A Bakkal During COVID

The federal Public Health Emergency remained in effect from January 2020 until May 11, 2023 — a period of roughly three years and four months.

So did anyone really expect me to sit at home doing nothing for three years?

Never.

My show business was finished overnight. No hotels. No airline travel. No conferences. No expos. Everything that powered my life — and my income — simply stopped.

And the truth is, I didn’t need to work. I already had my life savings.

But then ask yourself this: why is Warren Buffett still working at ninety-five? He doesn’t need to either.

Fine.

But I was a bakkal in my DNA.

Bakkal is a Turkish word for a neighborhood convenience-store owner — the guy who opens early, closes late, and always finds a way to make something work. You’re either born a bakkal or you’re not. You can’t study it. You can’t learn it. It’s instinct.

Harvard Business School cannot make you a bakkal.

The English word is entrepreneur, but I hate that term. It comes with a sense of entitlement, as if success is somehow owed to you.

I don’t use it.

* * *

So I found things to do during those three years.

The first business was urgent.

Purell ran out of product. Hand sanitizer disappeared everywhere. Overnight, the country had a shortage.

I put together a production assembly line — fast — and started manufacturing hand sanitizer in ten-ounce clear bottles. I’m sure many people had the same idea, but execution wasn’t easy. Finding containers was nearly impossible.

I tracked down a supplier in mainland China, literally filled an entire UPS plane with bottles, and flew them into Florida.

Then I located alcohol in Tennessee.

The first tanker arrived at my facility carrying 6,000 gallons of hand-sanitizer-grade alcohol. We emptied it into nineteen 330-gallon IBC totes — giant square industrial containers stacked like silent witnesses to what desperation can create. During our first alcohol delivery, a neighbor called the Pompano Beach Fire Department. Until ATF agents sorted out what we were actually doing inside the warehouse, my crew was arrested and taken into custody. I went and bailed them out.

* * *

I’ll skip most of the timeline here.

In short, our Purell-efficacy hand sanitizer — fully lab-tested and certified — became a bestseller on Amazon.

While Amazon shipments ran on autopilot, I hired much of the unemployed kitchen staff and servers from the Red Fox Diner next door.

* * *

Then I decided to do something completely different.

I bought a teardown waterfront property and designed and built what I believed would be one of the most beautiful homes in the world.

TikTok and YouTube channels agreed. They literally called it “one of the most beautiful homes in the world.” They wanted it to go viral — and it did. Millions watched my marketing videos.

I listed the property for $7.9 million and sold it for cash to a twenty-five-year-old Bitcoin kid.

* * *

Toward the end of 

the COVID years, I launched a soft-wash business franchise. Florida, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Los Angeles became our service areas during the first year.

That business is still operating today, with one simple goal:

to clean every roof in America.

* * *

Conclusion

COVID shut the world down.

It didn’t shut me down.

When everything stopped,

I didn’t wait.

I didn’t panic.

I didn’t complain.

I built.

Because some people need stability to move forward.

Others need chaos.

And a bakkal doesn’t wait for normal to return.

He opens the store —

even when the lights are out,

the street is empty,

and everyone else is still at home.