From corporate furlough to first place in the country
Published April 10, 2023; 1:07 p.m.

Melanie Ramos used to handle pay for 70,000 employees. Today as a small business owner she has goals to double her own pay. Image submitted

A few years ago when the world was sheltering in place, Melanie Whipple Ramos loaded up an RV with her husband Alan and their infant son to drive around the country and pick a new city and state to call home.

Her goal? Find the right market to open a franchise and do something she knew nothing about: estate sales. She opened Blue Moon Estate Sales of Knoxville on April 1, 2021. Fast forward and she was just named Franchisee of the Year for the rapid-growing network at the organization’s national convention.

According to a recent Incfile survey, some 90% of Americans say they want to own their own business.

Melanie Whipple Ramos can relate. For years she had ambitions to be her own boss. But that was one-day, someday kind of thinking. Maybe she would give it a try when she was older and ready to retire. Until then, she had no intention of leaving the “Happiest Place on Earth” in Orlando where she had worked on and off for 25 years.

Then the pandemic hit, shutting Disney’s doors for the longest time in company history.


Even The Biggest Companies Cannot Guarantee Job Security.

In March of 2020, Melanie and her husband Alan welcomed the birth of their son, Nico. A couple of days later, she was furloughed from Disney as the world was told to shelter in place.

“It was a strange time to have a newborn at home, but even stranger to be furloughed within a couple of days that he was born,” she shared.

Her work duties had included overseeing the accurate time and pay for more than 70,000 employees at Disney World. “I kind of thought I was indispensable when all the parks shut down,” she said. “At that point I thought this is just more time at home with my son. We were hoping by summertime things would be all cleared up.”

But even a powerful Fortune 50 company like Disney wasn’t immune to the lockdown. Weeks turned into months and a bleak summer arrived without tourists to turn things around. That’s when Melanie and Alan, a school principal, started rethinking their future. One outside of Orlando. They even entertained moving to a new state.

Then franchising entered the picture.


A Job Search Evolved Into a Quest for a Business to Own.

“I had a job coach as part of my separation package at Disney and she had mentioned a franchise coach she had just met at a networking event,” Melanie said.

Melanie was interviewing for 9-to-5 jobs, but the idea of being the boss of her own business got her attention. After a series of conversations with the franchise coach, Meg Schmitz with FranChoice , she was presented with five potential franchise opportunities and one immediately rose to the top: Blue Moon Estate Sales.

“This franchise coach made me realize I could actually do this,” she said. “As I went down the list, Blue Moon was in the back of my head as the one I was most passionate about. I could see myself doing it every day.”

That’s good. Because every single day countless people face uncomfortable transitions in life with the loss of a loved one, moving a relative to assisted living, downsizing in retirement, or any host of reasons that require the monumental task of emptying an entire house of its contents. The idea of providing a solution for them seemed incredibly powerful to Melanie. Plus, she already possessed years of the best customer service training in the country, courtesy of the Magic Kingdom. She only had one question to answer: Where should she do this?

Investing in a franchise would involve their entire savings, and location meant everything. So the Ramos family packed up an RV, hit the road with an infant, and visited cities and states on a pandemic vacation in search of a new place to call home. After falling in love with Tennessee, they returned home, put the wheels in motion, were awarded a franchise territory in Knoxville, and Melanie relocated with the baby a few months later while Alan stayed in Florida to finish out the school year.


Melanie Became A Tennessee (Small Business) Titan.

On April 1, 2021, Melanie was officially a small business owner. She had her first sale within weeks and quickly juggled estate sales and a one-year-old at home. Alan soon joined the family and elevated his career too as an assistant superintendent for the local school district.

Fast forward and today Melanie now sits atop a rapidly-growing Blue Moon Estate Sales franchise network as number one in the nation in sales. She has 22 part-time employees, averages two estate sales every week and has made back her investment from their savings account. She has also replaced her salary and has goals to double it in another year.

“I’m growing faster than I thought. I think I’ve had 130 sales,” she said. Best of all, she is providing an incredible experience to people who really need it.

“I think they feel immense relief,” Melanie says about her customers. “This is just something that’s been hanging over their heads. They don’t know what their options are. I once had a $22,000 estate sale with someone who said they were just going to donate everything to start with.”

She credits much of her success to the franchise system and training she received from the corporate staff at Blue Moon Estate Sales – a franchisor supporting a vast network of more than 120 locations across the country and part of the Best Life Brands parent company that has elevated multiple award-winning franchise networks serving the senior sector.

“I 100% follow their recipe,” she said. “I wouldn’t have known the pricing strategy without headquarters. They give you a formula and train you very well. The mom-and-pops out there, you can tell the difference. We have a POS system that gives [clients] an extra level of transparency and accountability. We give them an accounting, and mom-and-pops wouldn’t think to do it.”

The added bonus is joining fellow owners/operators who are an incredible resource. “I couldn’t do it without them,” Melanie says of her peers. “Whatever you’re facing, somebody else has faced it too. It’s great to run challenges by them and see how they’ve solved it.”

“I love being a business owner,” Melanie says about her new life. Especially the flexibility it provides with the ability to set her own schedule. “I didn’t realize how necessary that would be for me, and now I don’t think I could ever go back to a 9-to-5 job.”