Beronica Perez purchased Jacob's Restaurant from Jacob Begorgis in 2021. [Photo by Duncan Garrett Photography]
Small business owners are a special breed and must be resilient and flexible in the face of all the storms they’ve had to weather in the past few years. Women business owners often have to be even more resilient in order to succeed. We spoke with three North Bay women who all started as employees at businesses where they eventually became owners.
All three had learned the business from the ground up and found that there was still more to understand and take on when you’re sitting at the helm. As they weathered the pandemic and everything else that’s been thrown at small businesses recently, they all agree it’s been worth the struggle.
Nicole Humber, Bravo Restoration in Windsor
Nicole Humber bought Bravo Restoration in 2016. The Windsor business offers such services as smoke, fire, water, mold and biohazard cleanup in Sonoma and Marin counties.
Humber had been with the business since 2011 as the bookkeeper and receptionist as well as doing estimates and sales. “I kind of just touched a little bit of everything because we were so small,” she says.
Even with all that knowledge, there was still a lot she would later find she needed to learn about running the business. “It gave me the confidence to take on the business and I thought I had a good understanding,” she says.
Added Humber: “I think I realized probably within hours how much I didn’t know.”
She was really excited on her first day of ownership and recalls thinking, “Oh, I’m a business owner, yeah! High five everybody!”
But she immediately had to learn how to deal with unexpected challenges—like a disgruntled employee who didn’t want to work for a woman. He yelled at her, quit and stormed off, taking one of the company vehicles with him.
“I’m in a very male-dominated industry and having to deal with those different societal situations, it’s been quite challenging,” she says.
She says she weathered that storm and many others since, and they’ve made her stronger. “That kind of became my strength because I had to let the ego go to the side and ask for help,” she says. “I immediately hired a lawyer, a consultant, and made sure that I was doing the right thing(s).”
That wasn’t all that Humber had on her plate. As a mother with two young boys, she was also taking classes at Santa Rosa Junior College and recalls many late nights. “You know, putting the kids to bed and then doing my homework,” she says.
There were nights when she just wanted to “cry and give up.”
“But honing that grip to accomplish something has set me up for success as an entrepreneur in general,” she says. “The biggest reward I got from getting my degree was just practicing resilience, perseverance and discipline—just truly never giving up.”
Humber took out a second mortgage on her home in order to buy shares in the business before purchasing it. She laughs and says that her husband is understanding and supportive, but she didn’t tell him until afterward. “That’s my joke, that we’re still together even after I pulled that,” she says. “He’s amazing and I’m very grateful for him.”
“One of my strengths is, ‘What I don’t know doesn’t hurt,’” she says. “Like, I didn’t know enough to be as scared as I should have been. Looking back, I should have seen red flags and should have just never done it. But here I am and it’s working out so far.”
She adds: “Although sometimes it’s still scary.”
She says that buying the shares in the company allowed her some time while she worked on getting her contractor’s license, which she would need to purchase the business. But the first time she took the test to get her license she failed.
“I was so focused on the laws, the trades part I just didn’t study for at all,” she says. “That was a really defeating moment of like, ‘Oh, my God, am I really meant to do this?’”
But then Humber’s resilient spirit kicked in. “I was like, ‘suck it up, you’re fine,’” she says. She hit the books again, took the test and passed.
“That moment when I passed the contractor’s license exam, that was kind of my, ‘Oh, my God, here I am’ moment,” she says.
She’s made a lot of changes since taking over the business. “I changed our niche, our clients, changed the way we hire and the way we do contracts,” she says. “I changed our estimating software and our accounting software processes. Honestly, I even changed the logo and design.”
“The previous owner was really big into construction, whereas I’m more about water damage and mold,” she says. “And so construction is kind of a by-product of the emergency services we provide.”
Humber says she doesn’t really take a lot from the business and that has helped during lean times. “Surviving through the Tubbs fire, Kincade fire, COVID, this inflation, these wars—all of these things have just put a lot of pressure on small businesses,” she says.
“I just have this thing about my employees and I try to give to them before giving to me,” Humber says. “I have a very good culture of people who just want to work hard, do right by others and learn.”
She and her employees give back to the community, which she says is really important to her. “I volunteer my time to coach sports and volunteer within the community and so do my staff.”
She says one of the big benefits is how much her sons are learning about what it’s like to be a business owner and a leader.
“My kids have a really good understanding of the real world, because I share with them the highs and the lows of business,” she says. “I think it’s given them a perspective that’s going to help them be better human beings and adults.”
Beronica Perez, Jacob’s Restaurant and Verano Café in Sonoma
In 1995, Beronica Perez moved to Sonoma from Guadalajara, Mexico. She was finishing high school and found herself a part-time job bussing tables at Sonoma’s Pizzeria Capri Ristorante, owned by Jacob Begorgis.
After finishing high school, Perez was taking classes at Santa Rosa Junior College and still earning money in the local food-service industry. In 1999, she took a job waiting tables at Maya restaurant in the heart of downtown Sonoma. “I knew I was going to make more money for sure, because it was on the plaza and that was what I was looking for,” she says.
“We both were in the office and in the front,” Perez says. “I was more in charge of all the employees, but I was also helping in the office.”
She describes the jump from server to owner as “very different.”
“When you are a server you work hard, but you really don’t know yet how it’s managed,” she says.
She says it was a great experience where she was able to learn a lot about business and running a restaurant. In 2019 she and her husband also became part owners of La Hacienda Mexican Grill in El Verano, before divesting themselves from the business in 2020.
Meanwhile, Perez’s former boss, Jacob Begorgis, had renovated the kitchen and front of the house at Pizzeria Capri, expanded the menu and reopened in 2018 as Jacob’s Restaurant.
Perez had stopped at Jacob’s to have dinner and Begorgis was there. “We always see each other in Sonoma, Sonoma is a small town,” she says. “He was ready to, you know, move on—and he’s like, ‘Oh, my God, Beronica, you are the perfect one to take over here.’”
They began discussing the business in more detail and “then it happened,” she says. In 2021, Perez and her husband became the owners of Jacob’s Restaurant.
“I really love what I do,” Perez says. “We bought Jacob’s right in the pandemic and a lot of people were telling me, ‘Beronica, you are very brave to buy in restaurants right now.’ But I’ve been in Sonoma for so many years that I know the restaurant industry in Sonoma—and I know the people as well.”
Beronica says that when she was thinking about buying Jacob’s she sat in the restaurant and watched. She saw lots of people coming in, sitting by the windows and others were enjoying their meal outside and she says she just got a good feeling about its ability to survive.
“This restaurant has been known for so many years,” she says. “When you see people coming into a restaurant it’s because it’s a good business. So it was a great opportunity. I never had a fear.”
She says she also had faith that the pandemic wouldn’t last forever and then things would go back to normal. “[Business] is still on the low side right now, but everything goes away, you know,” she says.
Meanwhile Perez says she’s been watching the restaurant scene and listening to customers and this gave her the sense that a new breakfast restaurant would do well.
In March of this year, she and her husband opened Verano Cafe. “It’s a breakfast place here in Sonoma, where Animo used to be,” she says about their new venture on Sonoma Highway.
“It’s really nice,” she says. “It’s a small restaurant and everybody likes it and it’s been very successful. It’s been only like a little over three months, but I can see people really enjoying it and they keep coming back. We are super busy and everything is good.”
Right now she’s still being careful about labor costs, but says she’s paying employees well.
“We’re a team,” she says. “Because I’ve been on the other side, I always want my employees to feel that they are like a family, you know? And I pay them good, because I also want to keep them.”
When she’s giving advice to other prospective entrepreneurs, she always recommends they do something that they know a lot about and that they enjoy. “Everybody has the chance to be their own boss,” she says. “You can start little. You don’t have to start big. Just the experience, it’s going to make you stronger. It feels good when you have your own [business] for sure.”
Perez says she always thanks the community members who keep coming in. “Sonoma is a very supportive town to local businesses,” she says. “That’s one of the things I like about Sonoma.”
Cynthia Caughie, Homerun Pizza in Santa Rosa
Cynthia Caughie began waiting tables at Homerun Pizza in the summer of 2005, shortly after giving birth to her first daughter. Little did she know that the part-time server job would lead to a spark that would ignite her entrepreneurial spirit.
“It was a good foot in the door,” Caughie says. “It was perfect for me.”
She says she grew to love the business and after a few years began to think about one day owning it. However, her three daughters were still very young and so she waited.
In the summer of 2018 Caughie got her chance to purchase the restaurant that had become like a second home. She had just lost her house in the Tubbs fire—and so had the owner of Homerun Pizza. He was ready to sell, and her perspective had changed.
“I figured I had already lost everything, and I had loved Homerun Pizza so much,” she says.
She didn’t have the money to purchase the business, but wanted to see if there was a way. She went to Exchange Bank, which helped make her dream a reality. “They’re local and they want to see you succeed,” she says. “That really pushed my belief in shopping local and supporting local.”
“As I look back on it, I didn’t understand how much of an accomplishment it was then,” Caughie says, about being a sole, woman owner of a business. “I do now, just because of everything that I’ve gone through.”
Like other small businesses, Homerun Pizza struggled through the Kincade fire, PG&E shutoffs and the pandemic. Caughie praised her employees who have helped keep customers coming back. She says the local community helped keep them alive.
“The pandemic was a scary time, and people were amazing,” she says. “They would come in once a week and they’d be like, ‘We support you and we’re coming here once a week.’ And it just really made me so grateful.”
She says Clint St. Martin of Sonoma County Devil Pups, a nonprofit that promotes youth service to the community, was helping local restaurants with special events during the pandemic and Homerun Pizza was the first one he helped with a takeout event.
“He was supporting his community and that, in turn, sparked me to want to do the same,” Caughie says. “I was like, ‘Wow, pretty freaking cool.’ It was important to me that people were supporting us, and so I wanted to help support other people, like they supported us.
Caughie began doing community events in the restaurant with Homerun Pizza’s Giving Tuesdays. “Every third Tuesday of the month we support a local nonprofit or charity,” she says.
“I have a saying: Community supporting community,” Caughie says. “It’s really important that we continue to do that within our community—we support them like they support us.”
Being a mother, a business owner and supporting her community are not her only accomplishments. Caughie says her entrepreneur journey began when she purchased the restaurant, but it didn’t stop there.
She read Grant Cordone’s 2011 book, The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure, which encourages readers to set targets 10 times greater than what they think they can achieve and take actions that are 10 times greater than what is necessary to achieve those goals. It sparked her growth as a person, entrepreneur and business leader.
She found a community of 10- inspired entrepreneurs and leaders and began learning from them, as well.
She began changing her business strategy. She was encouraged to think about what set Homerun Pizza apart and how best to grow its brand. She says she realized it was their signature dish, the Knuckle Ball—pizza dough stuffed with mozzarella cheese and bacon, topped with butter and parmesan cheese and served with ranch dressing.
“The Knuckle Ball makes our restaurant different from any other pizza place,” Caughie says. “When I started to think about that it totally changed my business model and where I was going, what I was going to accomplish and how I was going to get there.”
“The knuckleball is a staple,” Caughie says. “Not only is it our signature dish, but it’s growing our popularity and our brand. We have a slogan for the Knuckle Ball. ‘Life is short. Have a ball.’”
She also learned what self-development was. “I was like—why didn’t anybody tell me this when I was younger and how did this whole world just open up for me?” she says. “It really just started this amazing journey for me.”
She wanted to share the valuable knowledge she had found and began writing her own books. She’s written Ignite the Entrepreneur and You Can Do Hard Things. She also completed a compilation book with Greg Reid called Station 42.
She created the Reflection Journal that inspires self-awareness. She recently released The Consistency Maker, a planner and journal that helps with staying consistent. “That is one of the things that I find is the hardest thing to do,” Caughie says.
Caughie has grown her own brand. She now has a website, a Facebook page, offers coaching and public speaking. She says she’s helping others discover that they are their own superpower.
“You know, it’s so crazy, but it’s my motto,” she says. “You can do hard things. And when it’s hard you have to have the mindset: What can I do?
“It’s not about all the things and all the people telling you what you can’t do. It has to be: What can I do?”
