We worked houses.
Restaurants.
A preschool.
Two office buildings.
A retirement community.
By thirty, I employed eleven people.
By thirty-one, twenty-three.
Then I bought land outside Mason, Ohio.
Nine wooded acres.
A renovated brick house.
A large metal building for equipment.
A detached office.
Two garages.
A private entrance with an automated gate because we stored expensive generators, drying systems, tools, and commercial vehicles on the property.
It wasn’t a mansion.
But it was mine.
The first week after moving in, I had almost no furniture.
A mattress.
A couch.
A folding table.
One night I walked through the empty upstairs bedrooms and laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because for the first time in my entire life, empty rooms did not mean someone else could decide what happened to me.
They were mine.
Every window.
Every lock.
Every key.
Every decision.
My family knew the business had become successful.
