The “Birth” of an Entrepreneur.

The “Birth” of an Entrepreneur.

Growing up, and even through college, I never had a strong sense of the exact work that I wanted to do.

I was interested in psychology, loved traveling and shopping, art and creativity, but I was never really great at any one thing. I was a “good” student (minus math, the D I got in college calculus still makes me laugh a little),played some sports, and was lucky enough to get admitted to Vanderbilt as a Child Studies major at Peabody College.

My family was a little surprised I chose Child Studies as my major because, to be honest, I was not really a little kid person. I was the youngest of four children and was a little bit of an old soul, and not the one seeking out babysitting jobs. Once I graduated with my Master’s of Education in Child Studies from Peabody I took a job in a research lab where we worked on language development in children with autism. I spent hours a day in a room with headphones on with other young graduates “coding” videos of therapists working with children to expand their language to create data to determine if the strategies were working and if they were statistically significant. It was a good first job and I learned a lot about working in an office and how research is done and gets published and shared. I felt good about the purpose of the research and seeing the difference this made in the lives of the kids and families that we worked with but it was not something I woke up excited to do every day.

During that time I was dating and got engaged to my husband, Pat, who had a job in healthcare technology that would support us both and gave me the option to consider leaving that job and starting something on my own. I was tutoring a couple of local middle school aged kids and loved making some income on my own terms. My sister Mary, who has been an entrepreneur since the age of 10, had started a few businesses in our hometown and encouraged me that I could do the same.

I started dreaming and scheming about opening a high end drop in-childcare, put in my notice at work, got married in October of 2010, and opened the doors of my first business in December. My sister had a similar business in our hometown called “Brilliant Babies” so I had a framework of what was possible and what I needed to get started.

Let me back up just a bit, because it’s never that simple.

I always appreciate transparency about anyone starting a business and where the time and money come from. My husband had bought a house when we were engaged and we used that home to take out a HELOC of $40,000 to cover the first few months of rent, supplies, furnishing, and start-up costs. When I think about the risk we took then and how little I really knew about starting or running a business, I am amazed at my 24 year old self. And, spoiler alert, after three years of running that business I maybe took home about $20,000 a year and just barely paid back the HELOC within that time.

But back to the beginning…

I found a few available spaces to rent and called and emailed around to set up meetings and share my business plan with landlords to convince them that I could, in fact, start a business and pay rent for a 3-year lease. I named this business Smart Sprouts and found someone to make me a cheap and adorable logo.

My sister Mary flew out from California (7 months pregnant with her 3rd child) and we drove a U-Haul to Memphis to load up on cute little tables, chairs, toys, books and supplies. I remember the day we decided the space absolutely had to be carpeted, because the gross tile floor was turning out to be very difficult to clean and was not kid friendly. Mary works faster than anyone I know and had a guy ready to lay carpet in about 24 hours, as I nervously wrote a check for a few thousand dollars. I had to navigate the city codes office (sometimes making personal visits and laying on the charm) figured out how to get my Squarespace site up and running, hired an architect to make our space ADA compliant including installing a double tier water fountain that I found on clearance at a restaurant supply chain. I found my first employees, some eager and kid-loving young women who I had absolutely no business managing but showed up ready to work. We opened our doors and I quickly learned that marketing was a pretty important part of the whole “owning a business” thing.

I was balancing everything.

Newlywed life, working Monday through Saturdays, being a boss, finding customers, changing dirty diapers, cleaning the occasional accident out of the carpet, attempting to learn how to reconcile our accounting every month myself and frankly, loving every minute of it (ok sometimes the diapers and the accidents and the employees were not easy).

When I look back on those three years of my life (which I lovingly refer to today as “business school”) where I worked a LOT, was constantly challenged and technically “failed” because I closed our doors and barely turned a profit, I’m so proud of myself. Because that was when I fell in love with being my own boss.

I was in so many situations I was not ready for, but I figured it out.

I made pricing plans and packages and factored in wages and insurance and rent to try to make money at the end of each month. I had wonderful supportive customers who I still run into around Nashville and can’t believe their toddlers I once held on my hip are now teenagers. I formed valuable friendships with other female business owners and traded services so they could work while I watched their kids. I had to stand my ground on pricing and pickup times, and apologize when I made mistakes. I learned how to price services appropriately and that typically my instinct was always to undercharge which wasn’t good for anyone.

I like to think that Smart Sprouts was “ahead of its time” because Nashville didn’t seem quite ready to pay $15 an hour for boutique childcare. It wasn’t a “bad” business and we had some great regular clients, but I knew once I was pregnant with our first child that it wouldn’t exactly run itself and turn a profit when I wanted to take a few weeks of maternity leave. So, I decided it was time to close the doors on that chapter, finish out the lease and move on to stay at home with our first daughter when she was born in December of 2013. But the spark had been ignited. I knew I was capable, I loved the creativity and the new challenges every day, and I was pretty certain I could never work for someone else again. One chapter was closing for me but I knew there would be more in my future. That’s when I got the bug, and an entrepreneur was born.

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