I started working in different capacities from the time I was 13 years old. My first job at a "real" company was starting at the very bottom. When I say bottom, I mean it. I literally stood for 8 hours holding two buttons on a machine that was stuffing envelopes - watching to make sure they all looked nice and nothing jammed. Occasionally I got to clear a jam but for the most part, I was just a glorified part of the envelope stuffer machine. During my first year at the company, I was promoted several times and wound up working in Print on Demand where I would fulfill print requests from all different departments in the company. Mainly I would just print, collate, and hole punch all day long on these giant printers in this room all by myself with the occasional opportunity to edit projects in order to format them better for printing. Somehow, I was noticed in my little room and was promoted again to work on the website tech support team.
This was the beginning of my journey of anything related to websites! I have been working with websites in some capacity since 1999. I initially started providing technical support on existing websites and transitioned into sales and marketing of websites. I spent four years traveling the country meeting with financial advisors at conferences and speaking about the importance of having a website. At this time many people thought that having a website was just a fad!! I saw the value of websites but I only looked at working with websites as a hobby rather than something I would make my long-term career.
During my time at that company, I also was an avid snowboarder and spend most of my weekends up in the mountains. A horrible accident that almost left me paralyzed from the neck down led me to become a ski patroller so I could provide people with the help that I received! I loved the idea of giving back and honestly, the free season pass was a big motivator to start! I quickly learned that I had a knack for emergency medicine so I left my position working on websites and began pursuing my lifelong desire to be in some sort of medical profession.
I entered Emergency Services and worked as an EMT and then even became a Firefighter. The job was rewarding and provided me with so many incredible opportunities (Ask anytime, I have so many stories I'm happy to share!). Although I loved being a Firefighter, I always found myself tinkering with websites for friends and family members on the side as a hobby.
After I got married, I decided to go back to school and earned a double major in Communication and Information Technology with an emphasis on Web Design and Project Management. I absolutely loved all my web design classes and decided I would start my own business after graduation. However, the business cart fled in front of the horse when my web design professor was unexpectedly diagnosed with brain cancer. He had his own business and I offered to volunteer my time to help him maintain his client’s websites for as long as he needed. As his health deteriorated, he began to give his clients to me to take over fully. I suddenly found myself with my own business before doing any of the groundwork that the analytical side of me would have liked to establish before going after clients.
In 2009, I found myself with a business that I didn't feel qualified, prepared, or ready to run! Initially, our company was called Solutions by Angela. This is where my fear and lack of trust in just taking the next step forward each day really took hold of me. I felt so inadequate and had no idea how to really have a business. I also needed to buy a Mac because I believed that all real web designers must only use Apple products!
..... updating still as of 10/12/2020!
