pet.

Anyway. Thanks for those who have cared, encouraged and spoke into my life over the years.

Hope you enjoy these pictures.

 

...and still working on it!

Stuck

I have never met someone that dwelled on the past and was successful in the present.

#30 Nothing of value

#30 Nothing of value from Guy Richards

#28 Lausanne / South Africa

#28 Lausanne / South Africa from Guy Richards on Vimeo.

#22 / I fell off the grid!

The update. I'm holding on...but just by my finger nails.

#22 / I fell off the grid! from Guy Richards on Vimeo.

#21 / Join the adventure, fake snowboard park in VA

Checking in from Liberty Mountain in 90 degree weather wishing I wasn't in dress shoes and had about an hour to spare. ...with Justin Brackett

PS. Yea I needed a haircut.

#21 / Join the adventure, fake snowboard park from Guy Richards on Vimeo.

#16 / My view from a nice, nice hotel

Giant chess pieces, little trains and a crazy caterpillar on a mushroom... very "Talkable."

#16 / My view from a nice, nice hotel from Guy Richards on Vimeo.

Press of Atlantic City

  Here is an article that the Press of Atlantic City wrote on me and Abiah.

(Still on an island in British Columbia and can't upload video.)

Update

Just a heads up, I'm on an island in British Columbia and don't have enough Internet connection to upload videos. (I have about 5 ready. They are even getting a little less shaky.)

-Guy
This post is from my phone
Prv. 3:5-6

Life 1, life 2, drugs and Jesus

Sorry I missed yesterday. I meant to breakaway to write this but I decided I would rather spend the time with my wife. So although Monday is scheduled to be a business insight, this is about drugs, a young man’s death and an on time Jesus.

I live it two totally different worlds. One with family, friends and the people I went to school with, in the same town I grew up in. I’m usually at the skatepark weekly, try to snowboard all winter with my friends, head out on redneck adventures in my brother Stephen’s backyard and maybe pick up an occasional game of horseshoes at the neighborhood BBQs. I see most of all my old bosses (bus boy, painting, mechanic, landscape, ice cream cart seller and once I was a chipper boy for a tree cutting service) in the super market, on the beach and sometimes at the local Boston Market. I may even come across one of my grade school teachers at WaWa (It’s our version of 7-Eleven).

On the other hand being the CEO of Abiah, an avid speaker and now an author, I travel to a lot of nice places where people wear suits, have stylish houses, fancy cars and extra letters after their last name. My two worlds almost never meet. In my closet I have two sets of clothes. The few hoodies and jeans I wear every day and the suites and business dress I only pull out if I’m traveling.

Mainly the people who subscribe to this blog are those who know me from business. Today I want to pull back the curtain of my life for you to see that I’m a regular person that was highly written off growing up. I sold crack all through high school, never placed well in academics, in fact I never have taken the SAT test and still don’t have a bachelors degree. But God…gave me an opportunity when I was 21. By that time I had enough of the drugs, people dieing around me, fake friends and the emptiness that filled my soul. The first book I ever read was the Bible. Which helped me realize I was loved because God made me, not as a condition of the things I do. As my behavior changed it shook my town up…”Guy?...Jesus? Yea, he’ll be back selling dope.”

No, that person was an old person. I was given a new life, not a borrowed, reconditioned or improved life, a new life.

In the last 3 months a saw God do it again. Last week I received a call from a friend who gave his life to Jesus in February. This guy is very rare. He grew up in the professional motocross party scene, has started smoking marijuana with is parents at 13 and like me was labeled with big red letters…FAILURE!

 

But then God…came and changed his life during that huge snowstorm back in February. As he started reading the Bible his world collided with the reality of right and wrong, promise and consequence, but more importantly the security of being loved by the God who paints the sky and keeps air in our lungs. His eyes started smiling and his motives changed.

People around the town are talking as if it was a front-page headline, little to my friend’s knowledge. My friend’s passion and realness to speak Jesus’ name is evident which fuels the critics.

Before my friend ever came to church with me he tracked down one of his old friends who was addicted to heroin, struggling for help and led him to Jesus.

Last week I received a call that my friends, friend died. But not before he gave his life to Jesus.

I know it’s sometimes hard to feel comfortable when you think those around you in “life 2” could not even begin to understand what you have going on in “life 1.” Chances are that we all have something going on, a person we love that is caught on drugs or stuck in some problem or a challenge that seems no one would understand.

I’m not sure this helps, but this morning I received a text that was very timely. “Our faith should not be based on what we know God has done for others, but on who we know He is – The God without limits.” David Jeremiah

I feel this is for someone out there. You know who you are. Don’t give up on that person you were about to write off, God hasn’t.