Success In The City

To this day, I still feel that my path into entrepreneurship was unexpected. I truly had no intention of owning my own business, let alone debuting myself as an entrepreneur. I believed heavily in the traditional life course of a biracial girl from the suburbs: go to school, get good grades, go off to college, major in something purposeful and meaningful (aka not profitable), fall in love, get married, have kids, move back out to the suburbs, and repeat. My first clue that I was not going to live a traditional life should have been pretty obvious when, at no point in my life, did I ever see a biracial woman from the suburbs in real life. At the time, for me at least, that category didn’t exist. I mean that LITERALLY—there was no box for biracial or multi-racial when I was growing up (young kids today are spoiled). I had to really think about what race I would put down on the box. Imagine facing an identity crisis every time you have to submit a form because you don’t know which race to check. Talk about stress—as you may have picked up, yes, I used to struggle with bad anxiety (more on that later in the series). From the start of my life, I was never meant to live a traditional life because, growing up biracial, life for me was always a bit untraditional. (At the time, that is—again, the kids today are spoiled. Now we’ve had a biracial President, Princess, Senator, Vice President, actors, actresses, and singers; we biracial folks are really starting to take over. But back then, in the late '90s and early 2000s, not so much).

My second identity crisis came two days before my 28th birthday when I found myself once again in an untraditional situation. I was unemployed just nine months after landing my dream job. I wasn’t fired or anything terrible; I was laid off when the money from the grant-funded program I was working on ended. I was devastated. I truly could not understand how, if I had done everything right—got good grades, went to a good college, and got a master’s degree—I could find myself unemployed. It was quite the blow to my ego, let me tell you.

In between sending out my resume and receiving rejection emails, I decided that there was no better time than ever to catch up on some reading. Prior to leaving the company, my former boss had recommended the book Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes. She had talked about it being funny and inspirational, and at the time, I could have used both. So, I went right on Amazon with my Prime account and had the book delivered the next day, and let me tell you, I was hooked. Unbeknownst to me, that book would launch me down my path toward entrepreneurship. To this day, I still recommend this book to everyone. It’s a witty, relatable, and inspiring book for anyone but particularly for those of us who chase perfectionism despite the shadow it casts over our own happiness. I had all the pieces of happiness, just not the feeling. So, there truly felt like no better time to start saying yes to things than in those moments because everything that I feared and thought I had control over, I clearly didn't. My biggest fear up to that point was losing my job, so once that house of cards fell, I was open to pretty much anything that would give me back any sense of control. And while it may seem overly simple, I could control the things I said yes to. You see, I couldn’t control the job market or what hiring teams read my resume, I didn’t have control over how much I would be allotted in unemployment, what positions were open, or how long it would take for me to get a job again (by the way, on average, it takes someone two years to find another job in their field). I couldn't control any of that. But I could control the things I said yes to. I could say yes to taking a chance on myself, and I could say yes to starting a new chapter, which is exactly what I did. I said yes to launching my own business, and on a warm fall morning, Cice Consulting LLC was formed.

When Cice Consulting was born, yet again, I got those feelings of untraditional. My Instagram feed was flooded with everyone I grew up with getting engaged or married, some seemingly moving at hyper speed and planning families, and here I was feeling like, by starting my business, I was somehow behind them in life. (Side note: during this time, my 10-year high school reunion hit, so not only was I seeing all these people on my socials living the life we all used to talk about, but it was actually there in front of me; the universe has a funny way of putting things right there in your face like that). I didn’t know anyone at the time who had started a business. No one in my family that I knew ever owned a business—let alone lived off the income of being self-employed—which is probably why I believed in the traditional path so much and why I didn’t really have a circle of entrepreneurs to draw from when I took this leap. In truth, what I learned during this time was that I wasn’t behind; I was lonely on my new journey. I had chosen this whole new path for my life; I just didn't know anyone else on it yet.

Now, before we go any further, I want to make this clear: This will not be one of those blogs to convince you to become an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur is not for everybody, and while you do get an abundance of freedom and some great perks, you are exchanging one stress for another. You can stress about not getting fired or you can stress about having $20 in your account and a client taking their time to pay you while your electric bill is due. That’s just a reality. I’m not an entrepreneur without stress, and I haven't met one that is (but if you know one, please connect us :) ). I just want to be in control of what I stress about. The great Buddha once said, 'To live is to suffer.' With good, there is always bad, but you get to choose how you handle it. When I was laid off, I could have chosen to be buried by what I could not control, but instead, I chose to be planted. I chose growth over stagnation; I chose to be empowered in a moment where I felt disempowered. I chose an untraditional path because, by doing so, I was choosing me. One thing about me is I’ll own my own sparkle catastrophes (defined below) any day of the week, but I hated being a part of someone else’s sparkle disaster. Never knowing when their explosions could go off just wasn’t an anxiety I was comfortable living with. The reason I am starting this blog series is because, all too often, we only see the struggle in an underdog’s story—the beginning—or we catch them 10 years into their 'overnight success,' and then we measure our paths against that part of their journey and not on the part of the journey that made them the success and the underdog that they are. The part that makes them real.

So, this blog series is a look into the middle passage. It’s a series about embracing the path less traveled, even if, in the moment, it feels lonely or untraditional. I felt seen the first time I heard Jay Shetty say, 'Do not judge yourself by the moment you are in.' Instead, celebrate the version of yourself that got you here. There is no rule book in life; it is just a series of moments that you get to choose. You get to choose your happiness, and you get to choose the path that you take, so embrace it without fear. A champion never wins and says, 'Wow, that was easy.' HELL NO! A champion chooses to look each one of their fears in the eyes and say, 'If it’s you or me, I am choosing me!'

I hope this series inspires you to choose yourself, to choose your happiness, and to embrace the path less traveled. In this series, I will share the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, the middle of the underdog story, the successful moments of being a business owner, and the harsh learning curves. I’m going to lay it all out for you here to show you that the road to success is not perfect and that happiness can exist outside of a societal-dictated tradition. My promise to you is that I will be honest and authentic about my journey. I will not cover the shitty parts in sugar just to convince you that life is perfect and easy once you don’t work a 9-5. In exchange, I ask that you give me grace in the less-than-perfect moments I share with you and that you don't look to my experiences to imitate but that you see in life there is no wrong decision, so take the brave step forward and choose the one that makes you the happiest, because no matter what, you’ll see it will always work out. :)

"I invite you to join me along my journey toward chasing happiness and building my business empire; and trust me when I tell you, the story is just getting good.

Spoiler alert: there is a happy ending.

sparkle catastrophe
noun | synonyms: sparkle explosion, sparkle episode, sparkle attack

Definition: The act of overthinking and worrying so intensely that one’s worst fears start to manifest into reality, often by unintentionally sabotaging efforts. Example: Worrying so much about your blog post not being seen that you avoid promoting it, thus turning the fear into a reality.