Back on March 11, 2020, the WHO (World Health Organization) declared COVID-19 was a
pandemic. A few days later, every aspect of our daily lives came to a halt. For families with
school age children this was a sudden shift in routine, schools shutdown and children were
home 24/7. Parents who were essential workers and had to go into work, were left scrambling
for childcare/supervision of their kids. Some parents were fortunate to work from home during
this time; however, they too struggled with establishing a routine and being available for their
children without making drastic changes to their family dynamic. The latter applied to my wife
and me. We were both fortunate that our jobs allowed us to work at home. We were extremely
grateful. However, as parents of an eight year old child on the autism spectrum, he needed our
attention. His routine of going to school and taking his swim lessons had all stopped. He didn’t
understand why. To get through this, something needed to change in our schedule for him to
have access to one of us when he wanted to play. He didn’t understand mommy and daddy
needed to work, or when school resumed via remote/distance learning in April, one of us had to
sit with him, he wasn’t going to sit by himself during the remote session.
Since my wife and I both worked, we experimented with different sleep schedules to allow for
one of us to start work early (5:00AM…it was usually my wife) to be able to finish early to
manage our son’s schedule. My role was to stay up late with him, this would lead to him and I
going to bed by 2:00AM, which was great in the beginning since he was a great sleeper, he
would sleep until 11:00AM-12:00PM during the first four weeks of the pandemic. I had to wake
up at 7:00AM to start my day. This new sleep pattern of about 5 hours a night for my wife and I
who were used to 7 hours a night was not sustainable over the long haul. We tried everything
we could: used our leave to help balance the day, requested a part time schedule, but
eventually we came to the realization that one of us would have to take a leave of absence from
work to be there for our son. If you were guessing, my wife made the sacrifice to step down from
her job she had been with for 13 years.
To make up for the lost income, I started to explore business ideas. I had friends who had
invested in real estate over the years, and I thought that if ever there was the time to do so, this
would now. We refinanced our home back in 2021 to begin this journey. Year one was great, we
bought two properties, renovated them and sold them. Things were looking good. However, with
any business venture, to grow you need more capital. I went on a journey over the next couple
of years to learn more about building business credit to help finance our projects. All of these
things that I learned have helped me acquire more capital to continue to scale; meet my
obligations to pay my investors; and manage my carrying costs. The strategies and advisory
provided by CCZAWOLO HOLDING COMPANY (named after our son) are all from my personal
experiences over the last several years. Since 2021, my wife has continued to manage our
home and business since she left her job. If you are interested in learning more about raising
capital to grow or start your business; grow equity in your home and save on interest payments,
CCZAWOLO HOLDING COMPANY can help you get there.
