Ciao a tutti e Benvenuti!

In today's episode, I share my incredible journey from Italy to the United States and how my entrepreneurial adventure began.

I arrived in the US in 2014, driven by my love for the English language. Despite being a successful CPA in Italy, I felt that working with numbers didn't give me the chance to practice English. So, I made the bold decision to quit my job and planned to stay in the US for just six months. During my time in New York, I landed an internship doing budgets for a nonprofit producing contemporary operas in Brooklyn.

Since I was alone in NYC, I joined a meet-up group called Language Exchange, where I could practice English and help others with Italian. There, I met a remarkable man—though not in the way you might think. He's 70-years-old, a NYU professor, a fellow CPA from Italy, and a polyglot who spoke eight languages. With a larger-than-life personality, he asked me, "What are you doing here, and what would you like to do?" When I mentioned my short-term plans, he encouraged me to share my resume, promising to help me find a job in the US.

Skeptical yet hopeful, I sent him my resume. To my amazement, he arranged an interview for me at the Empire State Building, and I landed the job. That night, overwhelmed with emotion, I called my father, a lifelong entrepreneur, to share the news. His response was both supportive and challenging: "You can take the job, but only on one condition. Being in the US, the biggest market in the world, you can't settle for a regular 9-5 job. You take it, you start it but you need to come up with something else and do it at the same time."

This advice sparked the creation of Healthy Italia. In 2016, Healthy Italia opened its doors, marking the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. The path hasn't been easy, and I'm candid about the lessons I've learned, including the pros and cons of having business partners which lead to me deciding to do this by my self, the challenges of accepting a gift from my father that turned out to be a loan, and the perseverance required to keep going when there is no other option.

Join me as I recount my story, offering valuable insights that is hopefully motivational for aspiring entrepreneurs.

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Hosted by Cristina Bossini

Produced by Cristina Bossini and Christine Borowsky

Edited by Christine Borowsky

Music by Matt Large

But in Italy, I am a CPA. And working with numbers all day long, I didn't get any chance to practice my English, so I decided to quit my job and come here for six months. Doing an internship completely unrelated to my job. I was doing budgets for a non-profit company that produces contemporary operas in Brooklyn, but at least I got a chance to speak to somebody.

And while I was by myself in the city, I decided to join a meetup group that was called Language Exchange, so I would be able to practice Italian with somebody, and somebody would practice English with me.

And I met a man, and every time that I tell my story, everybody's waiting for the man to arrive in the story, but this is not how my story ended.

He is 70 years old, he's a professor at NYU, he's a CPA here in Italy, he speaks eight languages. I can keep going, he's a huge personality, but he asked me, what do you do here, and what would you like to do?

And I said, I'm here for six months, and then I'm going back home, and he goes, send me a resume. I might be able to help you find a job.

So I went home that night wondering why he wanted to help me, but I didn't have anything to lose. So I decided to send him the resume and see what's going to happen.

So I sent him the resume. He sent it to three different CPA firms, and one of them was in the Empire State Building. They scheduled an interview with me, and they hired me.

At that point, I just cried the entire night. I wanted to stay here six months. Now I got a job. How can I just lose the opportunity in going back home?

So I called my dad, who is an entrepreneur since he was born, and I said, Dad, I got a job. And he goes, Okay, you can take it only at one condition.

You are in the United States. That's the biggest market of the world. You cannot stay there having only a regular job, nine to five. You take it, you start it, but in the meantime, you have to come up with something else and do it at the same time. And I always say that Healthy Italia is my something else.

So I started to think what I could bring from Italy that people will love and appreciate it. And of course, of course, I thought about food, but I decided to work with very small producer that never exported here before. My family ships me here a couple of containers a year with all the products that you can find in the store and on our online store.

And I decided to combine the idea of the storefront together with the cooking school. So I will be able to share my family recipes and traditions with my guests in the cooking school and to whoever wants to try our products.

So this is basically the short version of my story. That is like the shiny version.

It feels like everything went perfectly fine, but this is actually not how it went. There's a lot of up and down, a lot of struggles during this journey.

For example, I started this adventure with other people. I had other business partners. And even if you think that you started with the best person on earth, it's not that easy to find a common ground with different people, because we all have different backgrounds. We all have different point of view, and it's hard. So it didn't work out.

Like, I don't have anybody else blame me. Like, it's you, it was you. But I said, you said, so I prefer for now, for now, maybe I haven't found the right partner until now. But for now, I have to say that I prefer much better to be by myself and be surrounded by great people who can work and create a team with me.

But as far as ownership and partnership, I still find that it's easier this way.

The second thing that it might sound like very stupid, but this is actually how it went and how to show how much I've grown since then.

The reason why I started this business actually is because of my dad, as I said during this story, because he was the entrepreneur. He always thought that being an entrepreneur can give you a better life than working for somebody else.

Actually, this was his choice because since I was little, I always told myself, I always said to myself, I would never want to have my own business because I don't want to work alone.

I want to have somebody who I can ask something if I don't know how to do it, and I don't want to arrive home very late at night all the time. I want to have my weekends. I'm good, I'm a hard worker, but I also want to have a life.

This is what I kept telling myself because I grew up seeing my dad arriving home always after 9:30 at night. I was having dinner with my mom, and then I was waiting for dad just to say, hey, goodbye, good night. And then I was going to sleep, and I barely saw him during the week.

Then he was working Saturdays and Sundays. He was taking us to the office and to his factory. So we were kind of playing while he was working, but he worked like nonstop. And this is not what I wanted.

And now I found myself in the same position. The apple doesn't fall really far apart from the tree apparently.

And when my dad told me, Cristina, you need to take this opportunity, try to build something in the United States, he goes like, I'm gonna support you, I'm gonna finance you, but you need to do something. You can't stay there just being a CPA for now. And no, you need to do something more.

And I'm like, okay. He wanted actually to give me a better opportunity for life, I would say. And I said, okay, okay.

The thing is that back then, when I was 27, I didn't realize that all the money that he gave me to start the business was a loan.

I thought, this is his investment, whatever happens, happens. Like it's kind of a gift, forgiven.

And like couple of years after I started the business, he goes like, oh, you need to start paying me back. And I'm like, ah, I did not understand that.

So basically, after a couple of years, I started this business that it was a nightmare. It was almost bankrupting after a couple of years. Like we weren't making money. Everything was falling apart.

That with my partner was going really, really, really bad. We didn't have any money to pay employees or to pay suppliers. And everybody was yelling and blaming me because I was the one kind of making the decisions.

And I found out that I also had to repay my dad back. And I'm like, huh, I never wanted to have a loan in my life. I don't want to have a mortgage.

I don't want to have a car loan. I don't want to. If I have the money, I buy things.

If I don't have the money, I don't buy anything. This was my philosophy. And I found myself buried under a big loan and debt to my dad.

So like, okay, now, now I understood. And it was a big lesson. Like communication in my family was never a thing.

We were like the worst communications ever could happen in my family. Nobody was talking. My dad was silent for a month, so when something was going on in his company and we couldn't understand what we did, if it was us or like whatever.

So no communications at all. And that was the perfect example. But considering that I'm somebody who when I give you my word, I keep it.

I hate when I can't keep what I say I would do it. I said yes. Then even when everybody left the company and we all had debt to my dad, I just took all the debts from everybody.

And I said, okay, I made a promise. I'm going to keep going until I'm going to be able to repay my dad. I'm not going to give up because this is what I said.

This is what I'm going to do. This is just part of the story of what lessons I've learned just to say yes to start this business. And yes, I'm just keep going.

And I'm actually ungrateful. I'm grateful for this reason that I have this like, I want to honor this promise that I made to my dad. And these together with another thing that I'm here still with an investor visa.

And this allows me to just work for my company. I can't work for anybody else. And I always told myself that if I had have a green card, that I would never had my business today.

Because I would have given up. It would have been much easier to say, listen, I couldn't make it. I try everything I could.

I just prefer to go work for somebody else. I'll repay you dad in another way, but I can't do this anymore. But I didn't have any choice.

And if you don't have a plan B, if you don't have a way out, you just keep going. And I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I didn't accept a green card back then because this allowed me to have my business today.

Otherwise I would not have it. And it would be a great regret for me, a very big regret for me. And this is why Healthy Italia is still alive and I'm still here doing what I do and doing what I love.

Hey, podcast family. If you're more of a visual learner or just love watching someone talk with their hints as much as I do, you've got to check out this episode on YouTube. I didn't realize how much I moved my hands while talking until I will watch the video myself.

As a true Italian, I'm practically a human marionette. So don't miss out half of my passionate speech. Subscribe to our Healthy Italia YouTube channel that you can find below and never miss my hands talking ever again.

I'll see you there.