I was hired to handle customer service. But soon I showed competency in marketing – I kept asking questions and giving ideas to the CEO, who managed all the marketing (there were only 4 people on staff – 2 of them owners – plus me). The CEO quickly started giving me marketing tasks and lessened my customer service duties. Well, fast forward 5 years, I still reported to the CEO and was managing a 4-5 person marketing team including designers, copywriters and developers. We had grown by 3000% – from $100,000+ to $15MM in 5 years. We were among the Inc 75 for fastest growing companies. The company is currently at $25MM (more than 10 years later).

The owner put me in charge of a joint venture with a $7B company - basically a start-up / trial / beta revenue stream. The goal was $10M in 12 months doing something no one in the industry had ever done or even tested before. We did it – only we hit $10Min just 6 months. Now that company is worth $800MM. Anyway, I left because I was working too hard. I was expected to take my laptop home and if I wasn’t sending emails at midnight, I wasn’t doing my job. That was the culture. I knew coworkers who scheduled emails to go out in the middle of the night, just to give the impression they were working when they were actually asleep. I never did that. What you see is what you get. I didn’t play games then, and I won’t play games now.

Right before I quit my last job, I started prospecting for my own clients. I thought I’ve made millions for my bosses and it’s time to do it on my own terms. I knew I eventually wanted to be a stay at home mom, but I also knew that would quickly become boring if that’s all I did. What I wanted was a lucrative career I could do from home. Within 4 weeks, I attracted 3 new clients and handed in my notice. I figured, this is half of what I’m making now and I made it in only one month! Hmmm. Well, they didn’t let me go without trying to keep me – they offered me a tempting new EVP of Marketing title and a huge raise. Still, I thought I’d be so much happier doing my own thing even if I made only half of that new salary. So I stuck to my entrepreneurial guns. I craved the work-life balance that could enable me to have a family and be present in their everyday lives.

Not only was I right, but my business took off and Thrived - pun intended. In 2004, I officially launched Thrive Marketing® (which by the way is still alive and well). Through Thrive, we work with established, reputable businesses in the Thought Leader, Coaching and eCommerce verticals. We help them create clever approaches to their marketing, and generate attention-getting ideas for more profits and then execute them to a high standard. Our clients have included industry leaders such as:

In 2006, I was 26 years old and only two years into my marketing agency. I got a creative itch to start a clothing company on the side with a friend of mine. My business partner and I invested more than 6 figures EACH into the company. While we had a lot of hype around the company, tens of thousands of people on email, and had created a new movement and subculture, there was one rule of business we violated. My partner and I differed on where to manufacture the clothing. The profit margins weren't there for domestic manufacturing, so the cash needed to fuel growth was too high for the business to survive (learn more about how I handled this speed bump).

In 2010, we had yet another creative itch to start another company, this time in the digital scrapbooking industry – digital products + ecommerce. We abandoned this after 2 years when our business partner couldn’t keep up with the demand (she was the designer half while we were the marketing half). We had awesome SEO and people loved our designs. But it ended up being a good thing since the market changed soooo much in just those 2 years with the rise of mobile apps.

In 2012, Jared purchased a franchise selling hearing aids to Baby Boomers and even older folks. His intention was to purchase additional franchises. Thrive helped him and the franchisor with (some of) the marketing. The marketing we did on the down-low produced a 30:1 ROI while the marketing they did (and required franchisees to pay for) had a 3:1 or 4:1 ROI. Ultimately, we sold that franchise as we had very little true control over the marketing.

In 2014, Jared and I started Epic Matcha. It combined our love for the green tea drink with ecommerce and leverage. We’ve been a top seller on Amazon and also have a huge SEO presence (lots of organic visitors) to epicmatcha.com. We had Shark Tank approach us (not the other way around) a couple of months ago and they had us skip the application process. That’s still in process and who knows what will happen, but it was cool to have them contact us. I guess they found us as #1 on Google or Amazon, read our story, and liked that we were husband/wife.