My Entrepreneurial Life..
I began my career as an entrepreneur when I was 7 years old. I wanted to buy my mother a special birthday present, and it didn’t seem right to ask her for the money. But what can a 7 year old do? I had to think fast. I had crayons, and had to find something to color and sell. Napkins… the paper napkins were sitting on the table.. and the idea came to me. Color the embossed napkins, but they had folds in them… Luckily, my great-mother had taught me to iron, so I ironed the folds out of the napkins, and started coloring in the flowers. I made frames out of cardboard boxes, and sold them for $1.00 each door to door. My aunt was my babysitter, and took me out to the neighbors to sell them.
It took about a week to make the $12.00 I needed. My mother was very happy with my first present for her, but not too happy that I was selling the neighbors “napkins”.
I didn’t really understand what she had against me selling napkins, so I began selling greeting cards from the back of comic books. She knew there was no stopping me, so she let me run my business with my Aunt’s supervision, on Saturdays.
By the time I was 9, I was the most successful kid in the neighborhood, and started my own team of greeting card marketers. I took my business very seriously, and when my little cousin went out to sell with me, we had to get all dressed up, in our best clothes. Look at that hairdo!
School became harder, and I had more studies than time, so I put my business aside for a few years.
I didn’t like school, it kept me from running my business, and told my parents I didn’t want to go to college, I wanted to go right to work. Of course my first job, was in a bank. I found out after a few months, I didn’t like the corporate world, so I went into retail. I was selling carpet at 20 years old, and worked strictly on commission. The more I sold, the more money I made. This was a job made for me. I loved it for 6 years.
One day, I was sitting at work, and realized there was more to life than making money. I needed to do something creative. I had saved enough money to go back to school. I quit my job and went to photography school. After a year of learning everything about cameras, the studio, darkroom and printing, I knew I wanted to photograph people. In school, the “studio” shots we were learning to take, were not nearly as beautiful as the people I was seeing in front of me. I had to find a way to show the beauty I was seeing, captured on film!
When I finished school, I started my own portrait photography business. I did it my way. I shot exclusively in natural light for the first 10 years. Shortly after I opened my business, I photographed a famous soap star. His agent and managers loved my work, and began sending me all their up and coming stars. The people were “real” and beautiful, and I began shooting “actors headshots”. I photographed Dylan McDermott , Ben Affleck, Matt LeBlanc, Lucy Liu, Kristen Davis, Gabrielle Reece, I was having the time of my life. Then I photographed Elaine Stritch and those photos made me famous. They were everywhere, Broadway Marquis’s, CD’s, DVD’s, all over London. I love being a photographer. Every day is different, every person is different, every photo shoot is different. I will continue photographing for the rest of my life.
When professional digital cameras came out in 2000, I was the first “headshot” photographer in NYC to switch over to digital. It was very challenging, because although I knew everything about photography and cameras, I had never touched a Mac before, and there I was with the top of the line equipment. It was quite an adventure in the beginning. The photos were beautiful, which was all that mattered. We are all still laughing about how the CEO’s of banks had to look at their galleries sideways, since I was teaching myself everything as I went along, it took 6 months for me to learn to batch rotate the photos, since they are shot vertically, but load to the computer horizontally.
It was the best time of my life, starting from scratch and learning everything, teaching myself everything, studying everything I could to do the best job I could, with the photos once they were taken.
A few years later, I found myself missing people around me all day. I wasn’t around people as much as I wanted to be, so looked for something to add to my life.
I found network marketing…. it has only been a few months, but from the way things are going, it looks like the best thing I could have brought into my life. I am learning everything I can, both for myself, and for my team. It is important that I become successful, but even more important that they become successful. Once someone musts their trust in me, I do everything I can to give much more than was expected.
The energy is the same as photography. The people are wonderful. Every person is different, every day is different, everyone has a different reason for starting their new business. I am loving every minute of it… and will continue to update as the time goes on……
To be continued………
