Daily Mail & Strayer University Present The Power of Positivity
No matter how far you get slammed down, you should be able to bounce back higher, that’s how I’ve stayed positive earlier, and there weren’t much other choices. My name is Tina and I’m a serial entrepreneur and the founder of foot pedals, it never really occurred to me that I was the one who broke the cycle of my family’s history.
My mother and father’s relationship was so bad. We ended up in this shelter for battered women and children. Eventually, my father got together with another woman, they had three children and they end up in the same shelter that we were in 20 years prior before my father died.
I had the opportunity to be a mother figure to my younger brothers and sisters and changed their life and changed their environment, they just wanted to start a normal life it was just so wonderful. I started to make money and do some great things by inventing cushions for women’s high heels that made them comfortable.
I stepped both of my feet into hot burning coal, so all of the skin was completely burned off from my feet, when I rushed to the hospital, I thought why hadn’t anybody ever thought of designing cushions for high heels. So I asked around and a friend of mine, whose father-in-law is known for investing in Latino businesses so I became the first woman Latina that he ever invested in, and we grew the company with sixty thousand dollars.
The first year till the 10th year, we were doing ten million dollars a year annually and this big public company came in and offered to buy us for 14 million dollars. I took it, and I’m now on my second company, started again with my best friend. We didn’t need any investors, we didn’t want to be one hit wonders and I can’t believe this is my life.
I feel so happy, and it’s also a really exciting feeling to see other people create their careers. My biggest regret is not having a formal education and I wanted to change that into a legacy for my family. The moment when my brother graduated, in the cap and gown, he had all these honors and other things at that moment.
I was so proud of them, I’m thankful that I had the hard time at the beginning. Because no matter who you are, you’re going to have hard time in the middle or the end, It doesn’t matter. I summarize my core values into three Rs, the first R is your reputation, that’s your most valuable asset in life your work; the second R is resourcefulness; the third is being resilient and I think that’s the most important, because if you really learn from the hard time, you have got the lesson, and you’ve become smarter. There’s always an opportunity which you just have to find and hold.
