overwhelmed to overbooked
and everything in between

my name is melissa, and i'm addicted to building businesses.

I'm also slightly obsessed with quoting Mean Girls and sending sarcastic GIFs, but that's neither here nor there. For as long as I can remember, I've had entrepreneurial squirrel-brain. When I was 10 years old I made homemade locker magnets and sold them to my classmates. They were terrible. I thought I was a genius. For the next 15 years, I went through the motions of school, graduation, more school., another graduation, and a deeply unfulfilling junior career. I kept myself sane with various side hustles... none of which I could ever give my full attention- I was too busy surviving by doing work I didn't love.

one day I peed on a stick and realized i was cooking up a human.

I was excited, terrified, overwhelmed, and really, really, REALLY nauseous. Like, pull over on the side of the highway during my morning commute to spew, nauseous. I had to tell my employer I was knocked up before I even told my family, because I was just so sick. I had been running myself ragged for this company for months; 12+ hour days, no breaks, working weekends. I thought that would earn me a little bit of leeway when I became so incapacitated by my pregnancy- instead, I was offered a demotion "on account of the sickness and hormones." Yep, I'm serious... it was not a good time..

walking proof that you can live oFF coffee and carbs and not die.

it was time to turn an obstacle into an opportunity.

If you ask my husband to describe me, he will immediately and without hesitation say, "Difficult." I should probably find this offensive, but to be perfectly honest, it's true. If you want something done, just tell me I can't do it! I am a professional pain in the ass, and I believe that where there's a strong will, there is always always a way. I resolved to find a way to stop working for other people and design my own career, so I could be the professional and the mother I really wanted to be.

Here's the part where most people these days will tell you they "manifested success" for themselves, or "awakened their calling," or something like that. Well, I didn't do any of that. I set a concrete, achievable, and realistic goal: Make 75% of my current income through self employment. I developed a strategic plan to hit that goal, and then I worked my ass off to make it happen. And you know what? It did, and then some. 

They say when it rains, it pours. When my son was just a couple months old, we became the sole caregivers for my three youngest siblings basically overnight. That's zero kids to four kids in a matter of months, in case you were counting... which effectively put an end to my brand new project management career. Self-employment was my solution, and despite having the world's most bizarre variation of parenting responsibilities, I managed to make it work.

if i can make this happen, so can you.

Freedom. That's the whole reason I started a business back when my son was an infant- I needed the freedom to earn a full time income on my own terms, and on my own time. Just two years later, I moved my family to Europe to live out a dream we've had since we were teenagers- we even appeared on HGTV's House Hunters International, LOL. These days, we're back living outside of Vancouver, BC with our unconventional house full of toddlers and teens- and my business has provided for us every step of that journey.

everyone has a different dream life