How did I start my business?
- by Elliott Massa
- Jan 30, 2015
- 3 min read
In 1995, I was working as an assistant store manager in my parents business. If you have worked with your parents, you'll know that the true meaning of assistant manager includes: delivery, packaging, cleaning, creative team, favors and a thousand other things. I don't need to say that being a Business Owner was running through my veins and I was always thinking on ways to generate an extra income.
My parents had lighting fixtures and interior decoration stores. A lot of the customers were always asking if we did restorations on antiques. The answer was always no, my parents were not interested in that market. One day I had the idea that I could do the restorations as a side income, so I spoke to them and they told me there was no problem if I bought my supplies from them.
I could never imagined at that moment that in the first year I was going to generate an additional $15,000 and in 1995 that was a lot of extra income.
Later I started added other services like: deliveries, installations and maintenance of the lighting fixtures at the customer’s houses. In 1997 I already had the business running, customers call themselves and my agenda was getting full.
Business was good, but there was a lot to learn, until that moment I didn't knew anything about permits, marketing, accounting, taxes, inventory, employees, and the list goes on in addition to long hours of work, but there was something clear to me, I loved what I was doing.
I decided to finish my college degree and I did a Bachelor’s in Business Administration with a Major in Accounting, I also took all the classes I could in Marketing and Advertising.
I also did Graphic Design and I became an expert in Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc... In fact I learned to design all our marketing and advertising for my business. I read a huge amount of books and when I say a huge amount, man, I mean huge!
By the year 2000, business had evolved and I was distributing art at a wholesale level to furniture stores and interior designers, and now my old employers (my parents) were my customers. That business is still open and I couldn't tell you how many thousands of houses across the USA and the Caribbean have some of my art in their houses. You can see my Website at:
On September 11, 2001, I experimented for the first time what in the business field is called "External Factors". We suffered the worst terrorist attack in our nation's story, all businesses were really affected by this event.
This opened a door to help other businesses with their advertising, a lot of new business owners were recommended to me to help them and there my passion to see new projects came to life and evolve started, I have repeated this process so many times in Florida that I decided to create this Website so I could help more people achieve their dreams in a more effective way.
I'm going to keep giving "tips" with everything you need to do, so follow us on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to our email Newsletter so you can receive all our updates.
This is all for today, below you will see a comment section, please comment and ask questions, your questions are the same questions thousands of people have so ask all you want.
See you next time,
Elliott
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