Meet Michael Ferro | Exterior Remodeling Contractor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michael Ferro and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
I’m a serial entrepreneur. My father had his own construction company so I grew up in a household knowing that was a possibility. I started young, selling Christmas cards, mowing lawns, anything that I thought people needed. My first real success came when I was working for someone else in the construction industry. I was in the sales department and I saw how much business there was but I also saw how many deals that slipped through the cracks. I stayed with that company long enough to figure out the processes they used and went off on my own, replicating what I though was good and improving on what I thought needed work.
I had that company for over 20 years. It was very successful and taught me so much about business and working with people.

What should our readers know about your business?
In 2016 I decided it was time to leave Chicago and go to someplace warmer. So I sold the company and move to south Florida. Once here I bought a guesthouse and ran that for a few years. It really was fun, I got to meet many interesting people and it was fun and easy to run. Then COVID hit and tourism in Florida shut down. That really hit us hard. I ended up closing the business and selling the property. I knew I had to find another business but this time it had to be something that would not be affected by a pandemic and I could work from anywhere in the world, incase I wanted to travel. I started researching about ecommerce, specifically Amazon online arbitrage. I started selling used books. That went well, By the end of the first year I was selling over $10K/mo. As my sales increased I decided to expand my product offering. I started selling toys and sporting equipment. Q4 was approaching and I was buying a lot of merchandise to take advantage of the Christmas spike. Then Amazon flagged my account for what they thought were counterfeit goods. Amazon is their own world and they really don’t care about their sellers. I provided documentation that the goods were authentic and purchased from an authorized distributor. They wouldn’t accept the proof and deactivated both of my selling accounts. I was stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory that I had to get out of Amazon’s warehouses and try to sell on my own. I had the inventory shipped to a prep center and listed the items on eBay and Abe Books. Slowly the inventory has been selling but not enough to have cashflow to cover the expenses.
Once again I had to pivot. I remembered how in my construction company I had set up a finance company to handle finance of our deals. I had also started financing other companies deals. I drew from that experience and started MJF Funding Solutions. We are a B2B alternative funder that focuses on startup and MCA debt restructuring. I lvoe the funding space and it has proved to be quite successful.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I would take them to Chicago. We’d go to visit all the different ethnic neighborhoods and restaurants. We’d go to museum campus and take the architectural boat tour down the river. We’d attend outdoor concerts and street fairs. There’s so much to do from movies in the park to symphony concerts.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My father was a big inspiration, but not in the way you might think. He had his own construction company and worked very hard. He did most of the labor and micromanaged his employees. I saw his approach to business and decided that I liked the industry but didn’t like his business model. So I structured my business as a sales organization whose product was construction services. We subcontracted the labor out and ran the marketing and sales end of it.

Website: https://www.mjffundingsolutions.com