Meet Amanda Arreola

We were lucky to catch up with Amanda Arreola recently and have shared our conversation below.

Amanda, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

As a young adult, and up until 2019 I lived with addiction. I struggled to be optimistic about anything. Then, in 2013, my husband was in a very bad, life-changing accident and things became even more difficult. He was working for the city and could no longer do that job. Over the next 5 years we both sank deeper into depression and addiction. In early 2019, we both found sobriety and the changes that we were making in our lives opened my eyes to what life could be like. Then COVID happened and life knocked us back again due to a loss of income. I worked at a day care center that cut back their services and he was building fences. My husband started looking for ways for us to start our own business and control our own financial health. In November of 2020, we had $3,000.00 saved from our stimulus payments and $300.00 in EBT cash. My husband thought we should buy an old truck he found, because he felt if we had a truck we could make things happen. We had been sober almost 2 years now, and I knew I had to believe in him, because for the first time I saw him believing in our family. So, we took every last penny we had, and we bought Lucille, our 1987 Chevy pick-up. We had to stop by a friend’s house on the way home to borrow grocery money, but bne week later we had our first hauling job. That was when Blue Mule Hauling was born. Social media sites based in cities local to our area were a great source of work. We connected with a local realtor that refers their clients to us. Almost 5 years later and we’re working full time and we are able to employ both our adult sons part time. It has been a blessing to watch our little family run business grow and I am proud of how it has helped us grow as well.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

We are currently focused on growing our business to the point where we know we can consistently rely on it to meet all of our income needs. While our business is called a “hauling” business, it is really much more than that. In many cases, we are asked to remove entire lives worth of items. We do quite a few jobs for families who have lost a loved one and are clearing out their home. They will go in and remove the items they want to keep and we will remove the rest. Even when they don’t want to keep things, it is hard to watch them go to the dump. We work really hard to repurpose as many items as possible, by selling some, but mainly gifting them. We make this happen on a variety of social media sites using our own personal profiles and our Blue Mule Hauling pages. This has been very rewarding because it can be comforting to the families to know that their items aren’t going into a landfill. One very heartwarming situation was when we gifted an entire handmade miniature village to my mother and she set it up at Christmas . I sent the family photos of it all setp-up and they were so happy to see that. Working with my husband and my kids has added to the positive experience.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I think the number one quality that has helped us on our journey has been the faith we have in ourselves and our family. Additionally, the confidence in what we are capable of doing and the memories we are creating for our own family history.
The only advice I can offer to those who are struggling, is to believe in your dream. With hard work and patience we all can do almost anything.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

The main challenge I face is learning how to manage a business. Taking responsibility and having confidence in myself are just a couple of things that have been difficult to develop after the years of addiction. Learning self-worth and the value of my work has been a challenge but having my family to support me has been instrumental in our developing little business.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: BlueMuleHauling
• Facebook: Blue Mule Hauling