As mentioned above I started my first business on paper in 2018.

But before that, as a teenager, I would do hair in my mom’s kitchen.

On any given day you could come to my mom’s house and upon entry get a whiff of Spritz holding spray and hot Marcell irons.

I was a self taught kitchen stylist.

Naturally, when a friend came to me with an idea to start a hair extension company, I thought the idea was perfect and would compliment one of my already existing talents.

She was a licensed hairstylist, and although I had not done hair in years, I knew I could add value to the business.

In no time, we would get the business legalized…EIN…LLC….logo…website… you know… all the things.

We would even go on to make a few thousand dollars.

Nothing life changing…

…BUT that business was short lived and this partnership would soon be dissolved.

Next…

I would start a business selling women’s footwear and apparel.

I got the business idea from my sister.

I was the budget fashionista and would often get asked where I got my clothing items from.

One evening, I took my sister to the warehouse of my local vendor who sold individual items at a wholesale price.

She looked at me and said, “you need to make this a business”.

So, I did just that.

Since she had prior marketing experience, I invited her into the business venture.

And just like that, I had another business and another partnership.

But this time was different.

We focused primarily on marketing and we grew FAST. 📈

We didn’t have any business funding.

We leveraged the income from our W2 jobs and we made it happen.

We found micro-influencers who would promote our items in exchange for free pr packages.

Along with social media marketing, we would also do grassroots marketing…

…pass out flyers at local corner stores, gas stations, salons, and our favorite sales strategy… pop up shops.

Pop up shops became our thing.

We would pay a small vendor fee, promote the event, and make $1k - $3k in our business in a few hours.

We had a formula and it worked for us.

Starting off self-funded, no coach/ mentor, and our very limited business expertise we became very resourceful and DIYed 95% of the business.

I don’t recommend soloprenuership but we had not yet been exposed to business coaching.

When the world shut down in 2020, we knew our current inventory would be a hard sale since everything was closed down, so we decided to pivot.

My sister and I would then launch our loungewear/ athleisure wear.

And I mean… it sold like hot cakes.

We already had a built in following and our customers were already requesting these items so inventory moved fast. 💨

Not to mention, malls were closed so we were able to capitalize off the high demand and the fact that most suppliers couldn’t get inventory from their oversea vendors.

We made a lot of mistakes along the way BUT gained sooooo much invaluable experience.

I learned graphic designs, content marketing, paid advertising, email marketing, SMS campaigns, website building, app development, product development, and so much more…

I could go on and on but I’ll spare you the resume.

Mind you, my sister and I had built these businesses all whilst working our 9-5s.

We girl bossed so hard, we would make our biweekly salary in a few hours at a pop up shop.

One day in May/ June of 2021, I began reflecting on the possibilities of what I could achieve if I didn’t have to give 8 hours to my corporate job.

That day, I decided to fire my boss and go ALL IN as a full time entrepreneur.

You see…

...somewhere along my entrepreneurial journey, my mindset began to shift.

And after quitting my corporate job, I asked God to allow entrepreneurship to work for me so that I never needed to go back into corporate America again.

I realized my passion and purpose was in entrepreneurship.

And with that realization, I just couldn’t reduce myself to live a life of default.

You know…

…working a bunch of overtime to make ends meet and have very little time for myself to still live paycheck to paycheck.

But I also knew I didn’t want to be a slave to my business either.

The natural step for my businesses at that time would’ve been getting a massive storefront and a hiring a bunch of employees to manage the operations.

To me that sounded like a bunch of overhead and me never being able to take a step away from business.