11:09
Kemi EganThe author with her sister, Soma.
I'm mixed race, from a single parent family in London, England that polite company like to call "of modest means" (I call it broke - think using tape as a vacuum!).
According to statistics I should at best, be in jail, and at worst, be dead.
But I was the first person in my family to go to college and graduated with honors. I graduated in 2007 as a physical therapist and I was really good - it just so happened that it came naturally to me.
Quickly, I was traveling internationally and working with top sports teams. I had made a commitment to making a difference and helping people so I set up a private health care practice in 2010, after three years in the field. I wanted to reduce wait times for the public accessing affordable health care.
In the first year or so it was awesome: hundreds of happy clients, cash was flowing and my shoe collection was growing. I thought I was on top of the world, and complacency came knocking.
I was young and naive. Things were good, so I assumed they would always be good. Rather than save up and create financial walls around my family for security and stability, I spent and reinvested every penny I made, which left me vulnerable when things began to slide.
What happened next hit me so hard.
Businesses need leaders, strategic thinkers, and great planning. In the middle of a global economic crisis they need this more than ever, and back then, I didn't have any of that.
A lot of our revenue came from insurance companies dealing with work injuries or car accidents. As the recession took hold these companies went under, not only taking large portion of our turnover with them, but also owing us tens of thousands of pounds.
Quickly, patients dried up. In a recession, who needs a back massage, right?
It spiraled out of control and before I could blink I was selling cars, shoes, books, CD's, everything I had to pay my rent, bills, tax, and put food on the table. It got so bad that, because of personal guarantees, to close the business would have cost around $25,000. I felt like the only person in the world too broke to fail!
Eventually there was nothing left to sell and I was forced to move into the office in August 2011 with the one bag of clothes I had left and a blow up bed that always went down in the middle of the night.
The next few months were ugly. I cried constantly, ate garbage comfort food, and drank too much alcohol.
About four months into my meltdown, the next light bulb moment happened. I realized that right then in that very moment there were successful people in the world making money, creating wealth, and having a great lifestyle. Recession or not, people were making money and I was going to figure out how.
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