The Journey Begins

Finally, I have been chomping at the bit for over a year now to get this blog started.  Those of you who already know me , are well aware that I have been excited about this project for quite a while.

At long last , I am able to dedicate the necessary time and energy to, hopefully make this a place that you can come to that is filled with information about a. How you can get your cookie business off the ground or b. how you can take what you already have to the next level.

Okay so listen up ladies, before we begin, I have to be honest with you, and I want you to know exactly what you can expect from this blog.  I value your time , and I want you to get the most out of this. I also want you to know a bit about me as a person .  I don’t know about you, but I like to know who I am listening to and why I should listen. I don’t take anything for granted. 

My intention as I stated before is to share a wealth of information with you about how to grow your business. Now that  means different things to different people.  In other words, some of you may think the information I will provide is all about the mechanics of how to start a small business from home, but that's not what this blog is all about.  Sure, there will be some of that  but let me tell you exactlly  how I intend to help you grow  or start your business.

Before we begin this journey together, I want you to know a little about my story.  I will not bore you with the long protracted version of woe is me, because it’s not, but I can tell you this.

My  Dark Night

Before I started baking and decorating cookies for a living, which quite frankly, I would have never imagined,doing a few years ago, I went through what many call MY personal Dark Night of the Soul.

I am going to throw around some figures here, not to brag about what I had,  but so that you can fully comprehend the magnitude of what I went through, and how far I fell. 

Within the a period of a single year I found myself in a position where I was forced to sell my interests in a very lucrative Mortgage Business that I co-founded . My five figure monthly  income vanished, overnight.   My husband of 8 years left me for another woman.  I was left with a three year old child, a $4500 dollar per month mortgage payment, a $1100 per month car payment, three properties and two elderly parents. One an ailing mother ( Alzheimer’s) that died soon thereafter and the string of unfortunate events continued for two years, until they finally culminated in me losing everything except my son and my sanity. It was a period of three years that I do not wish on even the most evil person on earth.

The Decision 

As I  look back on as the greatest period of Creative Destruction I have sustained, there was an immense amount of growth for me both spiritual and as an Entrepreneur.  I am the kind of person who has never accepted defeat and therefore I decided that if this was happening to me, I was going to give it a purpose, and use it to serve me, and others In the future.

It's not what life throws at you, it's how you handle it that counts and determines your destiny.

The Comeback

From an early age, 16 or so, I have  been fascinated by the subjects of Psychology and Personal Development. I always loved people like Tony Robbins, Dr. Wayne Dyer and Louise L. Hay. I read their books, and studied them. I  wondered how these people had turned their lives around so dramatically after such devastating failures, setbacks and horrible circumstances

Over the years I had taken many Psychology courses both in college and invested thousands upon thousands of dollars in books, seminars and have an extensive education in Personal Development, Entrepreneurship, Influence  NLP and like subjects in addition to attending Business School for a year where I completed coursework in  Leadership Theory, Economics, International Business, Marketing and other subjects relevant to Entrepreneurship .   

It had been a few years since I had not done any heavy  work on the Personal Development related subjects, and somehow when I took an inventory of everything that happened to me, I decided that it was time for me to dive back in and search within , to uncover what was going on inside of me, rather than continue to look outside for those answers.   

I have read about countless successful entrepreneurs that have been financially devastated only to rise from the ashes once again.  I wanted to learn for myself, how I could apply all of these theories so that I could handle all of this without losing my mind,  and not just survive it, but learn from it , grow stronger and share what I have learned with others.

As you all now know, I did make it through that period of time in my life, and reinvented myself as a Baker/Cookie decorator.  I am not yet a mogul by societal standards, but I can now support my household on my own if need be.

I can tell you that my first year I invested about $800. That’s all I had to start with , no more.

My second year I think I made about $250, the third I made about $12,000, the fourth $74,000 and projections are for over 100K for year number 5 in spite of a recent setback.

That kind of money is certainly not a fortune to some, but for someone who is looking to build a business  produces extra income without having to leave their home too much ( Except when you have to rent out a commercial kitchen for large orders) that’s not too bad, in fact it’s about 30-40K more money than most middle class Americans bring home if not more.

It's enough , if using it as a second household income to send your kid to private school, or pay for your child's college tuition ( At least part of it depending on where they go) .

 I am here to teach you how to become independent and build real businesses.  I am an open book and if you are going to listen to what I have to say, then you should know that you are hearing someone who knows what they are talking about, and someone who is going to be able to teach you to do the same thing
and hopefully exceed those numbers.

There are far too many phonies out there lying about how they made 50K their first year working from home, honestly, I have never seen that happen in this business and it takes hard , constant and steady work to build a cookie business, Any business for that matter, anything else is a lie or a blatant exaggeration, plain and simple . 

I have been to what I consider the depths of hell and back and learned that  there is no growth without resistance.  As many of you already know , being a Cookiepreneur is filled with resistance on many fronts that we will get into at a later time. 

Focus of this Blog

In short what My blog will focus on is sharing much of what I have learned both through my studies and my personal experiences, my triumphs and failures and what  I consider to be the two main components of successful entrepreneurship.

Component I (MECHANICS)- The Outer game

This is the component of success that  most people are familiar with are the technical in’s and out’s of running a business such as having : A good business plan, a solid costing model in place, great products that stand out among your peers, great marketing strategies, great networking, understanding basic business principles such as  ROI ( Return on investment) and the like, I'm sure you get the point.

Component II ( MINDSET) -The Inner game 

This is the remaining  80% of , which is actually the most important part in both your life as an entrepreneur and your life in general . The inner game is your psychology or mindset and that is what is going to determine the following: How you handle failure and how quickly you can bounce back,  how you deal with difficult clients, how you determine the value of your work, and not feel guilty about charging what it's truly worth,  how you feel about yourself as a business person , how you react to people who do not appreciate your work , how you treat your peers and others, whether you are confident in your work or always trying to hide, whether or not you feel deserving of your success. All these things, if not fine tuned are ultimately are going to bleed into the mechanics of your business and affect your overall ability to earn money through doing what you love.

Think of  mindset  as the soil in which you grow a plant, if it is not fertilized properly, a plant will not grow or reach its full potential. Mechanics is the actual plant.

We will absolutely be discussing some of the MECHANICAL  aspects of the Cookie Business, we will mostly discuss the MINDSET aspects that will prepare you to build a cookie empire if that is what you wish to do, which brings me to the last point of disclosure that I wish to make.

I admit it !

I like baking cookies, I love decorating them.  For me, it’s like therapy and I love the fact that I can play with flour and sugar and have something so beautiful that families share on special occasions. Creating a cookie business has allowed me to discover a talent I never knew I had, to cultivate it and to grow from it.  It helped me get back on my feet financially after a complete holocaust and I continue to run my cookie business and am happy to do it however, life is about growth and I feel myself evolving into a new role.

I must make this confession to you.  My true passion, what keeps me up at night ( in a good way) , what makes me light up like a Christmas tree, is sharing what I have learned with you. So you see, this is a dream for me, and I greatly look forward to serving you in any way that I can.  I look forward to hearing from you.  I will post weekly in the beginning stages and  and as Cookiepreneur evolves and grows, we will have more discussions and I plan to hold conference calls, post videos, and even have live, in person conferences where we can all meet up.

Thank you ladies (And any gentlemen as well) for all of the inspiration you have given me to start these conversations . I will close with my personal philosophy of life.

Persistence is the greatest Key to Success! If you can see it, you can be it! Never, give up ! Never!

Aymee  

p.s If  you have any  general questions or think of a subject you would like me to touch on, please feel free to email me at Cookiepreneur@gmail.com