Kelli Esposito had wanted to run her own business for years. Back in 2017, though, she felt stuck in the corporate world. She had a successful career in fashion design and then corporate interior design—but neither was her dream. “I knew that I did not want to be in a corporate environment,” she says. “I told myself, ‘Life is too short. Let’s take a risk.’”
The risk became Harper Haus Interiors. She’s fulfilling her dream of owning her own interior design business—but the path there wasn’t easy.
Esposito’s story isn’t unlike many others: She felt trapped in the rat race and looked for escape. She’s one of the millions of people each year who start their own businesses—a number that’s skyrocketed since the pandemic. Entrepreneurship is a dream for many, but reality sets in quickly for those who take the leap. The hours are long and the money is tight. New challenges present themselves daily and easy answers are often hard to come by. But with some confidence, mentorship, experience and maybe a little luck, making that jump from a stable job into the unstable world of entrepreneurship is doable.
“Entrepreneurs are a rare breed,” says Andrea Walker, a business consultant with the Florida Small Business Development Center at Florida Gulf Coast University. “They would rather work 80 hours a week for themselves than 40 hours for someone else.”
Esposito was more than ready to make that jump. She was traveling a lot for her corporate job, and work-life balance was getting more and more difficult. Plus, she was working for someone else. She wasn’t in control of her own destiny. The timing was less than ideal, admittedly: Her husband was in medical school and they had two young daughters, one 8 years old and the other a newborn. She went from a well-paying, stable job to starting from scratch almost overnight. The early years were tough, with plenty of sleepless nights trying to wrap her head around all the new aspects of her business. Her mentality became to take it one step at a time without losing sight of the goal. “To me, the freedom was worth it,” she says.
She got her first few jobs from friends, and slowly, the business started to build through recommendations. Her husband graduated from med school and got a good residency, but it was in Oklahoma City, so the family was splitting time between Oklahoma and Florida. And then, a totally unforeseen challenge: COVID-19. At first, Esposito thought her business was done. As it turned out, it was the opposite. People sitting around in their living rooms decided it was time for a visual change, and they called Harper Haus Interiors. Now, with her full family (including a third child) settled back in Southwest Florida, she’s close to the point where she always wanted to be.
Harper Haus Interiors employs two other people, and Esposito tries to create the culture that she felt was missing in her corporate career—one with good work-life balance, where no one feels chained to a desk. Plus, she’s at a point where those sleepless nights are a thing of the past. “It’s like I get to enjoy life a little more,” she says. “It took some time, but I’ve learned how to turn work off when I go home.”
Even when times were at their most challenging, she held fast to the belief that, yes, she could do this. And for young entrepreneurs, it’s often that belief that’s more important than anything.
Rodney Riche had worked for about 20 years in the HVAC industry, but he had hit a ceiling. He was a technician with little experience on the business side of things, and though he even stayed after hours to learn all that he could about the other aspects of his company, he still got passed over for promotions.
“If they weren’t going to believe in me, I was going to believe in myself,” he says.
He started Nx Gen Heating and Cooling about two years ago. He’s his own boss—for better or worse. “The A/C stuff is easy for me,” he says. “The business side, that’s more challenging. But I love a challenge.”
It was a process of about three years from the time he first started thinking about starting his business to the time he was ready to launch. He had to plan, save money and study up for the licensing tests. He also had to get guidance. He contacted the FGCU SBDC and learned the ins and outs of finance and marketing. He also joined the SWFL Air Conditioning Contractors Association (and now sits on the board).
As of now, he’s a sole proprietor, but within five years he’s hoping to grow his client base and start hiring employees. “My plan is to grow as much as possible,” he says.
The biggest challenge throughout the whole process was establishing the right mindset. While Riche was starting up his businesses, he also was going through a divorce. Mentally, he wasn’t in a good place. “It took some serious soul-searching after my divorce to realize that I’d been my own worst enemy for far too long,” he says. “My self-talk was negative; my self-esteem was at rock bottom. I wasn’t finding any joy in life. It wasn’t until I flipped the script and started telling myself, ‘I can,’ ‘I will’ and ‘Everything will work out’ that things began to change.”
Four key questions
Andrea Walker’s job with the SBDC is to get people from “want-repreneurship” to entrepreneurship, she says. Nowadays, many folks love the idea—often rapturously shared on Instagram—of starting their own business and working for themselves. But Instagram tends to focus on glam and not grit. “Entrepreneurship is not as glamorous as social media makes it out to be,” Walker says, recommending potential entrepreneurs ask themselves some tough questions beforehand.
What is the objective of getting into business for myself?
This ends up being the one big question. Many people fall in love with the idea of being your own boss (especially if you don’t like your current boss). But don’t run away from the rat race; run toward something you’re passionate about. Entrepreneurship can be more rewarding, but it could be more demanding than that corporate job. And don’t think that being your own boss will mean you’ll get unlimited vacation time. “Most days I’m begging my clients to carve out some time to go on a vacation,” Walker says.
What are some realistic goals and expectations?
Sure, everyone would like to be a self-made millionaire—and preferably within the first couple years of starting a business. But that’s not realistic. In fact, expect at least two to three years before your business even turns a profit, Walker said. So, start setting some realistic goals and work backward from there. Make sure your goals are specific and measurable with clear deadlines, and even then, expect to make adjustments, as businesses need to react to an ever-evolving marketplace. Walker recommended looking at your business model four times a year and being willing to adjust. “Adaptability will win all the time,” she says. “It’s not OK to be complacent.”
Am I ready to be a jack of all trades?
Your business is more than just your product, of course. You can start your own widget-making business and your widgets may be the best out there. But owning a business means you also need to be CEO, CFO, VP of Marketing … and if you need a couple of employees to keep up with widget demand, guess what, you’re now HR. “You have to ask yourself, ‘Am I comfortable wearing multiple hats?’ Because starting out, that can be a lot for one individual,” she says.
Who have I consulted?
No small business owner can do it alone. Find a mentor with significant experience in your industry. Or reach out to a place such as SCORE Southwest Florida or SBDC. Both offer no-cost guidance and experts in a variety of aspects of business. It’s one thing to read about entrepreneurship online; it’s another to have an experienced mentor. Have you conducted a SWOT? What’s your SOP? What’s your P&L forecast? There are a million questions (and a million acronyms) that you’ll need to figure out. Ideas are one thing—doing the research into how to actually implement those ideas is another. “Most business owners truly have great ideas,” Walker says. “It’s the implementation strategy that will give you the competitive edge.”
The pandemic boost
The number of start-up businesses has surged since the start of the pandemic. According to U.S. Census data, new business applications rarely got above 300,000 in a single month nationwide before 2020. But the number peaked to more than 545,000 in July 2020 and has since leveled off to average about 442,000 per month. The Census designates a percentage of those as “high-propensity business applications,” meaning businesses that have high likelihood of hiring employees, and even those have shot up since the start of the pandemic.
The reasons for the increase are varied. One cause: People saved money during the pandemic. On average, household net worth actually increased by 23% between 2019 and 2022, according to a report by the Federal Reserve. Another cause came down to personal circumstances. We all heard about the Great Resignation, but ultimately, what it came down to was a Great Reshuffling. Many people quit jobs or were laid off only to find better opportunities elsewhere.
Some of those people just decided to ditch their corporate jobs and venture out on their own, and they were aided by the new-found comfort of working from home. “People realized a lot can be done online,” Walker says. “It opened a lot of options.”
Of course, starting a business is one thing; maintaining it is another. About half of new businesses close within five years, according to a Lending Tree analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. It’s still a little too soon to know how much of this is viable in the long term. But for now, the startup surge shows no signs of slowing.
Franchising vs. startups
Rene Cabrera wasn’t really looking to get into the coffee business. He and his wife were avid coffee drinkers, and often sought out the best cup when they traveled. During a trip to Austin, Texas, they stopped by Summer Moon Coffee, a chain known for its wood-fired roasting process and sweet Moon Milk. “We absolutely fell in love,” he says. “It was far different from what we had experienced in Florida. We thought it’d be great if we had something like that where we lived.”
They opened their own franchise in October 2023 in Fort Myers, the first Summer Moon location in Florida. Southwest Florida has plenty of coffee shops, but they felt that Summer Moon—a small company that has ambitions to grow across the country—stood out due to the quality of its coffee and the homey, laid-back vibe of the shops themselves. Cabrera had experience buying and selling other businesses, so it proved to be a perfect marriage from the franchise’s point of view. Franchising proved to be the right opportunity for the Cabreras, too. They could have started their own coffee shop and put in years of research about roasting, sourcing and otherwise trying to come up with the perfect cup of coffee—and probably not have created something as good as Summer Moon. “I wouldn’t have even known where to begin,” he says with a laugh. “But Summer Moon, they had already perfected it.”
Franchising has become more popular, especially in the Sunshine State. Due to its population growth, Florida had the second-highest expected growth rate in franchise establishment openings between 2023 and 2024, according to the International Franchise Association’s annual economic outlook. About 64,062 franchise operations were projected to be opened in 2024, a 4% increase from the year before. As Cabrera noted, many franchises come with a baked-in identity, product and name recognition. The option comes with less risk than investing into something that could never get off the ground. (That said, expect to pay about $20,000-$50,000 for the initial franchise fee.) The downside: You won’t have full control over the product, and recurring marketing or royalty fees will take a bite into your profit. But it can be a decent trade-off for already having so much set up for you, Cabrera said.
Cabrera recommended, no matter what type of business you’re starting—franchise or otherwise—to always research the marketplace and ask how you can fill a need. But even if you’ve found the perfect product for the perfect market, things will always be challenging. In his case, he thought he had the perfect situation with Summer Moon back in late 2022. He had signed a lease for a location and everything. Then Hurricane Ian hit, and it took a year before the business could finally open. Still: “Believe in yourself,” he says. “Because this won’t be easy. But if you believe in yourself, you can make it happen.”
