Oh, hi.

That’s my face.

Now that we’re acquainted, let me tell you a little about my journey. I started my career in 1990-something as a graphic designer. By 2003 I got my first job managing a graphics department for a kitchen electronics company that distributed products through every major retailer in the US. Since I have a creative brain and a big mouth, I wound up being moved to the product development team to help create products for the future of the company.

After I got bored designing rice cookers and potpourri pots, I moved on to the publishing industry. That job is where I learned that no matter how many good ideas I cranked out, I was never going to get a promotion over my male counterpart. #truth So I decided to quit my job and start my own business. That genuinely felt like a fantastic idea until I fell flat on my face. It wasn’t immediate, though. It was a slow, painful, dramatic fall.

After a couple years of licking my wounds and regaining stability, I cautiously stepped into business number two. With a new perspective, lessons learned, and a pragmatic yet creative approach, I brought the Sash Bag to market. It took only four years to turn Sash into a multi-million dollar business.

“How did you do it?” I get this question all the time. The answer lies within my superpowers: Creative Problem Solving and Community Building.

I doubt most of the strategies I used to grow Sash would be taught in a business class. I threw out a lot of conventional rules and tapped into my gut and my community. I approached every hurdle, every success, every opportunity, every setback from a place of vulnerability and being curious about possibility.

Long story short, the success has less to do with what I was doing and more about who I was being. This is the shift that made me want to pursue ontological coach training and use what I learned to help others do the same thing.