The last day of High School my senior year I remember standing on the stage in the auditorium looking out at the seats. I was alone, it was dark and I was center stage. That's where I enjoyed my High School years, on the stage performing or on the stage painting scenery or on the stage goofing off while I was supposed to be in another class. I was the President of the Theater Club and more than half of my classes involved theater in one way or another. I was wondering what I was going to do now. I was graduating, I worked at Pizza Hut as a waitress and Zach and I had just broke up "for good" this time. Lots of my friends told me I should go to New York to try and make it on Broadway. I loved performing but I knew that's not the kind of life I wanted forever. Trying to decide what to do with your life is probably the hardest question you'll ever ask yourself. It's also a question that I've learned you don't just ask yourself once but several times throughout your life. At least I do.
I eventually got a job at America First Credit Union as a Teller. I was the worst Teller ever! I was immature and was better at talking to the Members than counting out their money properly. I got "promoted" to the Loan Officer side of things... mostly just to get me off the Teller line. That ended up being a good fit. Something clicked and my career took off. Zach and I were married, we had Hailey and by the time Brooklyn came along we felt like I needed to be home with our kids. We were going to be negative $65.00 every month. It was so scary but the leap was worth taking.
I sold Pampered Chef for a while. I sold boxes of my homemade caramel. We started selling stuff around our house on eBay. Then it turned out... we didn't need that money. We took the money from eBay and started going to local auctions and bought more stuff. We sold that! We found a great deal on some "ATI Remote Wonders" ( I don't even really know what those are but they sold great.) We had the opportunity to buy a whole bunch of them only... we would need an $8,000.00 loan. (Which we had no way to pay off if this didn't work out.) Once again, we closed our eyes and jumped. We paid off the loan in two months and that's how our eCommerce Business got started. Now we have several manufacturers for our products and that business is pretty successful. What if we wouldn't have jumped? It was super scary pushing ourselves off the ground and into the air not knowing where we would land. We did though, crossed our fingers all the way (we still are) and so far (6 years later)... we're still in a pretty good spot!
I've always loved real estate and I really wanted to flip houses. I knew nothing about it really so I went to real estate school to get more information. When I was finished I decided to take the test to become a Realtor. Then the scary part came when we started submitting bids to purchase houses. We had to take out mortgages on them so if we didn't fix them up and flip the quickly we could be upside down pretty quick. We did two at a time and it worked!
People tell me all the time... "Wow! Look at you guys! How did you even start something like that?" or "Julie! If there's something you want to do you just go do it! Don't you!" Is that wrong? Should I not take the risk? Why is that weird? Why doesn't everyone do that? If it's something that I would love, shouldn't I take a chance? Not everything I ever did worked out but I did learn something from everything I ever did! It's freaky to stand at the edge of the cliff, not be able to see where you're going to land and jump anyway, but if I don't just close my eyes and jump... won't I still just be standing here?
I eventually got a job at America First Credit Union as a Teller. I was the worst Teller ever! I was immature and was better at talking to the Members than counting out their money properly. I got "promoted" to the Loan Officer side of things... mostly just to get me off the Teller line. That ended up being a good fit. Something clicked and my career took off. Zach and I were married, we had Hailey and by the time Brooklyn came along we felt like I needed to be home with our kids. We were going to be negative $65.00 every month. It was so scary but the leap was worth taking.
I sold Pampered Chef for a while. I sold boxes of my homemade caramel. We started selling stuff around our house on eBay. Then it turned out... we didn't need that money. We took the money from eBay and started going to local auctions and bought more stuff. We sold that! We found a great deal on some "ATI Remote Wonders" ( I don't even really know what those are but they sold great.) We had the opportunity to buy a whole bunch of them only... we would need an $8,000.00 loan. (Which we had no way to pay off if this didn't work out.) Once again, we closed our eyes and jumped. We paid off the loan in two months and that's how our eCommerce Business got started. Now we have several manufacturers for our products and that business is pretty successful. What if we wouldn't have jumped? It was super scary pushing ourselves off the ground and into the air not knowing where we would land. We did though, crossed our fingers all the way (we still are) and so far (6 years later)... we're still in a pretty good spot!
I've always loved real estate and I really wanted to flip houses. I knew nothing about it really so I went to real estate school to get more information. When I was finished I decided to take the test to become a Realtor. Then the scary part came when we started submitting bids to purchase houses. We had to take out mortgages on them so if we didn't fix them up and flip the quickly we could be upside down pretty quick. We did two at a time and it worked!
People tell me all the time... "Wow! Look at you guys! How did you even start something like that?" or "Julie! If there's something you want to do you just go do it! Don't you!" Is that wrong? Should I not take the risk? Why is that weird? Why doesn't everyone do that? If it's something that I would love, shouldn't I take a chance? Not everything I ever did worked out but I did learn something from everything I ever did! It's freaky to stand at the edge of the cliff, not be able to see where you're going to land and jump anyway, but if I don't just close my eyes and jump... won't I still just be standing here?
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