Level 5 NYC: Maria's Audio Story

Maria H. was a successful businessperson in Mexico, owning and operating a wholesale egg distribution company.  And she built her company "from scratch."  When she moved to New York City, she dreamed of expanding her business in Mexico.  But life in NYC can be difficult for anyone, and she found that she would have to "build from scratch" all over again.

Note: to build something from scratch is an idiom.  It means: to build from the beginning, or to build from nothing. 

Listen to her audio story below, and read along with the text.

-Eric, NYC

Maria's Story

I never thought things in my life would change 360 degrees, but it happened and I had to start working in a new stage in my life. 

Coming to New York City was a hard decision I had to make because I was a business woman in Mexico. I had to leave everything behind after I had worked for years to build my own business.  The first thing I planned when I got to the US was to find a job and work hard to save up money to expand my business in Mexico.  This was not as easy as I thought it would be. 

I was 16 when I started working for an egg distributor as an associate and learned the trade. I learned to distinguish the difference in quality of eggs. After three years I shared my interest with my boss of opening my own business, I thought he might not agree, but he encourage me and offered his support if I needed. 

After I began to plan how to start working, first I started working from my mother house buying from wholesale for one year, then I opened a small store where I sold the product in retail and wholesale.  After long time working hard, I could start buying from farms.

First of all, everything in NY was completely different.  The way people live in a very small place compared to the way I lived in Mexico, I felt like a bird in a cage, walking from one place to another in the apartment, finding halls and other doors before I found the street.  There were no people that I knew at that time.

I did not stop thinking about all my things I had left in Mexico, but life continued and another hard thing was to find work and started working as a worker again.  My first job was a kitchen helper.  

Nothing compared to the work that I used to do.  I worked in the restaurant for a while, cleaning vegetables, helping people to prepare different kind of things, until a friend of mine told me that a friend of his opened a new Laundromat. They needed someone to run the store and I accepted.

At the beginning I felt scared because I didn’t speak much English. This work helped me to feel more confident and secure in many aspects because I had to take care of the store and relate with people of other cultures. It opened my mind to new experiences of something that I enjoyed. 

Working in the store was a great experience, it helped me to improve my English and I felt more confident with the other people because I worked there as if it had been my own business. After a while, I started making decision in regards to the store and it made me feel good. I worked there for a long time until I solved my immigration status to start making plans about how to build my own business again.