On June 17th, I was one of almost 300 staff at a Children’s Treatment Centre who received notice that our jobs were being eliminated in 12 weeks due to the Provincial government’s funding cuts. It was there in that moment, whether or not I recognized it, that I began to call on my GRIT. Through many blessings that I will describe I was able to make it here today to share with you the launch of the Gritty Guru Company.
The first of many blessings was my monthly dinner date with my good friend, Joyful Janis, scheduled for June 21st. Through our conversations, laughter and shared love of dreaming out loud, the tiny seed of starting a business was planted. The blessings continued and four days later, I was having tea with Amanda Garrett , a wonderful woman who creates my custom dresses. She was sharing with me a good read that she had just finished and suggested I read it too: Jen Sincero’s “You are a Badass at Making Money: Mastering the Mindset of Wealth”. Amanda had no idea what was going on at my work place but had said that it was a great read for aspiring entrepreneurs. I hadn’t heard of the book, but I finished it in just a couple of weeks and then I decided at that moment to start a consulting business based on the lists and letters Jen outlined!
So, what were the next steps? I asked my friends, Lisa and Laura of the Oil Girls Canada to be my mentors and that’s when the cascade of resources, opportunities as well as blessings really began to flow!
Lisa and Laura told me about web.com and strongly encouraged me to develop a persona for my adventures with social media. Through that conversation, the inspiration of Gritty Gurus was developed. Lisa and Laura also introduced me to Rebecca Gamble, the best Bookkeeper ever, who then introduced me to a fantastic legal resource called Legal Shield for small business owners.
On July 24th, I registered the Gritty Guru Company and purchased www.growmygrit.com as well as www.growmygrit.ca because I’m a proud Canadian! I somehow managed to buy the former from web.com and the latter from GoDaddy. As a testament to their business model, I got a call from Amazing Ashley at web.com a few days after I purchased my domain name and that’s when I decided to choose them instead of GoDaddy to design my site for me. Remarkable Russell at web.com has been an incredible Project Manager/Design Lead and his support is invaluable.
In the two months after registering my business, my friend Connected Cathy told me about the seminal book “Grit: The Power and Passion of Perseverance” by Angela Duckworth. Then, my friend from elementary school, Literary Lesley, introduced me to “Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change” by William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick. These books gave me many ideas on how to facilitate conversations in a way that will help other people know their GRIT, grow their GRIT and show their GRIT.
On August 19th, things came around full circle when I started talks about a possible consulting contract with the same organization that would be eliminating my job in early September. My last day as a full-time employee there fell on a Friday and my first day as an Independent Contractor there was the following Monday. Who saw any of this coming???
Before I knew it, October arrived! With the final stages of my plan coming together, I asked my Bestie, Sandra-Jean, about ways to make the vision of my company’s logo a reality. Thanks to her boundless creativity, she designed my outstanding logo. Last, but certainly not least I hired Catherine (Bruce) Flanigan as my Social Media Manager.
Now it’s October 31st and it’s Launch Day for www.growmygrit.com
