Today's episode features Christine Hughey who owns A Little Local Flavor food tour business.
Christine navigated several cities and years to land her dream job in Nashville.
Then shortly after, Christine would be celebrating a new marriage and devastated by their household income dropping from $120k to $35k.
At the bottom, she took a challenge to start her own business and in no time had created a six-figure food tour company that is growing at leaps and bounds.
Listen, learn, and let us know what you think about Christine's amazing turnaround.
Episode Summary
Christine's background
She feels like she had a better than average financial understanding growing up
Christine would go visit who are Grandmother who tasked them with tracking stock prices
Her Grandmother would also buy them small stocks in companies they understood
It gave them something to chat about over their times apart
Christine admits that she took all those lessons for granted until much later
When it was time to go to college, Christine wanted to get into the print industry
This ended up requiring her to get an engineering degree at the college she was at
From there she moved to Colorado and got a job she did not enjoy
Journey Towards FI
In 2006 she is making around $35k per year and saving around $200 per month
She also realized a true engineering job wasn't going to be there for her in Denver
From there she moved to a small town in Texas for a few years
Then her dream job opened up in Nashville, TN
Things Begin to Fall Apart
We're now entering 2013 on the journey and Christine is hitting her groove
Until she is shocked to find out that she'll be losing that dream job quickly after starting
Leading up to this, they had tried to push more and more work on her with no increased pay
Christine's husband helped her through this down period
Then she got a new contract for a dream job as an engineer and things were looking up
Then six weeks after their honeymoon, that new contract got pulled and she was unemployed
On top of this, her husband lost his largest income-generating gig
Six weeks after their honeymoon they saw their pay get cut from $120k to $35k
They started cutting all expenses and downsizing their house
Christine admits that the whole experience was crushing
She vowed to never let one company be the source of her income
The turnaround
Christine finally finds work at a food tour company in Nashville
The hours are long and the pay had gotten cut in half
Then January 2018 happened and her life completely changed
This was when she attended her first financial independence event
Christine attended CampFI down in Florida
At the conference, she was challenged to start her own food tour company
When she got home, she quit her job and started her own business that May
This was the start of A Little Local Flavor
Building a Six-Figure Business
Christine admits she was out of her comfort zone
What got her through was just taking one small step every day
Most of her education came from podcasts
It took some time for her to shed being an engineer as her identity
As she built her team she had several keys she wanted to hit
Some things she wanted was to fair pay, have strong values, and a good work environment
She then layers in lots of bonuses into her employees' pay
This small step really incentivizes them to do great work
By the end of 2018, they had over $60k in sales
But then 2019 grew like crazy
She grew her team to include 8 employees
They also saw the number of visitors grow to 4400 and sales to $330k
With that, they took home 23% as profit
Christine expects to grow that margin and increase tour types and locations
Her 2020 goal is $500k for the company
She also hopes to be able to scale back her involvement
Key Takeaways
Social Currency: Christine talks about how to put out goodwill and fair pay and that'll come back in multiples
Taking a leap of faith: She took a leap in a smart way with a company that needed a low investment to start
Call to Action
Go out and build your social currency. Just give back and find a way you can collaborate with someone to make a positive change. You'd be surprised the good you can accomplish and the influence it can have on your own success.
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T's Information
Her Company's Facebook: A Little Local Flavor
Email via: [email protected]
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