73: The Highs of Entrepreneurship: 10 Proudest Moments in My Career

We are hiring here at Team Bonnie Christine and I'm so excited to share about it with you. We're looking for a marketing director, someone to step into the shoes of this position that combines creativity, strategy and leadership to help amplify our mission and maximize our impact. As Marketing director, you'll spearhead departmental initiatives creating create compelling marketing strategies and lead a dynamic team, all while fostering an environment of growth and success. If you're someone who thrives in a data driven, results oriented setting, but also has a passion for creativity and marketing, we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know someone who would be a great fit, please let them know. You can learn more about this position and everything that comes with being a member of Team Bonnie over@bonniecristine.com careers Again, that's bonniechristine.com careers we can't wait to get to know you this week. We're going on a little bit of a roller coaster ride. Today I'm going to be sharing with you my top 10 wins in my career to date. The top 10 times where I was just most proud of what I had accomplished or what we had accomplished as a team or a family. But to every up there is a down. And so in our very next episode, I'll be sharing with you the top 10 most challenging moments in my career as well. Now don't worry, this episode won't be a complete downer because for every challenge that I'm going to share with you, I'm also going to share with you how I overcame the challenge. So I have a hunch that you might be faced with similar challenges. And so I'm hoping that that episode will really help you as well. I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast. Today we're on the upside. So let's dive into the top 10 proudest moments in my career. I'm doing them in chronological order. So the very first one goes way back to 2012, when I got my very first licensing deal. Now, this came at the end of about two years of intense self study and development and learning Adobe Illustrator and creating patterns and working in collections and putting together a portfolio. And this long and winding journey found me at International Quilt Market on the floor, walking around with my portfolio, meeting art directors. Well, I had about 10 meetings set up, but I had one company that I wanted to work with so very badly. And my appointment with them was on the second day. And so I had had a couple of appointments and then I walked in to the art director, met the art director at this booth, and we sat down and I handed her my portfolio. And she took it and turned it page by page. And I'll never forget that she started to describe my work and exactly how I had hoped it would resonate with someone. And no one else had done that up until that point. She used words like sophisticated and vintage and feminine and floral and ethereal. And I thought, she really understands what I'm trying to go for here. She very quietly closed my book, pushed it back to me across the table, and asked if I would be willing to come and license with them, that I should go ahead and cancel all the rest of my appointments. In that moment, I had my biggest dream come true. And it changed me. It changed me for every moment. You know, after that, I felt like really, really big dreams were absolutely possible. And I'm still licensing with the same art director and fabric company all these years later. Now, number two is when we're going to fast forward to 2017. And there was a moment where I retired my husband and I never thought that I would be able to do this. In fact, I will always remember the years where we struggled so much. We were both on a combined income, making the same as the poverty line back in 2012. And I remember him being so supportive of me, but he just made more than I did, which was still under $30,000. And eventually I caught up with him and I matched his salary. And then slowly I started making more. And his job was a regular 9 to 5. We had also started to have children, so I had like a one and a three year old. And it just stopped making sense because I was making more money than him, but he was spending more time out of the house at his regular job. And so we kind of eased out of it he went for a contract position with the same company. For a while he was a cycling coach. And so that got him working from home. Home. And then he went from five days down to three days down to one day. And finally we were like, you know what, I think it's time that I just take it all. And so I officially retired him in 2017. Not that he's fully retired today. He does plenty of things. He works in real estate and he takes care of a lot of our business, finances and things like that. But it was really amazing. He was a stay at home dad for a couple of years and then when our kids got to the age of going to school, it loosened his schedule up enough to where he could start back doing some things. But he does them now for fun and not because he has to. And that is such a proud moment in my career. Number three is just a year later, 2018, I announced the Surface Design Immersion Course. This is one of my very most proud moments because I had wanted to teach this course for years. And in 2018, I had two very small children and a really big business. And I just remember feeling like I'm not sure if I can do this, but I know that I'm called to do it. I know that I'm called to teach and help people learn what was so difficult for me to learn. And so I very much started doing one thing a day. I buckled down, put my head down, and I created the best work of my life. I launched the Immersion Course for the first time in February of 2018, and it has been the most beautiful thing I've ever done. And I couldn't be more proud of the moment that I first launched it back in 2018. Mark your calendars for this, October 19th through the 21st, because my friends, Immersion Live 2023 is coming up now. This conference is for creative entrepreneurs, and our theme this year is called the Art of Business. We've gathered a spectacular lineup of industry leaders and artists and creative entrepreneurs for an unmatched virtual conference experience. Now, you're likely wondering, can a virtual conference really engage me and be fun, like an in person event? Well, yes, it absolutely can. Over three days, you'll unlock strategies to guide your business effectively, refine your art, and establish a flourishing creative career. The event kicks off with something that we call Open studio night on October 19, where you get to peek behind the curtain of some incredibly successful artists. The next two days, you'll immerse yourself in keynote sessions and workshops with people like Amy Porterfield, Glo atonmo, Nicholas Wilton, Morgan Harper Nichols, and so many more. You'll learn, interact and have all your questions answered. But here's the thing. Early bird pricing is about to go away. You can go get a ticket at the early bird price until August 15, and as an early bird registrant, you'll be guaranteed our very beloved ultimate Swag Box. This swag box comes, comes delivered directly to your door, and it's curated with some incredible items. They're exclusive and valuable and they add a tactile and memorable element to your entire experience. They also enhance exactly what you'll be learning during the conference. Plus, every session is recorded so you can revisit and absorb the wealth of knowledge at your own pace. Immersion Live has been designed to fuel your passion, bolster your skills, and transform your talent into a thriving business. Join us this October and watch as your world expands. Head on over to bonniecristine.com 2023Immersion Live to get your ticket. Now, again, that's bonniecristine.com2023Immersion Live. The next one, number four, comes in 2019. And this is when we as a family became entirely debt free. Now in 2019, we were like early and mid-30s, David and I were. And it's really not lost on me. It's phenomenal that we were able to be completely debt free. And so we paid off our house, we paid off our cars, we don't have any credit card debt. And we actually, the next year, bought a lake house, which actually haven't ever shared about. I need to share about that more. We bought a Lake House in 2020 and we were able to pay cash for it. And so now we have this very strict standard that we just don't go into debt. If we can't pay cash for it, we don't have any business doing it. And that, I think, is something that I never thought was possible. I think, you know, we just feel like a stage, certain amount of debt is fairly just normal and common. And so the night after we paid off our house, which was our very last debt, I remember just getting in the bed and going to sleep and feeling like it's ours, we own this completely. It's ours. Like what security that is, that no matter what happens, this is ours, we own this. And that is a really special moment in the same year. But several months later, I joined my very first mastermind, and I'm still in it. It's with Stu McLaren, who's my mentor. And the mastermind is called Impact. It was A big expense. It was a big commitment. And it very much signifies to me stepping into a really big room, stepping into a room that expands what I think is possible, saying yes to what I think is possible, saying yes to thinking bigger and doing bigger things and surrounding myself with people who are really incredible. And so I can't speak highly enough about Masterminds. I love the one I'm in and have been there since 2019. And I'm just so proud that I was not only able to do that, but that I got invited to do it even in the first place. It is definitely a mark in my, in my history. Number six comes in 2020. And this is when I started building a team. Now building a team and starting to get help in my business is something very special in and of itself. But there was one particular moment and it was during a launch. I think we were, we were launching the immersion course in 2020. And because this is somewhat unusual, but every morning that week we did like a little huddle. We jumped on the phone and just huddled with everybody on the team. There were maybe four of us on the call and just kind of kept each other up to date with what our priorities were that day, what was happening, what, you know, the, the pulse was in the community, like all of this stuff. And I got teary eyed on this one call because I think for the first time I realized that I wasn't alone and that I actually hadn't realized how lonely. I had been running this business all by myself for over a decade. All of a sudden I wasn't alone anymore. And you know, if you'd asked me a few years before, I would have never told you I was lonely. I never felt lonely until I wasn't alone anymore. And I realized how impactful and powerful it was to just have people by your side, doing it with you, being there by your side, you know, really understanding what we were doing, passionate about the, the thing that we were doing and changing people's lives and oh, I just could never go back. It was an incredible moment and I just have so much love for the people who do this incredible work with me. Later in 2020, I was able to give away more than I ever thought that I like, I was able to give away more money than I had ever even ever set out to achieve. So. So that year and every year since, I mean, we've always given, I've talked about that recently, but this was the first year that I actually gave away over six figures. I gave away more than I had only dreamed of making a few years prior. And that was such a proud moment. I mean, talk about being filled with joy. Giving away an amount of money that can actually make a huge impact in the cause or the world that you're trying. Trying to impact is one of just the most proud moments of my entire career. Number eight takes us to 2022. And I had this moment where we were sitting around our team retreat, and I actually just talked about this story in episode number 71, so you'll have to go listen to all of the context over there. But it was this moment where I had my team at our team retreat, everyone was sitting around the table, and I handed out a team handbook that I had been secretly working on for months. And we got to sit down and go through it page by page. And I was just able to share with them all of these things that I had put into processes and put into play for them. And there were, you know, tears. We were laughing. It was one of the most proud moments of my entire career. Number nine is a bit later in 2022, and it is the launch of this very podcast I y'. All. I have seriously been wanting to podcast for years. I told people I wanted to. I thought about it. I had a notes app on my phone full of podcast name ideas and episode ideas, and I just couldn't wrap my head around it. I remember feeling like I will not do a podcast until I'm certain I can be consistent with it. And in order to be consistent with it, I need to have a day where I'm like, I wonder what I'll do today. And that didn't happen for me. That took over a decade for that to happen. It didn't happen for me until, you know, a little bit over a year ago. And that was the first time I thought, I can do this podcast. Now. I felt a little late to the party, but I did it. And just releasing that very first episode and having it all figured out and now being in somewhat of a rhythm with it is one of the things that I'm just so incredibly pleased with. One of the things that we say all the time is, is the juice worth the squeeze? Because I have a lot of ideas you can imagine. I'm sure you do, too. As a creative entrepreneur, there's no shortage of ideas. And so something my team says is, well, do you think the juice will be worth the squeeze? And I can just so thoroughly say that the juice has been worth the squeeze with the podcast. And I'm so honored that you're here and listening. Now we're to number 10, and this is this year. And it is the moment that I stepped out on stage at the ConvertKit conference called Craft and Commerce as a keynote speaker. I was nervous, but I was prepared and I was excited to deliver this very important message. I talked about this experience in episode 62, if you want to hear more about it. And I walked off that stage. I walked on the stage feeling like, why do I do this to myself? And I walked off the stage saying, that's exactly why I do this to myself, because I was just a vessel that relayed a message that that audience really needed to hear. And I walked away proud of my ability to do that, proud of my ability to put my, you know, nervousness aside and deliver the message that I knew people needed to hear. And it was exhilarating. It was incredible. It was so worth it and might I say, was fun. So fun, in fact, that I'm very much hoping to speak on more stages in the future. That's a wrap. Those are the 10 most proud moments I've had in my career to date. Now, don't forget, you've got to tune in later this week to hear about my top 10 most challenging moments in my career, because as I said before, every up has a down. But we're all here. And I've got some great takeaways for you in the next episode as well. My friends create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you.