Hello World, Meet Lisa!

Let me tell you a bit more about my personal background and how that has shaped my perspective.

I grew up in a small town in Arkansas. It was the kind of place people moved FROM. It was not the kind of place many people moved TO. My family lived there for 20 years and were still thought of as the new people. I never really fit in. My parents’ values were very different from those of the people around me. I think everyone gets picked on in school for something, but I felt like I got an extra dose. I fully understand a lot of people had a lot worse childhoods, so I’m not complaining. In fact, not fitting in then is probably a strength now. Because once you realize you aren’t going to fit in and be normal, you realize you have the freedom to live the way you want to live.

When I finally went to college, I was elated. Here were the people I’d been looking for. They were smart, they were funny, and they thought I was fine just as I was. When graduation came, many of them went on to earn a Masters degree, but I was done with school at least in the short term. After 23 years of being educated, surely I knew enough to survive in the real world? I couldn’t wait to get out there and spread my wings. I’d always been a success in school, so working would be no different.

Have you noticed all through your school years as you are growing up you get more freedom? As a kid, your mom drives you everywhere. Then you get to drive yourself. Freshman year it’s all core courses everyone has to take. By senior year you and a professor are co-creating independent study classes. I didn’t understand this until recently, but I place a high personal value on freedom, and I had observed that I was on a trajectory toward more and more of it.

Then I got my first job, working for a software firm in the credit card industry. Wow, corporate culture was a shock. I kept doing the wrong thing. I remember the first meeting I went to when they asked for ideas. Finally, a time to shine! I chimed in with some great insights (or so I thought). Afterward, I was pulled aside and told I shouldn’t speak in meetings until I’d been there at least 6 months. To be fair I did not know what was going on and it was probably good advice, but it didn’t really feed my soul. I love to talk, Y'all.

I was told I needed to get up to speed on the credit application software, as I was going to be the subject matter expert. So I took the manual home with me one night to study it. My boss saw me coming back in the next morning with the giant white binder and chewed me out for taking confidential materials off-site. I completely understand her point of view, but nothing in student life had prepared me for not being able to study on my own time!

Another time our team was supposed to go on a field trip to one of our facilities across town. This was in the days before GPS or mapping apps, so I got out the paper map and tried to figure it out. The closest I ever got was to a road that overlooked the facility but did not connect to it. It was a half hour tour at the end of the workday, so after a half hour of wandering around trying to get there I gave up. I went home (before cell phones, remember), called the receptionist at the building and tried to reach my boss, and then left my boss a voicemail and called it a night.

It turns out just not showing up for work during work hours is frowned upon. In my mind, I’d missed an interesting and educational road trip, but by accident. They saw things a bit differently.

I decided the problem was the company and/or the small town I was living in, so I took another job after a year and a half and moved to Atlanta. I had a serious number of weird conversations and misadventures there as well. I was clearly a fish out of water, but I had no idea how to find my place. I went on to a third job, still working as a business analyst, but now as a consultant and in the telecom industry. I was making more money, but I still felt like a square peg in a round hole.

Around this time I met a lady who mentioned that she worked with a team who trained and mentored entrepreneurs. This sounded interesting. I could get out of the little corporate box (technically they call it a cubicle, but I’m being metaphorical here) and work on my own schedule in an encouraging environment. I could rise as fast as I wanted in the company because once you meet the criteria you are moved up. It’s entirely fair. No office politics. And it was also a multi-level marketing company.

Network marketing is an excellent field to enter if you’d like to learn to get over your fear of sales, experience personal growth, and lose all your money.

But that’s a story for a different blog post.