My core Evergreen business, Spraggins Inc., is a building products and construction services company based in Orlando, Florida and focused on the contract residential market. In 2007, the great recession hit our business extremely hard. Homebuilders just stopped building.

By the fall of 2008, we were down to 17 employees from 135. The 17 employees who remained were the best, and they were successfully managing what business we had. At that point, while I had enough money saved to fund my family’s expenses, I had no cash to invest. What I did have was time.