I was eleven when my goals for my future solidified. My parents had broken up again—it happened so many times over the course of my life, I honestly cannot tell you what number it was that time. The difference in this particular instance was that my mom decided to move out, and she insisted I come with her. Nobody asked me what I wanted or gave me a say in the matter. They simply announced that it was happening. My three older siblings would stay with my dad in our family home, and I would move into a crappy apartment with my mom. It was one of the darker years of my childhood.
I rarely had access to my siblings, and the financial strain of parents who were now dividing resources to pay for two places to live meant that we had even less than before. I have a photo from that time of my eleventh birthday party with a handful of friends from school in this run-down, shabby apartment. I remember being embarrassed. I remember the boxed cake mix baked in an old Pyrex. I remember that we couldn’t afford decorations. I remember being hyperaware of two things. First, I didn’t want the kind of life where I lacked funds for special occasions. Second, it’s not very convincing to assert your independence—from my mother, in this case—if you don’t have the financial means to back it up.
I vowed to myself that day that I would be wealthy when I grew up. It was my birthday-candle wish. I stood in that tiny dining room on stained carpet, in front of the yard-sale table, and I promised myself something better. I will never live like this when I have the ability to prevent it. I was vehement in this: someday I would be rich.
I’m not supposed to say that, I know. Social media is filled with hundreds of male CEOs and self-made entrepreneurs who tout the power of wealth and the justification for achieving it. But, if you’re a woman, it’s frowned upon. It’s impolite. It’s not something good girls do.
Good girls don’t talk about money, and they certainly don’t claim it as a life goal, regardless of their reasons why.
What I learned in childhood? “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”
That meant I should be happy with whatever life handed me, gracious and thankful for whatever came my way. But what was coming my way as a child and later as a teenager was a mostly crappy existence, and because I was a child, I couldn’t do anything to change it. But I knew after that birthday party that the second I was in control I would never be forced to settle again.
There is a big difference between gratitude for your life and blind acceptance of whatever comes your way.
I wanted more.
I wanted more than I had grown up with. I wanted more access. I wanted more experiences. I wanted more knowledge. I wanted more challenges. I wanted more influence. I wanted the ability to help others who were in difficult financial places, because I knew exactly how they felt—I understood even then that monetary resources would make that possible. I wanted so many big, grandiose things. When I was a child, people thought it was adorable. They’d pat me on the head and tell me how precious it was, but in my early twenties I quickly learned what was and wasn’t acceptable to my family, friends, or husband.
When I started my own company, everyone saluted my moxie, but two years later, when I was pregnant with my first child, people immediately asked when I would be quitting. The business, they concluded, was just this cute thing I was doing to keep myself busy until my real calling started: being a stay-at-home mom (SAHM).
It’s worth stopping right here to qualify that statement. I sincerely believe there is no harder job and no more important job than being a SAHM. I have so much stinking respect for my SAHM friends, and I’m not for one second implying otherwise when I tell you that it’s just not for me. Next to my husband, my children are my greatest blessings. But, y’all, if I had to stay at home with them full-time, I’m not entirely sure any of us would survive. It’s not my spiritual gifting. It’s not in my wheelhouse.
You know what is in my wheelhouse? Building a successful business, managing a team, writing books, giving keynote speeches, crushing it on social media, strategizing, branding, PR, and planning live events where a thousand women fly in from all over the world to be inspired. But at the time, none of those things were proven. I was still so new to business. I only had an idea in my heart and a fire in my belly. I was figuring out how to run a business using books at the library and Google. I asked a hundred thousand questions to anyone who could offer wisdom.
It was slow going at first, but, dude, I was going. I got my first client, and I worked my butt off. I treated that one single client like they were the last opportunity I’d ever get. I didn’t have money, I didn’t have a ton of experience, but I did have an unmatchable work ethic, and I let it shine. I got the next client based on a referral from that first one. I did events for basically nothing in order to build up my portfolio. I took on any client I could find.
I was essentially like, Do you have a pulse and a need to plan a party? You do? I’m in!
So when I got pregnant and had to explain my choices over and over again to well-intentioned family members, it honestly sucked. For the first time in my whole life I understood that other people didn’t agree with the life I’d imagined for myself. They didn’t like the idea of a working mom, even though they’d accepted it early on when we needed the money. A couple of years later, when Dave’s salary increased enough that it was clear I didn’t “have to work,” the passive-aggressive people around me began to vocalize displeasure outright. Even when you’re strong, even when you’re committed to your goal, it’s hard not to second-guess yourself or take on guilt when it’s coming at you from every angle.
Open disapproval wasn’t enough to make me change my course, but I did stop claiming my course as my own. I wouldn’t recognize it until years later, but those opinions began to wear me down. I was like a piece of glass that gets thrown into the ocean. Other people’s opinions became my waves, their judgment the sand I was tossed against over and over until it began to chip away at all my jagged edges. I know that as a society we tend to think that being smooth and pretty, everything worn to a soft, rounded edge, is what we should aspire to. But the more I grow and learn and think about it, the more I understand that your jagged edges—the parts of you that stick out in odd directions and don’t match everyone else—those are what make you uniquely you.
My unique qualities? I am a leader. I am a teacher. I’ve built two successful companies through hard work and hustle and the wealth of knowledge that can be found from a Google search bar. My goal is simple, even if it’s grandiose: I want women to understand that they have the power to change their lives. It’s at the core of everything I do. It’s the platform I’ve built everything else on, and I truly believe it’s what I was put on this earth to do. I’m building a media empire around the idea.
No, I did not mistype. Yes, I just said A. Media. Empire.
Not a company, not a side hustle, not a small business—an empire.
The world tells me that good girls don’t hustle, and they certainly don’t stick a flag in the ground and audaciously shout that they want to be a media mogul. They for sure don’t feel so passionately about it that they have the word mogul tattooed on their wrist.
I know I’m not the only one who has ever bumped up against the expectations of others and then backed down because of them. In a desire to find community, I constantly seek out other women in leadership, and what I find again and again are women doing just what I did. They’re downplaying all that they’ve achieved, because they’ve been taught that it makes others feel uncomfortable.