My Entrepreneurial Journey

I guess it all started in the sticker shop when I was about 8 years old in 1980. My FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD was this little hallway sticker shop on Main Street in Spanish Fork, Utah, called the Annex. Both walls of the hallway were lined with rows upon rows of sticker strips hanging within my reach. The stickers were affordably priced to my little budget and brain and I loved tearing off the little square of paper that contained my next sticker. The glittery bling ones always got me...I would keep careful track of how much I had spent and I was careful to maximize my quantity of stickers for the budget I was working with. It was in this hallway surrounded by the pizzaz of seemingly endless bright beautiful stickers that my desire for a business of my own was born....

Around the age of eleven I started babysitting for money. I am the oldest of ten children, so by eleven my mother had her ninth child, and I had plenty of experience wrangling children. I should also add I was pretty mature for my age and well liked, so plenty of our neighbors took notice and when not helping my mother, I was making bank. I started buying my own school clothes and got myself a savings account. I loved the idea of commerce. I liked having money to spend. 

Fast forward to high school. At the age of 15 my parents declared bankruptcy. It was a very trying time in my life, as I had just won the election for the Sophomore Class Secretary and a spot on the JV Volleyball team and would be giving both of those things up as we lost our house. A move to Provo brought with it new friends, a starting position on the Varsity Volleyball team and eventually serving my senior year as President of the FBLA. I didn't know what I wanted to do in business, but the spark was still burning and college was just around the corner.

Well, girl meets boy, gets married, puts husband through graduate school, wrangles four children of her own and 25 years later decides to finish school.... I start with this story because the little light of business has been burning in my heart for a long time. And though I happily chose to give a large chunk of my life to wrangling children (knowing there is no earthly paycheck in it) I still have a desire to learn and finish what I started. So here I am.

I love small businesses. I am working on finishing my Bachelors degree in Business Management with an emphasis in Entrepreneurship. I still feel excited when I walk into a small quilting store, and happy to stop and generously pay for the cup of Lemonade from the kids on the corner.  I LOVE the idea of commerce! So web business creation is a logical step on this path of discovery, and though I feel so ill equipped to compete on the web, I appreciate the opportunity to learn new skills and discover new tools (like Google ads- keyword searches). I am grateful for case studies of people who with similar desires have taken similar steps. I don't know what to expect from this semester, and honestly the thought of starting a business for "real" on the web, even a small affiliate, scares me. I am not ready. I don't feel like I have the right ideas yet or the TIME to devote to its success as I am still trying to finish assignments, etc. I still have people to feed and laundry to do... maybe at this point I am hiding behind my laundry because it is soft and when clean is warm and comfortable. It might be a little fear of the unknown, but I guess that is what this class is going to do- walk me right past my fear- force me to act for the grade, and I will do it. I just don't want to fail.

I know Thomas Edison has a great point about failure, and if I come at this in the right way failure is just experience, but I am still scared.....

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