🎊 Celebrating OVER 20 Years As An Entrepreneur! 🍾

Back in September 2004, I started my entrepreneurial journey.

I was a sales and marketing executive at a Fortune 50 company but I started getting my licensing and certificates for financial planning and insurance at night and on the weekends.

I didn’t wait until I passed my certifications to promote my new venture - I wanted a list of people eager to meet with me as soon as I was licensed.

In those first few months of working with clients, I made more in a day than in a week working my corporate job and in a fraction of the time spent at a desk.

Eight months later (in May 2005) I left my corporate job at lunchtime and decided not to finish out the day after lunch.

I quietly packed my personal items from my desk (including a vase with my plant and beta fish 🐟 living in it) into a box and walked out.

The first 10 years of entrepreneurship were all about trying EVERYTHING!  

I tried anything that I thought would make a profit.

I added Real Estate and securities to my financial planning.

When the Real Estate market crashed in 2008, I was one of the first agents in Orange County, CA to embrace short sales and help people get out of foreclosure. I started traveling all over California teaching short sales to real estate companies.

I then started a credit repair company so that my foreclosure clients could fix their credit so they could eventually purchase another mortgage/home from me.

Around 2010, I realized that I never wanted to do any of these businesses - I was doing what I thought would make a lot of money and would let me set my own schedule.

But these businesses were pretty much open or I was “on call” 24 hours a day.

I gave up my corporate boss for many “mini-bosses” (clients).

What I really wanted to do was be a Certified Professional Organizer.

I don’t know why I put that business on such a pedestal!

We didn’t have de-cluttering or minimalist videos on TikTok or YouTube back then.

There were a few shows on HGTV and Real Simple Magazine.  That was pretty much it.

I got the CPO certification, even though you don’t really need it at all to start an organizing business.

I did this for several years.

I loved coaching people to release their junk and simplify their lives aspect of my work but didn’t love the drive-around-to-in-persona-appointments-and-get-filthy organizing homes, offices, and hotel front desk areas.

Then again, I thought I could add another branch of this business to make more money.

I started a brick-and-mortar consignment store and then a virtual consignment store to sell my organizing clients’ clutter for them.

Then two things happened.

One, other stores started contacting me to sell their inventory online.

Two, other organizers started reaching out and asking how I was getting so many clients from social media (social media was still pretty new in 2010).

I started slowly meeting with other professional organizers and coaching them on how to take their marketing and business online more than I was meeting with actual clients who needed to declutter.

Then, the word got out, and referrals started coming in from other small and large businesses that also wanted consulting on how to increase their visibility and business online instead of using traditional advertising.

Also, my ultimate MAIN goal in becoming an entrepreneur back in 2004 was to have freedom of time and location, and driving to meet clients and working in a warehouse full of other people’s clutter felt like the opposite of freedom.

A little backstory - freedom of location was ultra important to me.

I always knew it was possible - why did I have to drive an hour to and from my corporate job to sit at a desk and work on the same type of computer I had at home?

Then I read The 4-Hour Workweek book, which confirmed my thinking… location independence was possible.

To test this, I told my business coaching clients that I’d be going out of town but I didn’t want to cancel their session and asked would it be ok if we met by phone or Skype for our next session (we didn’t have Zoom yet 😉)

So, I went to Arizona for several months, and my clients were absolutely fine with us meeting virtually. I'm so regretful that I didn’t put this in place sooner!

There are many more twists and turns to this story that I’ll probably be sharing on my private podcast called Unscripted.

To get this post wrapped up, I’ve been working since 2011 virtually with solopreneurs, corporate clients, and small businesses.

In 2019, I added the travel agency because many of my coaching clients wanted to host groups, events, and retreats for their businesses at resorts and on cruise ships and take personal vacations.

Lessons to extract from all this?

1. EVERYTHING works and makes money.  I didn’t have to spend all those years in financial planning, selling securities, and real estate, I could have gone straight for what I wanted to do.  All marketing strategies work.

2. Set up your business in a way that YOU would like to work day to day.  Your clients want the help, they don’t really care how you deliver it.

3. Things evolve… and usually for the better when you look back on those pivot points… so Never Settle!

**********************************

🌺  I’d love to support you, share the shortcuts, and be a part of your entrepreneur story, send me a message if you’d like to explore working together.  We have a program for every budget and level.

Never Settle!

🏝️ Mahalo.