Alberto Lugo: Welcome my Friends to a new episode of successful blunders podcast, where we talk about failure with successful entrepreneurs so you guys learn what not to do in your business so you can scale up very quickly. In this episode, we have Laura and Justin Oldaker owners and cofounders of the Oldaker group. Welcome guys.

Justin Oldaker: Thank you.

Laura Oldaker: Thank you so much. We’re so excited to be here with you.

Alberto Lugo: So, I met this great couple in Babson, be right we were part of the group, and all right so guys tell me a little bit about the Oldaker group. What do you guys do?

Justin Oldaker: Well, Laura and I are both co-founders of the Oldaker group and that’s our you know our parent Company for two other companies, well, it was three companies right now it’s two, Laura is CEO of the academy for caregiving excellence. I’ll let her explain that a little bit more, but I’m CEO of the gift of caring which is a startup that we’re building together as well, but that is a gift of hearing is an online platform to training family caregivers at home to do caregiving for their elderly parents.

Laura Oldaker: Academy for caregiving excellence is a trade school so we provide training and education for essential health care workers so you can imagine how busy we are during this quarantine you know because of the huge shortages were training, nursing assistants care you’re working with vulnerable populations anymore who wants to go into health care they make a stop here.

Alberto Lugo: Yes, I found when I met the guys I thought it was very clever what you guys were doing because there’s so much need for that services and everywhere in the world so it’s very important that people get informed for the parents and their older people. So let’s cut to the chase and let’s get to business talk to me a little bit about what was that blunder that you guys have had, the most learned or old lessons.

Justin Oldaker: For us would be standing in line 2004 beginning of our marriage, we were both involved in real estate, investing things right.

Laura Oldaker: We were the flipper couple that you like on TV, go demoing the home now, all the work, all the remodeling…

Justin Oldaker: Laura got her real estate license. She now she sold the home, so you found the new properties and then we sold them and I would go in and find this dump of home and convert it to one of the best in the neighborhood. It was so nice…

Alberto Lugo: Nice, let me stop you there guys, so you were buying the homes or you were part of a business with other people you? were by yourself the home and remodeling?

Justin Oldaker: We learn with and lifting on our own we’re not part of a group it was just Laura and I and some subcontractors and that is it mainly the labor were me.

Alberto Lugo: Okay.

Justin Oldaker: So, I got Ph.D. in youtube education and that’s how we’ve got go and we di did house and made a profit then we get another and then it just kept growing and at one point we had over four properties with lots of investment in it but properties.

Alberto Lugo: For properties at the same time in the portfolio, they got it.

Justin Oldaker: Yeah!

Alberto Lugo: I know I see where this is going.

Justin Oldaker: That’s what 2008 hit and complete bubble crush all investment gone, properties were gone, we lost everything.

Laura Oldaker: I mean we went from a portfolio of millions of dollars to now, we can’t pay her bills you know to support our kids pretty much overnight, it was pretty devastating and that’s really the only thing that we had gone, I mean we were full-on focusing on real estate and our you know, our real estate slipper business and so when the market crash you just like I said we lost everything and we had to kind of start over.

Alberto Lugo: Well, guys were using like leverage were buying houses and financing them, and then you had to wait. How long have you done your work? for example, that the flipping process, how long did it take from the purchase of the home to the actual sale?

Justin Oldaker: The process was different for each home depending on how much renovation was needed, but it could have been a fast process, it was purchased another you know. It was happening fast because it was motivated buyers yo they 3045-day process it was quick.

Alberto Lugo: Okay.

Justin Oldaker: But then until we got to work and that work could range from anywhere from a couple of months tho four or five months and now it’s on the market to list it but things are just moving just that after you’re got it on the market.

Alberto Lugo: So for example you were doing business you, were doing this successfully. How many houses were you selling a year?

Justin Oldaker: We were up to about a dozen homes by the time the 2008 time compared to other people, but it was something we enjoyed it was going good.

Laura Oldaker: So we were leading a pretty comfortable life, but that was you know that was what we put all of the eggs we had put in that one basket you know what. I mean so when the market crashed, we had to kind of very quickly reinvent ourselves where we were rock bottom for our money in our bank account, we lost some of the properties that, we had financed.

Alberto Lugo: That was one of my questions that you were you able to sell them or where you do you have to turn them in what happened with those four properties?

Laura Oldaker: We sold a few four, we sold a couple for a loss and we lost one property to two properties, so… we were pretty much rock-bottom at that point.

Justin Oldaker: And that was after all investment was in the homes so we finance of the property but all of the rehabs were cash.

Alberto Lugo: Wow!!

Justin Oldaker: Yeah, so everything was done after.

Alberto Lugo: So, what will through the process your thought process when you were there? you told me about your kids, how do you manage? first of all to accept what was happening and then, how long did it took for you guys to move all move over or move on to do something, or do you guys have to go to work or what so talk to me a little bit about it?

Laura Oldaker: Yeah, we didn’t have a whole lot of time to waste, I mean we have to very quickly, we have to put food on the table and pay bills make ends meet, so… at that point, we Justin took a job in construction and he started working 16 hours days job in caregiving because when I was in college I worked as a caregiver with older adults with elderly and I remembered at that point that I really loved it I mean I had always enjoyed it and so an opportunity came. I took a job in caregiving and I was working 16 hours days, Justin was working  16 hours in opposite schedules, so, a period of about six months or so that we didn’t really see each other we would take turns to take care of the kids. The kids were very little. So at that point when I went back to caregiving and was working so many hours he was in construction. I’d come back to the industry of health care and I started to see it with different eyes it was at that time, that the news reports were coming out saying in the next you know in the next year the baby boomers are in a preach you know retirement age and they’re gonna start to retire 10000 every day in school, it was at that moment Justin and I with entrepreneurial eyes thought well this might be an opportunity for us.

Justin Oldaker: I mean just what it was that, and on top of articles that were coming out of this caregiver stole so much money from their client they were caring for the abuse on caregivers and Laura what the one day we had like together from every day because of the overlap the schedule we were talking about it he turned to me and said: We could do a better job from there we formed a company called biocide senior care starting with one employee that way and from there. We grew it and I started my job so she quit we found a couple of clients and she was doing caregiving and then we got more clients than we needed to hire caregivers and it just kept snowballing they’re getting eventually got a point where. After about what two years, no? A year and a half I had to quit my job and go.

Laura Oldaker: well so… what happened is we had no money and we started the business with zero money really, we took Justin’s paychecks a couple of times too when we started to bring on employees which was pretty quickly you know about three to five months after we started the business we got so much business that we started to bring on employees but, I had to take his check to pay for the payroll because it takes a while for you to get paid from insurance companies from your apartment, so… eventually after about a year we took a loan of 3500$ to start doing marketing.

Alberto Lugo: That’s pretty impressive too, and that’s something that entrepreneurs do you are working your ass 16 hours a day to give you a check to pay your other people in new business so you must have you must be thinking this has to work right because you’re right how you’re spending your hard-earned cash putting on in the other business to see if it works so that LEM will applaud you for that… that’s crazy and then you went and took a loan, so, what?

Laura Oldaker: We did it was a small loan because we’ve gotta remember we just lost everything, nobody wanted to lend us money our credit was like you know in the dump, we didn’t have much collateral because we had lost it to the banks, so you know we knew that we had to make it work with whatever we could at the time eventually a local CDFI went just 3500$ to you know with our marketing and that’s when we officially registered the business because everything else was kind of like you know. I but not really pay taxes on it an amount of time but it’s what gave us the opportunity to at that point when we got that some alone to get going and then that’s where the business really took off and like you said you’ve got to be able to invest time after and whatever resource you have at that moment only hottest time and effort right.

Alberto Lugo: And let me ask you something so we’re maybe at half of the podcast, but lessons learned, what do you guys learn from this first entrepreneurship? Experience you were doing grainy you were having a great lifestyle or you were you didn’t have to work like 12 hours a day, so you were successful entrepreneurs when you first started what are the three key lessons that you guys learned from that experience?

Justin Oldaker: That experience is the first one, we never saw the bubble coming we never saw the collapse and if we did and we were very new entrepreneurs it’s not knowing how to do market research, how to analyze past history to predict the future and there was a lot of mistakes they’ll be our first one of not paying attention or paying attention to historical data and looking to what’s coming down the pipeline.

Alberto Lugo: Yeah, let me summarize that it’s paying attention to the Marketplace right to you to your environment and what’s happening around your Company?

Laura Oldaker: The second one I wanna I want to mention is be strong in your financial knowledge so were not strong in financials, I mean we did not know we didn’t have any knowledge we just kind of jumped on in. And I mean we didn’t really have a way to forecast kind of like what we learned in the 10k it’s like forecast How much money you have to have in the bank and how long will your business. We didn’t have that knowledge we learned it in 10k. I would say this is the second lesson learned.

Alberto Lugo: Okay.

Laura Oldaker: And you’re like if you’re gonna go into business you gotta know you’re you gotta know your finances, know your numbers for sure all.

Justin Oldaker: I would say the third for us and it was the beginning third idea and it really took hold in the second business is not having all your eggs in the same basket diversify your income levels, your income streams, because once if you have only one stream coming in or one big client when that changes your whole business crashes.

Alberto Lugo: I think that’s something that every entrepreneur should listen to and everybody can relate to because much of the time businesses there are services based they start with one client or two or three clients but there’s always like, I say concentration like you have like 80% of your revenues coming from this one client and I need a cause of they kick you out you’re basically out of business so not putting the eggs in the same basket I think it’s one of the most important lessons entrepreneurs should learn really quickly and I mean when I met you I was amazed at that with the second business right which is then given in given seminars or given information to people one looking to care for their parents and I think that’s something that it’s related but it’s not the same and that everybody can benefit from so I think that that’s impressive and… lets before wrapping up I since you have both of you here. I just want to make one last question, how do you guys deal with being a couple and working together? I Heard people that are cooler and I Heard about, I have seen stories of people that divorce or they can deal with each other after they come home so… how do you guys deal with it and how has that experience helped you for you or given you a hard time in your businesses?

Laura Oldaker: It’s been difficult, and where we find the difficulty is that we are both we’re both leaders and we want to both be the final voice.

Justin Oldaker: Right!!

Laura Oldaker: Yeah, so important at the beginning of our companies we were kind of having a big power struggle, so even we have to decide who has the final say, that was a very first step is who is gonna have the final say in the decisión that’s being made for the business and everybody has very had to have very defined roles, however when one of you has the final say it you will definitely bring that home, so… you just, you start to build a kind of a nun said and unsaid tension at work and then you bring that home… It took us a Little it took us years to actually get past that we eventually were we Split up into we sold our original business by your sight senior care in 2018 because in 2015 we launched academy for caregiving excellence because again we saw mead we saw the pain in the notion and in our community for education and we decided, Okay we don’t want to run a 24/7 business anymore let’s just focus on the academy and focus on training family caregivers so we sold it bu your side Split up the businesses academy is for professional training of professional health care workers the gift of caring is for the training of caregivers, Justin took over one Project, I took over the other Project and then we’re both kind bosses of our own businesses right but it’s not so it really has become a trial and error, we try not to and this is really difficult but we try not to talk too much business at home.

Justin Oldaker: It is much easier for her.

Laura Oldaker: Yeah!!!

Justin Oldaker: Me I can’t turn it off and it’s very good.

Alberto Lugo: that’s clever but that’s very difficult, I think 80% of the talk at home it’s business-related just because I take it home and try not to do it and I’m trying to do other hobbies when I’m home with my family.

Justin Oldaker: Biggest successes in our relationship where having an understanding that we have bad days we both have bad days and even moving the same businesses my bad day wasn’t as bad as you know.

Alberto Lugo: Yes.

Justin Oldaker: And so we had an at first an unspoken rule with like you come home and you just you’re just spent and you just raise your hand up like, I call trump button and they like pretend to hit a button and we say ok you called it first so that person’s gonna dinner letting that person just decompress and then we wouldn’t we abused it and then you could something that is easily abused if we’re both hitting it every day.

Alberto Lugo: Yeah!

Justin Oldaker: But for us, it was a nice like she got the button first, I got the button but that person would just step up even if I had a bad day also I would just step up.

Laura Oldaker: So this one-button Works really well if you can imagine like red button like the register button if you remember that you just press you don’t actually have a button it’s the other person’s like a responsibility to take care of you that day and it’s where I mean borrow it to use it whoever’s watching it Works really well in the key is like you said it’s gonna be to not abuse it.

Justin Oldaker: Yeah!!

Alberto Lugo: Yes, all right guys, I want to thank you both for being the podcast and being responsive with my request guys thank you for having, thank you for being with us.

Justin Oldaker: Yes.

Alberto Lugo: Thank you for following us remember to click that bell so you can get a notification on new episodes and like and share if you’re watching us through youtube and if you’re listening to this podcast please, do subscribe insurance well if you find it useful, thank you guys again.

Justin and Laura Oldaker: THANK YOU!