The unexpected journey of an entrepreneur!

Few of my friends that went to college with a declared major. I was going to do business with an option in marketing because I wanted to work at ad agencies. That's what I wanted to do. I knew this was my calling. So while in college, I actually interned at a few agencies in different semesters. This allowed me to get to see how different agencies worked. And each agency that I worked at specialized in a specific industry. There was the sports agency, There was the home goods agency. I got to see how different processes worked at different agencies. When the time came to graduate in 2007, the economy wasn't doing so hot, and the job opportunities in these ad agencies was pretty much not available. So I went back to my hometown, which is about an hour and 45 minutes from my college town, and took a few odd jobs until I got my job for the federal government. And in our hometown, the major employee is this army base. And it is a great job to have. It's a very competitive job. And at the time when I graduated from college, the government had had a huge hiring freeze, a long hiring freeze. So they were looking at bringing on college educated fresh workers to start putting in place for the baby boomers that were going to be retiring. I was fortunate enough to grab one of these spots, and I was kind of an intern position. It wasn't like a typical intern. You were a full time employee, but you were in this program where it was an accelerated pay grade. Every year you got an increase in pay, you increase in your grade. They do it in like grades. In the government, you also got education funding, you also got training opportunities. It was basically like the perfect job that Everybody wanted, right? Nine to five, you could pick your hours really, starting from like 6:30, get off at three, starting at eight, get off at five, whatever you wanted. It was very flexible time off, sick leave. Who wouldn't want this job? So I started the day after Christmas on 2007, and I was ready, right? Brand new college student, gung ho in her career. The thing was, I was in charge of managing software maintenance contracts. Yeah, I still don't know what that is to this day, but I was like, this is gonna work. I just need to stick with it. I'll figure it out. This is good. This is my career. I was lucky enough during this time to get to travel because of the money I was making. I got to go to Europe and London, Paris, Brussels, Prague, spend a week in Italy. My husband and I, boyfriend at the time, we got to buy our first house because we knew we had this Stable job. The thing is, I kept getting unhappier every time I went to work, I just felt like there was something missing. I thought I was going to be at this ad agency. I thought I was going to be able to be creative. I tried in that job to do things creatively. I would bring ideas to my boss, and they were just like, that's not how we do it here. Like, just stick with these sops. So the Shift came in 2015 when I had my first child, and we had some issues scheduling the maternity leave. And after I went back, after four months of maternity leave, I realized this, this isn't gonna work. I cannot drop my daughter off and go to a job that I can't stand. That just sucks the living day out of me. So I started finding a way. What was I going to do? During the time I was pregnant, I started getting on YouTube. I was never on YouTube before. I wasn't in that generation of YouTube stars and influencers. I graduated college when YouTube was still in its infancy. So, I mean, I wasn't into that whole YouTube stuff, but I was trying to find out, you know, what was happening in my pregnancy, what was normal, what other people were experiencing. I started connecting with some vloggers and communicating with them and their community in YouTube. Then I started documenting my journey for these new friends that I met and for myself, because I thought it'd be really cool for me to look back on and for her to look back on what it was like while I was pregnant. I started my first YouTube channel back in 2014. And what happened was some people started reaching out to me, asking me, oh, how did you create this thumbnail? How did you do this channel banner? How did you edit this? So I started helping people along the line, just out of, like, connections and not even charging for it. Then I started having social media managers asking me about YouTube and how to use the video here and there. And I got a light bulb. I dove into this, creating this online business that I didn't even know existed. In fact, a lot of the stuff that was going on in online business with social media and all the other things, like setting up email funnels, I did not cover any of that, even in my master's degree of business that I got going through my intern program. So I decided at the end of 2015, after a lot of convincing and promising to my husband that I could make this work, I started my own business and dove into everything that I could learn about YouTube. I watched all of Derral Eves and Tim Schmoyer, all of their videos, everything that I could, Podcasts. I took the Creator's Academy on YouTube at the time, doing everything that I could. And even though it was the hardest work that I had ever done, I was happy. I enjoyed it. I may have been up late night working, I may have been getting paid pennies for the amount of hours that I was doing, but I loved it. And in the first year of my business, not only did my daughter turn one, we found out we were pregnant with baby number two. We sold our house while I was eight months pregnant with, moved into a two bedroom apartment and had baby number two. And to say last year was the hardest year ever is an understatement. But what got me through it was being able to help such amazing women business owners. Those were the people that were coming to me because they understood, they knew I understood them and their insecurities of being on video. They knew YouTube was important and knowing I had these women counting on me and knowing to help such amazing women business owners. Those were the people that were coming to me because they understood. They knew I understood them and their insecurities of being on video. They knew YouTube was important and knowing I had these women counting on me and knowing I could help them in their business and help them reach and spread their message is what kept me getting up in the morning and staying up late at night and continuing working. And that's basically how I went from small town girl to being on YouTube and sharing my knowledge with other business owners. If you can resonate with me and know what it feels like to go to a job that you absolutely hate, but the financial burden is there, so you keep going. Let me know your story down in the comments below. Don't forget, you can subscribe to this channel and I've got an entire playlist of videos on your screen right now. So that documents my life as a business owner. They're my fry diary, so check them out. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.