For this issue of Nona Your Neighbor, we caught up with Mike Nunez, a Nona resident since 2013, who has quite the story of how his life led him to reside in the Lake Nona area. Mike told us what the growth and development of this area as a whole means to him. His story is just one of many from Lake Nona residents who have come from far and wide and from a variety of walks of life.
Mike has lived in Central Florida for most of his life. After attending the University of Central Florida and falling in love with the internet and technology, Mike and his brother founded The Performance Company, which is an internet marketing agency, to help meet the need for digital marketing professionals.
While attending a conference in New York City, Mike found the opportunity on a bus ride to a conference event to partake in some networking with the other people on the bus. Little did he know that one action would create a butterfly effect on many events that would occur in his life much later. Eight months after this conference, and those few interesting interactions on the bus ride, Mike was in talks to work with a company he’d dreamed about being part of for a long time, Channel Intelligence, an Orlando tech-startup company. After Mike worked with Channel Intelligence for a time, the news broke that tech mega giant Google was planning to purchase the company, making Mike an employee of Google.
With all his successes, even after moving to Chicago for a bit, Mike has always seemed to find his way back to Central Florida, residing in Celebration for a time. Eventually, he settled in Lake Nona, coming back to work with The Performance Company again and with his late brother, who passed away in 2015. “Having a little initiative can change your whole life,” says Mike.
After spending a lot of time – more than 25 years – jumping around the state of Florida, Mike settled on Lake Nona, though the journey to live in the Nonahood was not an easy one. From a cramped house, to a discussion on how possible it was to gain a waterfront property, Mike and his family eventually moved into the Lake Nona area, and it was love at first sight. Mike attributes most of his love for the Lake Nona area to the culture and the people of the area, along with the increasing technology and advancements that are coming down the line for the area. All the growth in the area is making Lake Nona a hotspot for people to move to and fall in love with, just as much as it is for the residents who already reside here. With the Lake Nona area set to continue to grow and establish itself as a powerhouse community for the state of Florida, there’s no doubt the culture and technology involved in setting this area on the right path will continue to make it one of the hottest places in Central Florida to live.
As far as advice for those considering joining the Lake Nona community, Mike offers a couple of points for those on the fence about moving here.
“You will get nails in your tires. … We’re going through some growing pains currently, but the culture and growth outweighs all of the difficulties by far.”
“I’ve lived in almost every neighborhood in Central Florida, but this is really my forever home,” says Mike.
Do you or someone else know someone with an interesting story in the Nonahood? Contact us at http://nonahood.to/nonaneighbor for the chance to be interviewed and have your story included!
