I grew up in an entrepreneurial and a creative home. Mom, Dad, and Big Bill (my paternal grandfather) were all entrepreneurs. Mom, Grandma (my paternal grandmother), Nani (my paternal grandmother), and countless Aunts were creators from painters to interior designers to architects.

I found myself drawn to architecture in high school and followed that path in college and then on to earning a Master's degree. College was great. It was competitive, creative, and inspiring. The real world of architecture was a bore. Nine hours a day sitting in a cubicle fixing other architect's mistakes on ugly buildings. That would have been the first three years of my career (plus studying for an 11 part licencing exam) had I stayed the course.

One day I looked around and took stock in what my bosses and my bosses bosses were doing. I didn't want any of their jobs. That's when I decided to quit. I had the feeling that #1- I wasn't contributing anything meaningful to this world and #2- I would never make as much money as an architect as I could doinging something else.

A few years, and a few jobs and failed business attempts later, my father and I decided to start a business together. We had a few ideas (he's an idea man to the fullest) but the only one I actually cared about was our current business. At the time I was fully immersed in a new concept- living a healthy and happy life.

The catalyst was losing both grandmothers within six months of each other to various cancers. Grandma (my maternal grandmother) had always had cancer... literally my entire life... so her passing was not that big of a shock to me. Because of her I thought you could live with cancer for years and still see your family grow up, fight the good fight, and grow old. It was almost normal. Nani (my paternal grandmother) was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer out of the blue. She looked amazing, was active, and seemed healthy. The diagnosis rocked us all. It was only 4 short months until she passed. This shook me to my core and brought the reality of cancer to the forefront of my thoughts. Sometimes you have a long time, and sometimes you don't.

At the time I was in my mid-twenties and realized that I had plenty of time to figure out how to live a healthy life for myself. This obsession with learning about food and what is truly healthy started out as a purely selfish thing. I didn't want to end up like Nani... living my life assuming I had many good years ahead of me, and then one day getting a death sentence handed to me. I took my new obsession to the next level and decided to enroll at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I didn't want to be a health coach, I knew that from the beginning. I was doing it for the knowledge and the certification, because I knew that I wanted my next business venture to have something to do with what I was learning about health (and as it turned out happiness).

So out of the four or five business ideas my father and I came up with there was only one that I actually cared about, which ended up becoming Raw Generation. My father gets excited about a lot of different things so long as they involve starting a business, so I think the determining factor in us starting a juicing business was the fact that I was not only into the product but also the health benefits of what our product offered. I found something that I was proud to say I was a part of. I felt "I'm contributing something valuable to this world".

We started in my dad's kitchen, then built out the garage, and within the first year we had enough business to move to a commercial kitchen. My focus was marketing and sales, while my father developed the production and operations side of the business. We were fortunate that we had completely different strengths but could also come together and talk big picture.

We launched our website in August of 2012 and got busy promoting to our green juice to our non-existent Facebook audience. Crickets. No sales. Then in January of 2013 I shut down the website and re-branded us as a juice cleanse company, and in February we launched our first sale on Lifebooker.com (a deal site that is no longer in existence). In one week we generated $8K, which was more than we had sold in the entire first six months of being in business. So for the next 2 months my entire job became getting us up on every deal site I could. By June of that year our sales were up to $100K, holding steady, and we were profitable. We were truly in business.

Four and a half years later (as of Jan 2017) we're still in the same commercial kitchen space, however we've now taken over the entire building. Apparently, we got on the juicing/juice cleansing train right as it was leaving the station. Each year between 2013 and 2015 our sales doubled, and in 2015 we became a multi-million dollar company, and still profitable.

Now, at the beginning of 2017, I am still as involved as ever in marketing and growing our business. However, my role has changed and a lot of my work time is consumed by making decisions, managing, and doing non-creative work. I started to feel frustrated and unfulfilled. I knew I needed a purely creative outlet that was completely unrelated to Raw Generation.

One day I was picking up a to-go order at a restaurant and saw a painting of lemons on the wall. I thought... "I bet I can paint that" and took a picture of it. So I went onto Amazon, bought a cheap set of brushes, paints, and canvas. A few days later I was all set up and in a 4 hour paint session I had successfully replicated the lemon painting, taking my own artistic liberties to make it unique. I was hooked. Now I have a studio set up in our spare bedroom and am painting not only for myself but am in the process of starting a side business selling the originals and prints.

Most recently, I've found that it's not good for me to put all of my energy into one thing. Maybe for a very short period of time, but I do better long-term when I have a variety of creative and business oriented tasks that fill my time. I find that by painting at night and on the weekends, I feel less frustrated when my work days are filled with decision making and non-creative tasks.

I also love interior design, and just finished redecorating the apartment that my husband and I live in. Part of me was sad when it was finished, but low and behold, a friend just bought a new house and needs help so I get to focus that part of my creative ability helping a friend.

It has been my experience that when you figure out what you want and put it out into the universe, the universe usually responds. Keep a positive frame of mind and focus on what you DO want. Work smart, take vacations, work to your strengths, read Napoleon Hill. Figure out what makes you happy. :)