At several points in her life, Ann Flynn had to work to survive. Her house burned down. She was on welfare and food stamps. And she was raising two children.
But those tough times are a far cry from where she is now, running her own business, IQ Telecom, which helps businesses streamline their telecommunications operations. And it’s miles from Flynn’s first foray into the working world, when she was just a kid looking to earn a few bucks.
Flynn got her first job checking coats at a banquet hall where her mother worked as a waitress. Her mother and father both worked, so Flynn was working to earn some discretionary spending money.
At 16, she was old enough to be a waitress. “It was flexible work,” she recalled. “And you had cash in your pocket.”
Her parents had saved money for her and her four siblings to go to college, but instead, Flynn married a Marine right out of high school. She followed him to Beaufort, S.C., where she leaned on waitressing to help pay the bills. And it served her well for several years, keeping her family afloat as she moved back to the Hartford area and raised two children.
But as her children grew, the night, weekend and occasional holiday shifts grew tiresome. When her youngest child went to kindergarten, she got a job as a customer service representative for the Southern New England Telephone Co.
When her house burned down six years later, a full-time job just didn’t mix with trying to rebuild a house, so Flynn left her new career and returned to waiting tables.
After the crisis had passed, Flynn worked for a telecommunications consulting company and then took a telecom job at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center.
Then, in 2001, with her kids grown and gone, she started a business out of her house. Her vision was to be a consumer advocate, a liaison between customers and the phone company. When she landed Kodak as a client and outgrew her surroundings, she secured an off-site office location and brought on a partner in 2003. Now, Flynn has 14 employees in an office on Pratt Street in Hartford and counts beverage giant Coca Cola among her list of clients.
With her business flourishing, Flynn went back to school, and, at the age of 48, she earned her bachelor’s degree. Her parents were still alive to see it happen.
