My Entrepreneurship Journey

Here's my story. I have been scared to fully share my story because I was afraid of feeling like a failure in this area of my life. Over the pass 5 years I have been trying to find ways to earn additional income and step out on my own in business. I've always had side hustles but I started trying to accelerate my earning potential outside of my full time job with the goal of hopefully exiting. I am a College Advisor by day. The job requires teaching, counseling and guiding 12th grade students in the college application and financing processes. It has a heavy emphasis on parents education in financial aid, scholarships and college choice. I provide direct service and support to all 12th graders and their families as they transition from high school to their next plan. This is a big job that so many more parents and students should benefit from. I started to provide individual consultations to those that would contact me outside of my job. Friends of friends and of my students but would not charge for any information I shared because I am a helper by nature and didn't feel good about accepting money for information I shared.

I wrote a book Creatively Closing the Gap Unconventional Ways to Find Money for College in 2016 and did a modest book tour, gave speeches and made appearances around my city and local media. I launched my website www.danamartincollege.com and did the legal work for the name, but the business didn't really produce much profit. It was the base for my book and to book me for consultations, professional development and precollege programming.

I have struggled since the beginning of this journey with balancing being a wife and mother and being a well woman. I have not successfully found the formula to balancing everything well. I kept finding that when I turn the hustle up on my business my parenting or marriage would suffer. I'd miss a school meeting or my kids would start acting out or husband and I wouldn't see eye to eye about something unrelated to business. At my 9 to 5 I'm very respected and the salary has been steadily increasing to 6 figures but my day work would suffer too. Also I had instances where my day job felt that my outside work was in competition with them. I started to get ill more often. Migraines, strep throat, colds that lasted for months, listlessness, shortness of breath. Everything would catch up to me and beat me down. On the flip side when I focused more attention on my homelife everything else would suffer, the business, my 9 to 5 etc. It's like I couldn't win everywhere at the same time.

But there is a fire inside me for entrepreneurship that will not go away. I have been a part time party planner for my family most of my life. In the past 2 years we had so many parties at our house. My family combined had celebrations for high school graduation party, had a trunk party, 6 birthday parties, went on 2 proms, anniversary parties, fight parties (boxing), holiday parties. It was to the point where I could book all services needed for a party and have everything together in less than a day. Venue, food, dj all services, decor. Done. My kids loved helping with the planning and decor. My husband is good with organization and order. He and I talked and decided to start Marty's Parties our family business.

Marty's Parties is our family business and I must say I have had a much better time balancing family life with this business. But this business requires more hands on work and right now doesn't make as much as the college business could.

Healthywise I am doing a better job of taking care of myself naturally.

So I am here now with both businesses trying to figure out how to push forward. I will continue to promote and set goals but I feel kind of lost even though I've been at this for a while.

Thanks for listening.