Um what really began the the interest in in starting at a particular time is I was working one morning at my desk in my computer and I was typing away and uh all of a sudden I felt a jolt in my right arm. It's like, what was that? You know, didn't tried to not pay attention to it. Just dismissed it. And about 10 minutes later, I'm typing away and all of a sudden another jolt. And I thought, I might be having a heart attack.
What is going on? And I also had this thought. If I should die right now in front of this desk working for this company, my life wouldn't have quite the meaning I hope it had in store for me later on. Well, to make a long story short, I drove to a hospital. They checked me out and uh the doctor came in and I said, "Tell tell me what's going on." You know, and he looked at me seriously and he said, "John, you have a severe case of indigestion."
And uh and people laugh about that, but I I figured it was God's indigestion at that time because it really woke me up to the possibility of my own mortality, right? That uh that what what happened if if that would been the last moment. So that kind of I I called my wife Julie up and I said, "Hey, I'm fine here. Here's what it is." We both laughed and I said, "You know what? I think though this is this is how we we have to go forward."
So, that's a that's the first phase of of the story. There's actually a second phase. A week later, I get a call from a client, a big law firm in Washington DC, and they said, "Hey, we have this big environmental court case, and we want you to testify as an expert witness. Uh, we'd like to know if you'd like to do it." And I said, "Wow, that sounds that sounds interesting. um I better check to see if I have any conflicts, you know, because you never know on these legal cases whether that can be an issue.
Well, I checked out. No conflicts. And uh I called the guy up and I said, "It looks like I can do it, but you know, there's one thing. I'm thinking about leaving this company and starting my own business." And I just wanted to know if that would make a difference, if that somehow would uh would cause you to reconsider. And the guy said, "Oh, no, not at all. You know, we're we're looking for you to to be part of this uh litigation and and this is a huge case that's going to last six months or nine months."
Well, I called my wife, Julie. This is the perfect time. I said, you know, we've going to have backlog. this is going to take the risk out of this and uh we said let's go ahead right so I called the lawyer up said yes we're I'd be happy to take this so the next Monday morning I turned in my resignation to my boss who was the president of the company I was the senior technical guy he wasn't very happy at all but I got out of there I went to lunch after telling him and then I came back and there was a flashing light on my phone and someone had left a message and I checked the messages and it was this lawyer in Washington and he asked call me right away.
So I called the lawyer right away and he he asked me did you resign already and I said yeah just this morning. He goes oh no this case just settled. So there was no work. Well I got off the phone and I thought I have to call my wife called I called Julie up and I said hey the case just settled. We have no work. What should we do? I just turned in my res resignation with the president that morning and we said, you know, I think we need to go ahead anyway.
That's that's just it's just a test, you know, of of our of of our desire, our passion to do this. So, um so we hung up. We decided to go ahead. At the end of that day, I had received a call from a client of mine and he had heard through the network that I had resigned and I I told him, "Yes, we're we're gonna start our own company." And he said, "Call me Monday morning. I've got a project for you."
So, that all transpired within, you know, a few days, but it was the beginning of this this adventure of the economy of communion. And it also it's also reminded us that you know sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and see where that takes you.
