It’s not easy being a parent and starting a business. But if you asked this local handywoman, you might just agree it’s possible.
Columbus resident Hannah Jordan, 25, started Handy Hannah’s in January 2021 with the hope of building a handyman business, painting and making general repairs on houses in the Golden Triangle. When she found out she was pregnant in July, she took a pause from her work while preparing for motherhood. When Harlan William Jordan was born in February, she started thinking about the right time to start it all back up.
Jordan said she restarted her business in May, painting houses, putting up sheetrock, repairing walls and has now added landscaping.
“I’ve done one yard that was a jungle, now it’s a yard,” she said.
Jordan’s entrepreneurial spirit started when she was just 6 years-old, when she started a lemonade stand.
“She saved to buy her own bicycle,” said her mother, Amy Hopper.
A few years later, Jordan started Handy Hannah’s Car Wash, washing cars for her mother’s clients at Amy’s Salon on Warpath Road in East Columbus.
“My clients would come in to get their hair done and she washed up the cars,” said Hopper.
Her passion for working on houses came from helping her grandfather build cabins.
When Jordan initially started her business, she only painted houses. As clients started asking about her doing additional work, she added to her skillset.
After graduating from Victory Christian Academy in Columbus in 2015, she attended Shelton State Community College in Alabama to study personal training and education. She left Shelton State in 2017.
Though working in childcare for seven years and then at a Mercedes Benz dealership in Vance, Alabama, Jordan said she recognized she was not cut out to be an employee at someone else’s business.
“Honestly, I can’t work for anybody else. So I told myself that I’ve got to figure out something to do to make money where I’m the boss,” Jordan said. She started her handywoman service in 2021.
“She’s always been my own little entrepreneur,” Hopper said.
For Jordan, being a good mother to her son is the most important thing. She wants to show him the work she does and eventually teach him her chosen trade.
“My goal is to be able to run my own business and teach Harlan how to paint. Once he’s able to hold a paintbrush, he will be ‘helping,’” Jordan said.
Jordan said that for the time being, she can only take on a few jobs at a time while Harlan is so young. Whenever she goes to work, her mother is right there to help with the baby.
“My mom watches him. She works too so a lot of her (clients) play with Harlan while she’s working,” she said. “I come in and out and check on him throughout the day.”
Hopper understands the challenges of running a business and raising a child well.
She opened her home salon in 1996, just six months before Jordan was born in 1997. The goal? To work and be there for her baby.
According to Jordan, entrepreneurship just runs in the family.
“I think it’ll go somewhere eventually once I do more jobs and get my name out there,” Jordan said.
0 Comments