A few weeks ago, our student Nathan contacted Jason Keck about sponsoring our CEO badge business. It was 6:15 in the morning. Yes….6:15.

Jason actually loved receiving that early-morning text. He couldn’t believe a high school student was already thinking about business at a time when he could have been sleeping in. Instead, Nathan was up early, taking initiative, and reaching out to a local business owner for something important. That made an impression on Jason right away.

Jason and his wife, Christina, are the owners of Muttley & Me and Peace By Piece, both specialty boutiques in Swansea. And in full disclosure, they already knew Nathan very well. Nathan’s grandmother, Joyce, has worked with them for years, and Jason told us how special it has been to watch Nathan grow up. He said once he received that text, he immediately knew that he wanted to support our class.

That relationship is what eventually brought our entire class to their businesses this morning.

After Jason and Christina welcomed us in, we let the morning naturally unfold. There wasn’t a formal presentation or an agenda we had to follow. The kids wandered, asked questions, and talked with them about the businesses.

Then Jason started telling us how their story began, and the funny thing is, it didn’t start with either of these businesses.

It started with a lawnmower.

In 1998, Jason was driving a beer truck and started helping a friend mow lawns. He bought his own mower, picked up customers along his beer route, and kept growing the little side business. Then a strike at the beer company changed everything. His pay and insurance stopped, so he took every lawn job he could get.

By the time the strike was over, the lawn business had grown enough that Jason had a decision to make. He called the strike “the shove I needed out the door.”

During the winters, when they shut down the lawn business, Jason and Christina picked up jobs at different retail stores. That’s when they fell in love with retail, and that eventually led to Peace By Piece.

Peace By Piece opened in downtown Belleville in 2009. Almost nine years later, they bought the building they are in today and moved the business to Swansea.

And this is where the story takes another turn.

They had planned to lease the space next door to another business. They created a separate entrance, set aside about 1,200 square feet, and spent about a year looking for the right tenant.

They talked to an insurance company. A coffee shop. Several gaming businesses. They just couldn’t find the right fit.

So they changed the plan.

Jason put it this way: “The best thing that didn’t happen? We didn’t get a different tenant. Us being the tenant was the best solution to that problem.”

And that is how Muttley & Me came to be.

Christina said something that I thought tied the whole story together perfectly: “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Listening to them tell their story, I kept thinking about how many times the plan changed.

The lawn business wasn’t the original plan. The strike changed that.

Retail wasn’t the original plan. Those winter jobs opened a new door.

When they bought their building, Muttley & Me wasn’t the plan either. They were looking for a tenant. When that didn’t work, they created something themselves.

And that may be one of the most important things our kids can learn from real business owners. You can have a plan. You should have a plan. But you also have to be willing to recognize when something changes and figure out what comes next.

Sometimes you’re backed into a corner, and the path forward only becomes clear because you have no choice but to find it.

Sometimes the path you end up on is completely different from the one you thought you were taking.

And I love that Nathan’s connection to Jason and Christina is what brought us into this story.

This is what we want CEO to be for our students. Yes, they are learning about business. But they are also building relationships, hearing real stories from people who have actually done it, and seeing that there is no single formula for figuring out what comes next.

And honestly, our students had a blast today.

They explored both stores, asked questions, picked things up, tried things on, took pictures, ate donuts, and spent the morning laughing and learning from entrepreneurs. They were completely comfortable, and it was one of those mornings when I could look around and simply enjoy watching them have fun and learn at the same time.

Thank you, Jason and Christina, for being badge sponsors, for welcoming our class into Muttley & Me and Peace By Piece, for sharing your journey with our students, and for giving them donuts and such a fun morning. We loved every minute of it.

And thank you, Nathan, for making that 6:15 a.m. text that got us there in the first place—and for reminding Jason that sometimes the most meaningful business conversations begin before most people are even out of bed.

Video credit- Chris
Photo credits- Gentry, Tyler and Brina