Hello

I am originally from Billings Montana but found my way to the DC area by way of the military. I come from a long line of small business owners, boot-strappers, and DIY'ers. Everyone in my immediate family is either currently an owner of a small business or one at some point owned one. As you follow the branches of my family, the list of small business owners gets even longer. It’s safe to say that small business runs through my veins. I know the struggles, I know the stress, and most importantly, I know what is at stake.

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While I have witnessed all this second-hand with my family’s businesses, I didn’t truly “get it” until I tried creating something of my own. Immediately after graduating from my undergraduate Business Administration program, I started my own business. I decided that it would be the best idea to turn my hobby into a business. Do you know the adage, “If you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life?” I loved sewing clothing for my daughters and had made a few cloth diapers for them and they seemed to be pretty good, so that’s what I did. Just me in my basement sewing cloth diapers. No written business plans. No vision for the future. I just made a website, social media account, and ran with it. To my surprise it took off like a rocket. I was so busy I was up late filling orders, answering emails, planning social media posts, figuring out my next release of products. You’d think that I would have been ecstatic, but truthfully, I hated it. I was sucker punched with how hard it was. I took something I did for fun and monetized it. For me, that sucked every ounce of joy out of it. It did make me happy that people liked what I had created, but in my heart, I knew this was not where I belonged. So, when our orders for Germany came down, I scrapped my business, moved abroad, and went back to the drawing board.

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At the encouragement of my husband, I applied to go back to school. I flipped back and forth between getting an MBA and going for something else. After a lot of thought, it dawned on me that the part about business ownership I knew the least about was the financial side. I thought back to the first year I did my taxes as a business owner, and how absolutely terrified I was because I had no clue what I was doing. The social media groups I had joined to help guide me as I was getting started out was filled to the brim with people just like me. They were asking questions about where to start, how taxes work, and how to manage their businesses’ books. Right then and there I decided on a master’s in accounting. I saw an opportunity where I could help.

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That first semester, the lightbulbs really started turning on for me. I started to gain my purpose. I found my niche. I immediately started sharing what I learned with my friends who had homebased businesses. Knowing I was helping in a meaningful way sealed the deal for me. This was it! But after being a stay-at-home mom for so many years, I knew getting back into the workforce was going to be a challenge, even if the last few years were spent going to college. In my senior year of my master’s program, I stumbled upon the FINRA Foundation Military Spouse Fellowship Program. A lot of my accounting knowledge overlapped with what the program covered so I applied. In 2019 I was one year from graduating, I was very pregnant with my last child, I lived abroad, and was about to embark on my journey as a FINRA Foundation Military Spouse Fellow. It was chaos, but in the best way. I networked, something I had never done before. I met so many incredible and motivated women. They helped me overcome that initial anxiety of getting back into the workforce. They planted the seeds of confidence I needed to grow into who I am today. Looking at you Andia and Heather!

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Even before I had graduated both my master’s degree and fellowship program, a job opportunity too perfect to pass up just sort of fell into my lap. I now had professional references so I went for it. I started working as a bookkeeper for a company that worked closely with military and veteran owned small businesses and I felt at home. I wrapped up my experience hours for the fellowship program working there and became an Accredited Financial Counselor. I applied my knowledge and did everything I could to be the best bookkeeper I could be for my clients. I was able to develop a strong bond with so many of them that was build on a foundation of trust. I get a little choked up thinking about it actually. They trusted ME. They had faith in ME and my abilities. They called me with questions I actually knew the answers to. I absolutely flourished in this position, but as it goes with those who have the pull to create something of their own, I knew this was my starting point. Someday I was going to something that was MINE.

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Sometimes in life bad or unexpected things happen that throw us off balance. Things that force us to recalculate our routes. A crossroads if you will. Circumstance put me in front of a crossroads, and I could either choose to stay on my current route that was safe but the price was to betray a bit of who I was. The other route was scary, unknown, uncharted, and without safety nets. Unwilling to betray myself, I decided to give Fear the middle finger and throw all the chips down to bet on myself. H6 was born.