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DO THE DAMN THING Audio Experience
DO THE DAMN THING Audio Experience
A Single Mother's Story: Transforming Crisis into a Business Venture
What if you only had $9 to your name and two children to feed, could you turn the tides and become a business owner? Join us as we have an enriching conversation with a single mother who did just that. She saw an opportunity, acted on it, and with just $9 in her bank account, took a leap of faith and purchased an event planning business. Hear her fascinating story of how, despite having no funds or previous business experience, she built a successful business ground-up.
During this podcast episode, you'll learn about the unexpected hurdles of entrepreneurship and how to overcome them. Our guest shares her experiences, from the practicalities of acquiring businesses listed in the yellow pages to the importance of taking calculated risks during desperate times. She emphasizes the power of resourcefulness, resilience, and betting on oneself. She shares many insights from her journey, inspiring us all with her story of determination, courage and asking the right questions. Tune in, and be ready to be inspired by a tale of using adversity as a stepping stone to success.
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I was just remembering buying my first business. It was just something out of a book and I was gonna pick up the book and read it to you. But just imagine that I figured out how to make like 40K for the year. I was putting my kids to bed hungry. I read that I can start a business. I start a gift basket business, but I don't make enough money. You ever just start a business and you just don't make enough money.
Speaker 1:So fast forward, One day I'm with my kids and let me see if I can remember exactly some chapter five. So I'm with my kids and we are at a park in Sunrise, Florida, and this comes from. Confidence is Key in the Build the Damn Thing Now book. I'm with my kids at this park and Jada Meyer 18 months apart. So we're running around, we're having fun. But I see this woman. I see a truck actually over there in the community center and I'm thinking to myself man, what are all those trucks for? My life is really not only boring, but I'm not making enough money. I hate making baskets. I'm not good at it. I'm trying to feed these kids. Of course, their dad is nowhere to be found. My family is not racing over to come and save the day and I'm literally just on my own as a woman.
Speaker 1:I go over and I, you know, with my kids in hands, I walk in a walk inside of this place. Now there's a woman. She has a clipboard and she's doing all this and they're decorating tables and it's exciting and I'm thinking to myself what are they doing? I've never been to an event before. I don't understand what it is. So I walk over to her and I gotta tell you like this is called.
Speaker 1:Confidence is key, because I'm walking you through not only the story, but I'm walking you through. I didn't. I would not have thought of myself as having confidence back then. My ex-husband was in the streets. I was a single mom. I can't be my kids. I'm in tears probably every three or four days. I'm cussing God in multiple languages and the fact of the matter is that I just had this one moment of termination because I don't like what I'm doing as a woman. But I know I gotta do something different.
Speaker 1:I tap into the show and I'm like hi, I have a question for you, what are you doing? And she goes, she looks at me like, and she's kind of like I'm an event planner and basically tells me this is her company and that there is some type of an event happening. I think it's a wedding. I'm blown away Because what she's doing looks like so much fun. And specifically I say to myself man, like I, I get into this place of oh my gosh, maybe I could do what she's doing. Now, instead of me thinking that I could just do what she's doing, I have this bright idea that I'm gonna go ahead and ask her this question. I have a question for you.
Speaker 1:Have you ever thought of selling your business? This lady looks at me way older than I am. She kind of looks me up and down and she's like takes out her card, not out of her pocket but out of a thing and then she's like you know what call me in two weeks. In my mind, I'm like yippee, as far as I'm concerned. She just said I can buy the business. One, I don't have no money. Two, I don't have any money. Third, I know nothing about events, but I got excited because I asked a question and someone responded and I think, as a woman, I just I have been through so many scenarios that no one respected me when I asked a question. So I feel like, in the tiniest way I was heard.
Speaker 1:Maybe Truth of the matter is that I go home, I read all the books. I, you know, race through everything and I start stalking her business. Her business is like 15 minutes from my not house, but where I'm sleeping in someone else's house. Now the truth of the matter is that we get into dialogue in two weeks and, before we know it, I am sitting. She tells me her price of her business and she's like I'll sell you my business. And I'm like whoa. She tells me she'll sell me her business for $30,000. Now I want you to. I want to have context this because, number one, I don't have $30,000. I have like $9 in my account. Probably it's negative $9 on this day, but, based on what I had read, all of the businesses were like hundreds of thousands of dollars to own. So the fact that she was selling me hers at $30,000, I thought it was a deal.
Speaker 1:At that point, I owned my little gift basket business and I was just too ahead of myself. I tell her yes, I'll do it. I convinced her, though, to sell me the business and let me pay $5,000 a month, or six months, until I own it. She has a retail shop that's in Miami and it's on a main road and I'm like, yes, I'm gonna take this and we'll make it work, Fast forward. She has a lawyer, she draws up the contracts. She is the person who. She is the person who does all the things.
Speaker 1:I show up to a lawyer place within 30 days. Now, here's the truth of the matter. I don't even tell nobody I'm doing this. You know why? Because, one, I don't wanna hear it. Two, I don't wanna hear it. Three, I know someone's gonna go. What the hell are you doing? You don't even have no money. Your business is. Everybody's gonna talk smack and I'ma know it all. I don't know if I was a know-it-all or I was just scared, I'm not sure. I think I was just scared of someone else shooting down my dream. I think I was just scared of someone else telling me I can't do something and I was finally getting the courage in my life to be able to do something. So I show up to the day lawyer, blah, blah, blah, blah, sign on the dotted line. She tells me, actually she wants $25,000 for her business. I tell her I'll pay $30,000 for this business. And me paying $30,000 for this business. I tell her sorry, and me paying $30,000 for this business I pay $5,000 is like I don't know, like I guess it'd be it works. I sign the pieces of paper. Now I'm gonna read you this from this chapter because I really need you to understand where I am. So right now, I've signed, I've bought a business, I've bought a business, a retail business, and I'm doing all of that. So we close. She says her and her lawyer congratulations.
Speaker 1:So it was my first day. This is chapter five. Confidence is Key. It was my first day as an official business owner. I was now the president of a well-known, well-established event planning and decorating company in Miami, Florida. Now, be clear I don't know not a damn thing about. I don't know a damn thing about decorating nothing. I barely. I've never even been to an event for real. I've been to, like Ray Ray's birthday party in a backyard, you know, like once or twice in Miami, and if you know what that is, that's just a bunch of Heineken's and multiple coolers and people sitting around. Okay, so my first day would be a special day.
Speaker 1:Indeed, I drove, with the music loud and the windows, down all the way to the shop, which was like a good 15, 20 minutes from my house. The sun seemed like extra bright and extra beautiful this morning. It was great. I was so stupidly excited. As I pulled up to the shop, I noticed that something was missing the sign, the stupid sign on the top of that building was nowhere to be found. It was actually gone. I stared at the empty spot and complete the disbelief, and I could not park my like. I want you to know, I couldn't park my car fast enough, Like think of me, just like pulling up and like jumping out the car and not even putting this thing in park Cause I'm like what the hell? Now I stared too hard as I approached the front door. I'm so excited just reading this, like I can't even get the words out fast enough. As I approached the front door, I noticed the door signs are also gone and that something was up. This was absolutely crazy, Utterly confused.
Speaker 1:I walk inside. I see the woman who I bought this thing from in the shop in the far left and she's packing up things. Now I was thinking to myself, why the hell is she packing? She says to me actually don't get me wrong like I did understand that she was gonna be putting things somewhere, but I definitely didn't. Like you know her little personal things that I've often get in the mouth so I could start running this thing. But the large items, the things on the shelf, they were gone.
Speaker 1:She turned to me, smiled and said good morning. I was not smiling, I was pissed. I walked closer to her and slowly and asked where were all the signs? She looked at me calmly and she said they are at my home. Now I'm like you know, I'm a little hooded. So I was like wait a second, I almost you know, like you know, you have a moment where you're angry and try to compose yourself as a human, as a woman, as exactly where I was. So now I blurted out why are they at your home? What are they doing there? I bought this business. I need these signs. What am I gonna do without them? You bring them back.
Speaker 1:She paused for what felt like I swear to you a whole eternity and all I know is she said to me honey, everything you bought is right here in this store. I was like what, the what? Where are you talking about? I got a whole piece of paper and says I bought this business and she was like, ha, you did not buy the business. You bought the assets. You bought the assets. Now I remember standing there. I don't even have to read anymore because I remember what I felt. It was like sickening disgust, anger, pain, sadness, every feeling that is like the epitome of holy. What am I going to do? Because now I have signed a lease for this place. I think the rent was like $2,000 a month. I now owe $5,000 a note, but I want you to understand what's around me.
Speaker 1:She has left trash. I don't want you to think she just took the signs and left everything else, Anything that was good. She literally just pulled it like this and took it off and put that shit in the box. Anything that was broken, anything that had tears, she left it right there. Anything that was battered and could barely be used, she left it right there. Now, in the back of this place, she left some tuxedos that were unfinished. She left wedding dresses that were unfinished, but that's not what I bought and, more importantly, I don't know what the hell she's doing with those things.
Speaker 1:Now my core lesson. I have two lessons I want to give you from this, because me walking through this particular journey has been one of the most important Because I know that, as a woman, you don't know what you don't know, and then you trust people too fast sometimes because we're buying and doing things or we're moving on emotion Back then, totally on emotion, I had no idea. Lesson number one You've got to do all the things with the lawyer, All the things with the lawyer, or with someone who and, or with someone who is not bigger and batter than you, but you know what they're doing, which is like the things that I do for our clients in the shadow CEO. The second thing that I learned was that it was my first taste of understanding that I could acquire a business in order to grow in scale. Now I'm gonna get into that in part two, three and four and five in this journey and this, this time that we have together. But I want to give you this because I Cried for ever.
Speaker 1:I feel like, as I rolled around like a complete jackass on the ground, like you could visualize me in this little tiny store, Looking at all this thing, thinking and what the hell am I gonna do? Not having no answers. But the truth in the matter is that I made a decision right there and then that I would not lose. So, yes, it's tempting to go to all these external places when you feel like you're drowning and you can't anymore. But the truth in the matter, like what I talk about here in chapter 5. Well, I'm so excited about this tour we have coming up. I'm coming around the country, I'm going on tour Specifically so I can talk to business owners, Because business owners and women, I feel like, is the other part of it, because the truth of the matter is that I know that when, in moments like this, we start throwing time and money at the problem, especially as women, we throw time and money and in time, like, like surface time, what I realized was this this really really, really important thing I'm gonna get out of here I Realized that I had to be resourceful with what I had and I had to make one bet and one bet only in this life on me.
Speaker 1:So, after crying and wiping my tears I don't even know if I wiped my tears I probably made these phone calls with tears in my eyes but I go to the yellow pages and if you're too young, if you're not a millennial You're younger than a millennial you may not know what a yellow pages are, but this was a big-ass book that would sit inside of your business in your house and you would look through numbers and I started to call every single business that was complimentary from mine and I started to go high. I own a such-and-such business. Do you have anybody who's looking to that? Build relationships with people. I need I by go was 10 10 people in the Miramar community that had that, had businesses that were complimentary limousine photographer, Carer of florist. I just called them all Built relationships and said hi, I'm an event planner.
Speaker 1:I never, I never, planned no event in my life. Hi, I'm an event planner because I didn't know what held you back. Hi, I'm an event planner and I am gonna plan. I plan amazing weddings for awesome couples and if you have someone who wants their, Please can you give me a call back or can you let me know. And I have a referral fee. I didn't have no referral fee. I didn't even have a program or a product. I just got up the phone and I started making calls.
Speaker 1:Third lesson, which is a bonus you don't have to have the thing in order to start fixing the problem. You just need to have yourself in order to start fixing the problem. I literally stood in that place alone, scared, afraid, owing a lot of money, not telling anybody in my family, Thinking about these kids, angry again all over at my ex-husband, who was my husband at the time he was in the streets, who I still hadn't seen for months, and thinking to myself this could not be. But I had to learn the most important part which is why I wanted to write this originally In what it means to become more as a business owner is, I had to learn the principle that I All else fails. I have myself, and so do you. That is it. This is my one, two and three thought for you on today's daily tea. I got part two, three, four and five coming.
