Has the idea of retiring early to start a business ever crossed your mind?
If you’re like most people, you’ve likely found yourself daydreaming about what you could accomplish if you just retired from your job and built your own business. Maybe you want to start your own company selling a product you know people will want, like a family-owned recipe for some delicious holiday pies. Perhaps the drive to start your own business comes from a desire to help people.
Regardless of what your early retirement dream looks like to you, it’s important to understand that even though it may sound like wishful thinking, it is indeed possible if you know the right steps.
Jules Hicks is an outstanding example of someone who retired early to pursue her dream of helping people. Jules retired from her corporate job to start a business in the senior living industry with her mother, and her story is truly an inspiration to all of us who dream of leaving the corporate world behind to make a difference in the world.
In this article, we discuss what led Jules to make the decisions she did and how she has navigated her finances and success by providing loans to members of PMC. If you’re looking for an inspirational story about someone who achieved success and helps others on a daily basis, you’re in the right place!
Leaving the Corporate World
Self-admittedly, Jules has always been a “connector.” She explains that her natural inclination to bring people together, make connections, and build relationships has helped her immensely in the corporate world.
“Even when I was in high school and in team sports, I was a connector of people. People would always come to me and proposition me to be the spokesperson. In [the] corporate [world], in order to get things done, you have to build those relationships. You have to say, Hey, is my team doing something wrong? What can we do better to help your team? It is a quid pro quo. You need to work to be nice and to help so they will do the same thing on your end in order for you to build those relationships.” – Jules Hicks
These natural skills proved to be useful in her corporate career. Before finding her way to lending to members of PMC, Jules was a corporate manager for a huge cable company for over 15 years.
“I was formerly a senior manager of marketing operations for Spectrum Enterprise — the cable company. I had a team of five, and we brought in marketing technology and sales technology into our marketing stack. My team would get it ready to launch for the marketing team, then we would get it ready to launch for the sales teams. We did a lot of internal stuff that customers don’t really see. It’s just behind the scenes, making sure that you can find where all of your files are and make sure that they’re tagged appropriately.” – Jules Hicks
Leaving behind a cushioned, 20-year career in marketing management for a huge, reliable business isn’t something that you just do on a whim. Lucky for Jules, this decision was not made on a whim, and she had a plan to execute alongside her business partner and mother.
New Beginnings and Finding a Need
So, how exactly did Jules go from the corporate world to starting her own business with her mom? Jules’s source of capital came from her qualified retirement plan that kicked in after she retired from her corporate job at Spectrum. She was eager to give her retirement capital a job to do instead of just letting it sit around. This led her to the world of real estate.
“I don’t know if you’ve had to go through moving and going through your senior’s stuff, but it’s hard. What do you do with it? You feel bad, you feel guilty. I don’t want it. You don’t want it. They don’t want it. So what do we do with it? It can’t go with them for whatever reason, so now what? So people just get in this mire that they can’t move. So we come in, and we offer to buy the house as it is. Leave all the stuff. Just take what you want and move your loved one into care.” – Jules Hicks
They had their business model. They found a need for a service — a way to help people — and they had the capital they needed to make this a reality.
“We started to build a residential community — my mom owns a construction company, and I do marketing and marketing operations and all the backend stuff. However, we started to get some red flags for us regarding our comfort level in the business. We loved the idea, but we wanted to build from the ground up. Apparently, this was like a $10 million idea. So when you get those numbers in there and the red flags around appear, a lot of the stipulations about how you need to handle everything need to be in place because you’re holding people’s lives in your hands.” – Jules Hicks
The two began researching the real estate world and quickly discovered a pressing need for transitioning seniors from their houses into assisted living facilities.
“While we were doing all that research, we found our current business model for the company that we now have called Aunt Ida’s House, where we help seniors sell their homes to unlock that equity so they can move into an assisted living community, a memory care community, skilled nursing, or wherever they need to go. It’s helping those families unlock that equity and get into care quicker than a traditional real estate transaction.” – Jules Hicks
Starting Small at PMC
Jules is an excellent example of someone who didn’t throw all of her eggs into one basket. Rather, she started small lending with PMC, allowing herself to merely dip her toes in and get a feel for her environment before making bigger steps. She organized a small loan to help out another member of PMC with a real estate opportunity in Atlanta. Jules claims that the biggest takeaway from this first loan was the valuable connections she made with other members at PMC.
“It costs me nothing to give out information. That was one of the things that I learned. About 10 years ago, I went to a professional development program, and one of the things that I wrote down was [that] I wanted to help people. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, and I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish that. Helping people in [the] corporate [world] is hard to do unless you’re directly in a helping role. So that was the thing that I learned: I can help people and connect them directly to other people, and a lot of that help is simply those connections.” – Jules Hicks
The entire premise of PMC is that you can meet other individuals who are either doing the same things as you or who are doing similar things so that you can trade secrets or bits of guidance or say, “I’m doing this, and it’s working really well.” Going forward, Jules hopes to do more with seller financing so she can continue to help people who need it.
“[Seller financing] is really exciting to me. Not only can I help the senior family, I can help another family that can’t walk into Bank of America and get a loan, but I can sell or finance it, and they could get the loan because they do have a good job. They do have income, it’s just they don’t fit that nice, pretty little checkbox that Bank of America wants them to fit in. So we can help people on the front end and the back end.” – Jules Hicks
The connection you form with someone will result in a face-to-face meeting in which you will exchange information on acquisitions and similar topics. Then, one won’t necessarily need a large sum of money to get started with someone. In this case, a small loan was sufficient.
Some people may be intimidated by Private Money Club and believe that you need a substantial amount of money to participate as a lender. It’s great that the threshold is attainable and allows lenders to dip their toes in without loaning a huge sum of money.
Learn More About How Private Money Club Can Help You Achieve Your Dreams
If you’ve read through Jules’s story and thought that you might be able to learn the ropes of real estate, or if you feel as though it’s time to start loaning your money sensibly and planning for the future, then you’ve come to the perfect spot.
Private Money Club has the solutions you’re looking for if you’re interested in private lending and want to identify fascinating projects, swiftly strike deals, and make things happen. The Private Money Club (PMC) contains the answers you’re looking for.
If you’re ready to make your goals a reality, join the club today by visiting the website.