My First Business: A Story of Boredom, Books & Boldness 📚🔥

Snow Storm Weekends are now for reading, crackling fires, cupcakes, and hot chocolate. 

Back in 2000, after I graduated college, weekends were so painfully dull with nothing to do. Much of my life at the time felt extremely uneventful. I went from constantly being surrounded by friends who were a few steps away to having miles, highways, and tolls between us.

We all went our own ways to claim our future in different parts of the world. Alone in mine, I fell into a mundane routine that left me feeling as if working and coming home to watch Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU, Without A Trace, and CSI and CSI: Miami, and food shopping was all there was to life. 

Out of sheer boredom, I started my first business: Sassy Kibba Communications, later renamed SK Communications. I read Secrets of a Freelance Writer: How to Make $85,000 a Year by Robert Bly and The Well-Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency as a Commercial Freelancer in Six Months or Less by Peter Bowerman. Using those as my foundation, I set out and created a copywriting business at the ripe age of 24. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had fun doing it. I love a good challenge, and figuring out how to run a business is definitely one. 

I actually got paying clients. I wrote sales copy for MBI, Inc., sales letter for a homecare business and press releases. How did I market? I designed and printed my own postcards and mailed them out to all the businesses in the Stamford Chamber of Commerce directory. Businesses reached out or referred me. 

As I write this, I’m quite proud of myself for just coming up with an idea and going for it, having no clue, being nervous, and doing it anyway. Go me!

Well, this is not where I thought today’s write-up would go, but here we are.