From Fired to Founder: Evelin Johnson’s Bold Move into Entrepreneurship
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When Evelin Johnson looks back on the moment she was fired from her job, she can’t help but laugh a little.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Johnson recalls. “I said, Are you firing me? I’m the rockstar here!”
At the time, that news felt both unbelievable and devastating. Evelin spent four years at one of the top staffing firms in the country. She loved the work she did there and had grown strong relationships with clients. Suddenly, all of that disappeared.
Evelin and her husband had two young children — just four and six years old — and they felt the financial pressure immediately. “We had good salaries and were top in sales at our companies. Then one day, that changed,” Johnson shared. “Sometimes, we didn’t have money to pay rent or for daycare.”
Getting fired was shattering. But with a family to provide for, Evelin didn’t have the luxury of sitting on her loss for long. Within a week, she knew she had to find a way forward. A friend suggested she take up cleaning jobs as a source of quick income, but Evelin quickly realized that wasn’t the path for her.
“I cried too much cleaning the toilets and floors. I value the people that do that work, but I thought this is not for me.”
Though painful, that period gave her a sense of clarity. “In life, sometimes you’re on the top, and sometimes you’re on the bottom,” Evelin explained. Those cleaning jobs showed her one thing: Evelin was ready to climb her way back to the top.
It was her mother who gave her the push she needed. She had always believed in Evelin, reminding her that everything she had done with dedication for others, she could also do for herself. Those words and that unwavering belief made her wonder: if she had worked so hard to grow someone else’s business, why not build her own? That is how she made the decision to take the leap into what she truly knew — the staffing industry — now from her own business, and with all the experience she had built over the years.
That push was all she needed to launch CMI-HR Facility Solutions in Dublin, OH. Her relationship with clients, coupled with her time in the industry, gave Evelin a strong sense of what would make CMI-HR stand out in the market. From the jump, she had a strong sense of her company’s ethos: comprehensive 24/7 support to alleviate stress for clients who feel like family. That philosophy directly shaped how she built CMI-HR. Instead of simply placing workers, she created a full-service model that removes as much burden as possible from business owners.
CMI-HR pairs temporary and full-time employees with their client companies, as well as running HR operations to let business owners focus on what they do best. Behind the scenes, Evelin handles everything — vetting employees, managing payroll, covering workers’ compensation, and even paying vacation time. If Evelin sends an employee their way, her clients can rest assured that the candidate has been thoroughly vetted and can do the job well.
“I tell clients, give me your pain, and I’ll fix it. They don’t have to worry.”
In the early days, resources were tight. Like many staffing firms, Evelin had to pay employees much sooner than the 30-day terms in which clients paid their invoices. Even though she operated with minimal overhead, without enough working capital to bridge that gap, covering payroll was a constant challenge. But Evelin was stronger than those obstacles — she found creative and professional ways to run her business despite limited resources. Instead of relying on office space for client meetings, Evelin used the local library's free meeting rooms. “I did what I had to do,” Johnson shared.
Although Evelin was a seasoned pro in the staffing world, she was new to entrepreneurship. “When you start a business, you don’t know anything — you don’t know how many responsibilities you really have,” Johnson admitted.
To fill those gaps, Evelin took advantage of ECDI’s training programs. She completed courses in networking, marketing, and SBA resources, all of which honed the skills she needed to make her goal a reality. She also pivoted from library rooms to ECDI’s co-working spaces and computers; these simple amenities made a big difference for a company with limited resources.
Working with her mentor at the ECDI Women’s Business Center of Central Ohio, Evelin learned how to start CMI-HR from the ground up. “He asked me, What do you need?” Johnson said. “But when you’re first opening a business, you don’t know what you need!” He walked her through everything step-by-step, from budgeting and projections to opening an account at the bank. Two years later, Evelin still considers him a great mentor who helped her get her foot in the door of entrepreneurship.
“If you want to grow, you have to do your part. People can give you resources, but you have to take advantage of them. I take every opportunity to show who I am and what this company stands for.”
Today, CMI-HR Facility Solutions is thriving. Evelin runs a weekly payroll of $27,000 with accounts ranging from Cincinnati to Florida, and last year, they surpassed $1 million in invoices. Her dream? To build a company even bigger than the one that let her go.
“People can replace you skill-wise,” Johnson remarked, “but you can’t replace people who work with love.”
That philosophy is the driving force behind everything she does — from the care she shows employees to how fiercely she shows up for her clients. Looking back, Evelin doesn’t see getting fired as an ending. It showed her she was meant for more.
“It’s been two years,” she says. “And we survived.”