Last year at QB Connect I was totally inspired by Oprah and her stories, afterwards, I told everyone she was talking to me. She was really great. But that was so last year.
Yesterday, Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit was talking to me.
Seriously he was…..
Ok, well he doesn’t realize but he was…..
If I were into getting a tattoo, I would have what he said written permanently on me!
However, I need to share a my journey first so it all ties together…
Bear with me, trust me it’s worth it! Go ahead and get a cup of coffee.
When QB was v1, I had my first child 1991. Over the years, I had struggles of typical mom/work life balance. Right after I had my second child, my husband lost his job and we started a construction sales company together, I had to track inventory in QuickBooks along with a very tight margin, 1994. We had our third son 1998, started to turn a profit and I started working part time only as the controller. At this point we had accumulated a lot of debt. We started a plan to eliminate debt. In 2000, we had our forth child, first girl! We were living in our dream neighborhood, had just bought a boat
Being blindsided by my friend, was quite overwhelming on top of that I was left to care for four kids, with two in diapers without help. My parents were a huge support for me and the kids. It made sense to move back to my home town. It was comforting to reconnect with childhood friends, made new friends and it is where I eventually met my husband.
I won’t lie, the first three years were rough! My contentious divorce was final in 2001 but the courtroom battles continued. My ex-husband and his new wife were unwilling to follow the agreement. It was really scary when the support payments ended for an entire year. When they stopped paying our home mortgage, the bank started foreclosure proceedings. Their life continued to proceed as though we didn’t exist. It was embarrassing but necessary to seek government assistance and go back to work full time.
Going back to work allowed me to reignite my passion for QuickBooks. I was hired by my parents who had an IT firm as their inventory manager. I converted them from Macola accounting software to Quickbooks in a parallel environment for 6 months. This also meant many late hours and weekends keeping the two systems in sync. In 2002, I became a certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and started getting calls for support business.
Courtroom battles meant I had to drive four hours round trip to Charleston. I managed all this while working full time, often having to work nights and weekends to stay caught up. These battles ended at the end of 2003 and I remarried in 2004 bringing a blended family of 6 kids together. With my husband, together we were able to create a healthy home for the kids and he provided the support I needed to juggle kids and work.
My QuickBooks life has continued to flourish after I joined the Intuit Reseller Program. In 2010 I started Complete Business Group. 2011 hired my first employee and 2015 launched my CBG partner program so that I can collaborate with other ProAdvisors for support and provide them my QB Product Expert advice. I continue to take on opportunities to teach others through out our QuickBooks community on ABBO. Most recently I was invited to joi the exclusive IRP advisory Council.
As a mother, this has been quite a personal journey, I’ve had to completely evaluate all my friendships and work relationships to make sure they are genuine and real. I came to realize not everyone has integrity or wants to see you succeed.
That’s the “quick” background. At the end of Michael Phelps interview/story at QBC 2016….
Brad Smith described a story of a single mom struggling and eventually made it.
Brad concluded with “Don’t let anyone blow out your flame to light their own.” I seriously stopped everything was doing (yes, I put my phone down) and said “WOW”, “I know EXACTLY what he means by that”.
Happiness is Possible 