Hello! Welcome. I’m Tiffany, and this is my very first officially official blog post.
It’s good to be here and it’s good to have you here. See, this whole online business thing has been something I have pondered on, fought away from, and consequently not been able to shake for over 6 years. I always had it hanging around in the back of my mind and for some strange reason, refused to admit that this is the thing that I should have been doing all along.
Maybe that’s due to the fact that I’m a small-town girl who has always cared entirely too much about what others might think of me. Or maybe it’s that I was straight up being lazy. I was more “comfortable” playing small, keeping my head down and my mouth shut.
Still, I simply could not get this lingering thought to leave me alone; that I should be building a beautiful business…creating content for others, and serving those people out in the world who are on my same level or a few steps behind me. Because guess what, self? I actually do have value to offer someone else in the world, even if it’s a single person… and I actually do love seeing others succeed. More so than I care about myself succeeding.
What’s more crazy to think about is that if I had started it all those years ago, my life would probably look much different than it currently does. That is a super deflating and frustrating way to feel as a 33-year-old mother and wife who has had big business and money dreams for far too long to not have taken much action at all.
Okay. Now let me stop with all the coy melodrama and take you back to the beginning and what led to the point that we are now.
Growing up I was always super shy. I loved to observe, but never wanted to be the center of attention. I was so uncomfortable with it, that I would cry when people sang me happy birthday. I giggled about it after, but I know now it goes deeper. When the spotlight was off and you got to know the real me, I was creative, I loved to draw, paint, sing, and dance and had an affinity for giving to others. It made me happy to see others happy.
I think that comes naturally in most middle children. (I have one older sister, one younger brother, and one younger sister). They are the peacekeepers and the ones always in the background ready to help or break up a fight. Being the older middle child out of the four, I also learned a lot about being a leader and teaching my younger siblings things along the way.
So in a nutshell, we have an introverted, creative, and giving leader.
I believe this is what doomed me to the life I currently live.
As the years went on, I made my way through high school and college and sadly lacked any real sense of where I was headed. I knew that I wanted to make a lot of money doing something that I found interesting and could enjoy doing for a long time. But what could I do? Well, anything really…so I started throwing ideas out there.
Medical field? Doctors make lots of money….but remembering those Dr. shows on cable TV where they do open surgeries and show the bloody goo, I figured out I really don’t handle blood well and actually have a pretty weak stomach…so I better not do that. Hmmm….Sales? Ehhhh, it makes me feel uncomfortable when people get backed into a corner to buy stuff they don’t care about or want. No thanks.
Maybe I’ll go to school for Business. You can use that for literally anything…like owning a company or a small business doing whatever you want. Yeah, seems like a pretty decent plan! Okay. Let’s go to school!
So I took the more affordable Community College route to play it safe, and after two years and a couple tens of thousands of student loan debt later, I graduated with an associate degree, and off to the job fair I went. I even took what I had learned in business school and wore a fancy-pressed outfit with a nice blazer.
At the job fair, there was one place in particular that stuck out to me; a life insurance company. For whatever reason, I felt drawn to the recruiter and felt a small connection to their company, so I interviewed and decided this was it. Plus, I was gonna go from making minimum wage at the local home improvement store to $14 dollars an hour. In 2010 just fresh out of college, that was a pretty freakin’ big deal. I didn’t know it then, but looking back on that moment, it was my very first quantum leap from what I saw as reality, to what I saw as possibilities.
I have just realized this is beginning to be a lengthier post than anticipated, so I’ve decided to stop here for now. Feel free to watch out for part two soon if you are at all invested in finishing reading this lovely story of mine…
xoxo
Tiffany