Business View Magazine | July 2020

97 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2020 JZE BUI LDING & RESTORAT ION and lo and behold I ran across a guy who was looking for sales people for a roofing company. He wasn’t keen on hiring a woman, but I said, “Look, you have nothing to lose. You only have to pay me if I sell something.” So, I worked for him in 2015 and the deal was “If you sell four roofs a month, you’ll make $10,000.” At that point, I’d have been happy with a thousand, just for a chance to make some extra money besides valet parking and massaging people’s feet. “As it turns out, during that season I sold 16 roofs in one week. Mind you, I saw no money for two months and I was working late nights, knocking on doors, getting clients, and turning in contracts, but didn’t get paid right away because they were insurance jobs. But my boss started giving me a draw of $2000, $2000, $2000 for a total of $17,000 in a month. Two months later, I realized I could do this on my own instead of putting money in someone else’s pocket, so I started my own business, working with clients for myself.” BVM: Can you tell us how the business came into being? Bear: “Back in 2013, I was going through a terrible divorce, lost everything including my three boys to my husband of 30 years, and I was literally sleeping in my van. I’d never worked outside the home but I was always working on my homes… fixing them, hiring contractors. I’ve always been a go-getter and helped my husband with the different businesses we had while we were married. We had a manufacturing company, a retail stereo store, sold cars – I believe, now, that all that time I was a stay-at-home mom running businesses for him, God was preparing me for something bigger. “So after having everything stripped away and missing my boys so much, I had to figure out what to do next. I got jobs massaging feet, valet parking, anything I could do because the court said I had to have proof of sufficient income to get my children back. That’s all I wanted. It was very humbling. I knew I could sell anything