This is me in first grade. Circa 1971, full-tilt Waukesha Wisconsin. Picture day was always a big day for me because I wore a patch on my eye and picture day was a patch-free day.
I love to look at this picture and think that this kid has the same brain and the same eyes that are in my head right now.
I like to pull out this pic, too, when I feel like I'm falling behind, that I'm not doing enough. In life. In business. Because looking back, I can say this about first grade Heather:
She's going to grow up to love writing and and art and also creating a little bit of a ruckus.
She'll be monkey bar champ for a hot minute...her athletic career peaking at age 7.
She'll doodle ad campaigns for Hoover vacuums during her art class and find she loves flipping through the ads more than articles in her mom's Good Housekeeping.
She'll find her voice among her eight brothers and sisters. They'll call her Mighty Mouth, which she hated then but loves now.
She'll dream of being a reporter for Rolling Stone and in some twist of fate will end up marrying Bruce Springsteen.
But then at Ohio State, she'll find advertising and design and marketing and well, see ya journalism.
She'll move to Chicago to work on Michigan Avenue.
She will not marry Bruce Springsteen, but will instead marry Patrick Campbell, who she loves to this day...she'll be grateful things didn't work out with Bruce.
She'll not like the ad agency culture so she'll quit and go to grad school...to be a teacher. She'll realize while in front the class teaching Julius Caesar that she hates Shakespeare and can't imagine teaching it year after year. So she'll quit that too.
She'll get a job temping for a real estate company, where she'll eventually become a vice president after a fortuitous tarot card reading on her 26th birthday reveals she'll have a career in real estate.
She'll have two pretty cool kids, the number of which surprises everyone because people think every kid from a big family wants to have a big family (not true!).
She'll get fired for a few jobs (it's that Might Mouth thing), with the last time being the last time that inspires her to start her own agency where she can say anything she wants.
She'll then get a spark of inspiration to start an online course to help entrepreneurs nail their marketing. She'll sit on the idea for a few years.
Then she'll listen to that nudge and launch her online course not once but twice...with plans for a third, fourth, fifth....
And she'll be the happiest and most fulfilled she's ever been. That little kid from Wisconsin. Who knew?
Sometimes we don't think that we've done enough. In life. In our business. But when you look back from the almost beginning, you'll see how far you've come.
I'd love to hear your story from your first grade self. Bonus points for including a pic.
I'm rooting for you!
xo, Heather
