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Linda Nottingham's path to entrepreneurship wasn't a typical one.
After working as a social worker in California and teaching children in Arizona, the then-37-year-old divorced mother of two tried to persuade a Chicago acquaintance to hire her as a consultant to operate a hospital's laundry facility, the Florida Times-Union reports.
"He told me I couldn't do it," Nottingham says.
"I said, 'You don't have anyone to do it, so why don't you just hire me?' He did.
That led to more contract work and eventual full-time jobs as a marketing director for a preferred provider organization (PPO) and executive for a health maintenance organization (HMO).
When the HMO's new owner let all employees go, she worried she wouldn't land a similar position quickly, so she and a colleague struck out on their own.
They launched an independent health insurance brokerage from Nottingham's basement.
"It was truly an act of desperation.
We were scared to death," Nottingham says.
"My security and my safety was tied to a job."
It was "terrifying to start a business and not have a job because you don't have any revenue in the beginning," she
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