I love designing, creating and making things. I love art, in many different forms. I have had many different ideas throughout my life to create a business making things. I was going to start a business making wedding dresses, (with a Barbie dress to match), or children’s clothes out of recycled denim. I wanted to be a photographer, take pictures of landscapes, people, and even abstract things. I wanted to make calendars, puzzles and just large prints of my photography. I love drawing and painting. I wanted to take my own pictures so that I could draw and/or paint from them and sell them. I was going to have a business making and decorating cakes. I wanted to start a business making furniture, mainly for kids, or making animal houses, or kids play houses, or….. The list goes on.
I have always had an obsession with Barbie’s. I was not allowed to have any as a kid, because ‘they were the gift that never stopped needing more’ as my mom said. I loved making clothes and furniture for my friends Barbie’s, it kind of sparked my obsession with doll houses too, as well as designing floor plans for my own dream home. I remember drawing up floor plans with all kinds of hidden hallways, secret rooms, sunken living rooms, (it was the 70’s). My brother and I would make little houses out of paper, we had an origami book that showed us how to make the furniture. I wanted so badly to make real doll houses, in lots of different scales; HO (train) scale, 1:12 (regular doll house), 1:6 (Barbie), and up to play house sizes, my own miniature house. I wanted to make the houses, all of the furniture for it, as well as all the little things to go in them, and even the clothes for the dolls to wear.
I learned at a very early age how to turn trash into treasure. We didn’t have much, but we did have cardboard food boxes that could make some cool little things, along with popsicle sticks, yarn, material scraps, and old clothes that could be used for material. I loved making clothes for my stuffed animals and dolls, I learned how to sew at a very young age. One of my biggest problems has been deciding what direction to go in. I’ve always been told, by many different people, that I need to pick one thing to focus on and go with that. It seems like a good idea. It is very good advice. So I make a decision, I’m going to…… AAAHHHH!!! I want to do them all!
At one point I had finally made a decision, I was going to get a degree in Architectural and interior design. I had decided that I was going to design and renovate homes. I could only take 2 classes per semester to start with. The school was in San Francisco, and I was working a full time job in Wyoming, so I was taking the classes online. One of the classes was model building. I absolutely loved that class! I made a model of a Mediterranean house, it was cute and little. I made a model of a living room, and designed a really cool fireplace that was a large fish tank with a bio-fuel fireplace on top. Pretty cool, if I do say so myself. I made a two room model that was a living room and a nursery. I made all of the furniture and accessories from scratch. This one was so realistic looking, it was actually being entered into the University’s spring show. I was quite proud of that one. That got me back into my obsession with wanting to make doll houses… I thought maybe the direction I could go in was making models for Architects. Another class I took was furniture building. Here we go again, I want to build furniture. In yet another class we were to design some kind of boutique business. I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea, a tropical get-a-way hotel in the middle of Wyoming. It would have a huge atrium with palm trees and tropical flowers, and a pool that had a beach, and all the rooms would have balconies facing into the atrium. The instructor for that class didn’t see my idea as brilliant, I guess she couldn’t understand that there are a lot of people in Wyoming that most likely would never have a chance to go to the tropics, but whatever, I liked it.
Well, two semesters in, working massive overtime at work, not really getting any sleep, I hit a point where something had to give. I realized at that pace it would take me about 10 years and $100,000 to get that degree, so I decided to take the next semester off. It turned out to be the right decision, in March of 2010, I had a stroke. That would have been in the middle of that semester. That kind of changed, well, everything for me. Now, instead of deciding what direction I wanted to go in or what kind of business I wanted to start, I was trying to figure out how to recover from a stroke. I was, and still am (almost 14 years on), very aware of just how lucky I was. I lived through it, and I still have use of my left side, and am still able to speak. I know of people that have had strokes that weren’t that lucky. That being said, I have had to deal with a lot of physical and cognitive issues from the stroke, as well as a TIA (mini-stroke) in 2018, that are permanent. A number of these issues have made it hard for me to get and hold onto a job, which has again sparked my desire to start my own business.
My husband and I have worked hard over the last 12 years to scrimp and save and do without a lot of things in order to get our finances in good shape. We have slowly built an inventory of tools and supplies that I would need to be able to create and build things for my business, but the one thing that I am lacking is space. The space to store supplies and the space to actually work on things. We have a fairly small house that is over 100 years old. I have tried to create work space for making things, but there isn’t really any room for it. There is no real storage space in the house either. We bought a camper that I was going to try to make into a work shop for me, however we need to do a lot of work to it and we need to put electricity in there. I’m not sure about being allowed to use it for a business as far as zoning laws either. I’ve had people suggest getting a storage unit. That would help with storing supplies, but that doesn’t really work for actually working on projects. I’ve looked into garages for rent, but that’s so far out of our price range that it’s not an option. I see a lot of buildings here in town that are just sitting empty, some have been for years, and I always think of what I could do with that building if I owned it. I would love to set it up with areas for specific types of projects, like wood working with power tools, and an area for sewing, an area for painting and such. I could have a store front area, where I could sell the things I make. Maybe even set up an area where I could offer a place for painting parties and such.
That got me thinking… I started looking into ways that someone could raise money to buy a building for a business. Of course the first thing on the list is a business loan, not really an option for us, we can’t afford to take on a loan. Then there is the suggestion of getting investors to invest in your business. That’s a great idea, but generally you need to already have a business up and running to get investors interested. Another idea was finding a philanthropist that likes your idea, it just so happens that I don’t know any, and again, usually they want to see a business up and running. Then there’s the old, ‘got any rich uncles?’…. Not that I’m aware of. Then, there was the suggestion of crowdfunding, more specifically, GoFundMe. I had heard of that, but I thought it was just for tragic situations. As I looked into it further, I learned that you
can set up a GoFundMe page for pretty much anything, and that there are a lot of people out there that want to help others try to reach their goals, such as entrepreneurs wanting to start their own business. That is what has brought me here.