I have this distinct memory of waddling out to the living room one morning 8 months into my 4th pregnancy. It was late February and our baby boy was due in March. Chris had sold his business a few weeks prior.
He was there on the couch and said, “Your deals are doing so good! You can’t quit!”
With Chris’ encouragement, I had started a small hobby business in October 2016. I had begun to make leather earrings, founding Iviana & Co. I sold some at pop ups, a little through my website, and on a third party marketplace. Most of my sales up to February of 2018 were inconsistent and the business was still very much in a hobby type phase.
Being so close to my due date, I felt like it was best to wind down and close up shop. One of my sisters worked for me at the time, and to keep her working, I had continued to sell on the third party marketplace, since this is where the bulk of our sales happened. My plan was to finish the deals I had committed to for the month of February and quietly quit.
So that February morning, the deals on that marketplace were doing better than they ever had! Chris, now needing something to fill his time, started booking more deals on the market place. I reminded him that I was having a baby soon. He kindly left a two week period in March free of deals for some “time off.”
And there we were. I was 14 days post partum up late at night after we’d put the kids to bed. Teaching Chris the ins and outs of my jewelry business and making earrings in between nursing a newborn.
If we had known how hard it was going to be to work together, I don’t know if we would have done it. The next year was hard to navigate as new business partners, all the while parenting four young kids and keeping our marriage in a good place.
Despite the obstacles, we figured out our new dynamic. I think that process is another topic all on its own.
So while we learned how to navigate the business together, while working to scale it, the sale of our business continued to haunt us.
One day in July Chris called me while I was out with the kids. We had been awaiting a shipment of bubble mailers to be able to fulfill earring orders. The package had been rerouted to be delivered to the person who had bought our business! There was a couple other circumstances like this that were just not adding up. How was our personal information being accessed, and why?
We hired a private investigator per the recommendation of our lawyer to dig into what was going on. Get proof, so to speak. Over the next few months there was this persistent paranoia from our buyer. He thought Chris was trying to run a cellphone repair business again. Which would have directly violated our contract when we sold. So he was trying to find his own proof…but there was nothing to prove.
The bubble mailers were for the jewelry business.
After our private investigator had his proof, he was able to get the police to make a visit to this buyer. That, with a cease and desist letter from our lawyer finally made things calm down after about 6 months of chaos.
As nice as those monthly checks were, it sure was nice to see the last one come and know we had been paid in full. After 18 months from the sale of the business our non-compete clause was officially over, so then there were really no stings attached anymore. Although I just have to say, Chris, to this day has not gone back to the tech repair industry.
After the sale of our business, we learned that Google had banned the cell phone repair industry from running Google ads for advertising. 98% of our revenue for Chris’ repair business came from those ads. This brought a whole new light to the tension after the sale of the business. Without those ads, it was likely worth nothing. We felt bad, but admittedly relieved that we had been able to sale.
Around the time those monthly checks ended, the jewelry business became income producing! All due to the sales on the third party marketplace. But it has happened. We had scaled the business up and it has become our sole source of income.
We’ll end here with this part of our entrepreneur journey. This was early summer of 2019.
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