I am definitely being tested.
As a single father of 15 year old twins and the sole owner of a small business based in Stanton, California, the coronavirus pandemic has placed a tremendous amount of pressure on me since mid-March, like so many other Americans.
I’ve always been known as a resourceful and resilient guy, but this unprecedented pandemic came on the heels of my having suffered a surprise heart attack in September, two days before my 55th birthday and my mother’s death one more later.
But I pulled myself out of these two tragedies for the sake of my twins, Madeline and Mikey, with support from my brother and close friends and now I’m in better shape physically and am starting to heal emotionally from my mom’s death. Both events were extremely difficult for my children. Because they haven’t been attending their regular school, I’ve had the extra burden of keeping them focused on their online education and trying to keep them busy around the house, even when they feel like they’re losing their minds and are separated from their friends. Last night, to keep up the morale in the house, I cooked them their favorite lasagna dinner, we changed out of our pajamas and put on our regular clothes, grabbed our masks, jumped into the car and went to McDonald’s for Frappacinos and took a drive along the Pacific Coast Highway. For a while, everything seemed normal until we had to return to our messy bunker and it seemed like we were living in a science fiction movie.
I’m the owner of an imprinted sportswear company which means that I create t-shirts and merchandise for hundreds of schools across the United States, and the pandemic, within less than a week, shut my business down, because schools closed and events were canceled, which brought a sudden halt to year-end orders. I had no customers.
So from running a flourishing small business, in a matter of days, orders were canceled and production ceased. I had to furlough most of my employees and I was staring at stacks of bills which I’m still negotiating. But more importantly, I worried about paying my mortgage, panicked about water, electricity, gas and telephones being turned off and even wondered if I’d be able to be able to put food on the table.
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As we all know, it’s small businesses all across America that have been hit extremely hard by the pandemic and I saw literally hundreds of my clients forced to close their doors, unable to generate income and forced to let go of their employees.
But I also realized that others were struggling worse than I was, but that I had the ability to rebound and fight back and help other people who were paralyzed by the pandemic. One of the first things that I did was to ship toilet paper to several of my mom’s octogenarian friends across the country. But that wasn’t enough.
Once my situation was stabilized (including stocking up on essential supplies from Costco), I realized that I could help my clients generate income for themselves and the employees that they had been forced to lay off. Almost of my small business clients shared with me that they had applied for small business loans but I only know one who has received a loan. They came to me asking for my advice and I realized I could transform my existing business into a temporary source of income for both myself and my clients, as well other small businesses and non-profit organizations.
I quickly designed and launched a website called www.HereForGoodCA.com, which is now part of a network of more than 30 other projects like mine. I am now in the business of printing t-shirts for my clients who have been forced to closed down their businesses, with the proceeds of the sales of the t-shirts divided between me (I absorb the entire cost of manufacturing the t-shirt) and I give the client or organization $10 from the sale of every $20 t-shirt which promotes their business. The clients use their mailing lists and social media to send their customers to a link to www.HerForGoodCA.com, where they can support them by buying their custom designed t-shirts, whether it’s a sporting goods store, a restaurant, a brewery, a gym or even a non-profit organization.
Currently, I’m working with more than one hundred different businesses and have 3000 t-shirts in production for them, with the goal of raising $500,000.
Some of my clients are paying their employees, some are donating the proceeds of their t-shirt sales to families in need of money for groceries and some are buying diapers for homeless babies who are exposed to domestic violence and substance abuse neglect.
Although my company has produced hundreds of thousands of t-shirts, I now know that just one t-shirt can make a huge difference.
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Photo Credit: Author
