My Story as a reluctant business owner began 20 years ago when I moved to Orlando.
Freshly divorced, mother of two wonderful daughters and with no close relatives in the country, I requested to be transferred from my job in Puerto Rico so I could get a fresh start and provide better opportunities for my kids.
To obtain the transfer, I had to accept a cut in salary of more than 50% (ouch!) since my actual position as a Restaurant Manager was not available in Orlando at the time.
I became a housekeeping supervisor for the same hotel chain that I was working.
Needless to say, such a huge cut on income came with devastating consequences for my already shaky economy as the sole supporter of my daughters.
I had to come up with something very quick in order to avoid being another statistic of a single mom depending on government support.
Don't get me wrong, those resources are there to be used if you need them, I just wanted to give it a try on my own before asking for help.
With my newly learned skills as a housekeeping supervisor, I decided to invest my tax return of 4k in a Commercial Cleaning Franchise.
That bought me 2k a month worth of Commercial Cleaning Accounts.
There I was, no idea how to run a business, with no close family to help with my daughters, while at the same time working full time for the hotel and having to get up at 4am 3 times a week to clean the location before their business hours, then head to my work.
I Made it work. I will tell you how on another post.
Regardless of my limitations, I took that little 2K a month Individual franchise and became a Regional Franchisor, selling franchises for the same company I originally bought it from and managing an independent territory.
We were generating sales of 500K in 3 years.
Sold it for more than a quarter million dollars 5 years later.
Part II
I Used that Money to start a Real Estate house flipping business right in the middle of the last big recession we had. (Yes, I Did That!)
After being trained by the brightest and most successful Real Estate Investors , my husband and I used our knowledge and ingenuity to make it work.
Made a boatload of money and lost it all when the builders came back into the game when as the economy improved.
At this Point, with several properties under our belt we had to file for bankruptcy to be able to keep our home.
Back to step one.
With 20 dollars in our bank account after paying attorneys fees etc, we had to start from scratch.
Since Several Hedge funds have been also depleting the housing inventory as they would buy the houses after being foreclosed by the banks to remodel and rent, we approached a company that had a contract with them and asked them for work.