Why am I here?

I wanted to take it a step back this week and talk simply about why I am here. Why do I care about the things that I do? Why should you care about the things that I write? This blog is much longer than most I plan to release, but I felt it necessary to give some context to my story.

Let’s start in 2018 - after working in social work or senior care in some capacity for about 8 years I started to seriously burn out. My clients were dying in sets of threes (IYKYK), and my on call phone was ringing non-stop day and night. I came to the painful realization that social work simply wasn’t going to provide me the type of future I was hoping for and that while its an incredibly worthy cause, I simply could not continue down that career path for my health and that of my family.

My dream was to somehow break into the tech industry - I knew the money was there but doubted with my background that would happen. I leveraged my client relationship skills that I had obtained however, and applied to hundreds of roles as a BDR. I interviewed with Acklen Avenue in early 2019, and was told that I would be very bored, but that they would keep my resume on hand and call me eventually if a role more suited to my skill set arose. Yeah right. Companies never call you back later.

Clean Juice Corporate Training 2019

In my desperation to walk away from social work, I took a job helping some precious family friends open their cluster of organic juice bars in Nashville and taught Pure Barre on the side. I was able to help them build out & lead their teams, market their brand & launch their brick and mortar locations with record shattering sales. It was fast paced, exhausting, albeit exhilarating launching something new. A seed was planted in my spirit. I learned here I loved finding areas for opportunity and optimization, ways to reduce costs without compromising quality & it was also the beginning of my leadership journey.

Also during this time, my husband was studying for his MBA and set to launch a security tech business of his own upon graduation. I was able to walk through the business building process with him from ideation to execution and it was incredibly exciting. He was solving real world issues for real people, having smart conversations with even smarter individuals. Everyone in this day and age calls themself an entrepreneur, but we were really doing it. We built business plans, financial forecasts, pitch decks - you name it. We made incredible lifestyle and financial sacrifices during this time, which I can get more into later but that’s the non-sexy part of entrepreneurship that people don’t often talk about. I am eternally grateful for this practical experience we had together and it truly helped build out my foundation of business acumen.

Shockingly, I got a call about six months after my initial interview with Acklen. In a bittersweet transition I left my beloved juice bar and I officially launched into the tech space in September of 2019 as a BDR, or more lovingly - “New Business Coordinator”. I was immersed into training on agile methodologies, sat in on calls with Fortune 500s, listened to start-ups share their pain points & navigated how Acklen could best come alongside these companies as a partner. I learned about programming languages and API integrations and cloud services. And most dear to my heart, how to provide value to our clients throughout the longevity of our relationship. I began to understand more and more key business objectives from different organizations which all at the bottom line come down to this: obtaining the highest value possible, as expeditiously as possible & as close to budget as possible. I absolutely loved my early days at Acklen. I woke up every day excited to learn something new and have more interesting conversations. I have countless notebooks where I scribbled everything everyone ever said to me.

Around this time, my husband and I decided that maybe it was time to think about expanding our family. We tried for a baby for about nine months only to realize that maybe it just wasn’t in the cards for us. We were finally coming to peace with this realization and then one Tuesday, April 14, 2020, I took a test at lunch and there were two pink lines. We were thrilled, terrified, excited, nervous…you name it.

The world had just shut down due to Covid-19 and so there were so many unknowns we were walking into as new parents. It was then that my journey as a working mother began.

I had no clue the dichotomy that would arise as I began to navigate what our life would look like once our baby was born. I was a part of a fairly traditional and conservative upbringing where it was completely unheard of that a mother would continue to work following having children, but for our family, I knew this wasn’t going to be an option. Not only did I want to keep working. I needed to keep working. I labored in prayer for months over what this would look like for our family as we navigated childcare, juggling responsibilities etc. I knew that for me, I still desired to maintain the more traditional female role of caretaker & nurturer and had no clue how I would do both. I’ve since navigated how to utilize systems in our home that optimize this for me. I’m not perfect at it all the time, but it’s definitely a jumping off point. Mothers have to figure out what works best for their family, and it might not be what works best for mine, and that’s ok! I will share these systems at some point in the future.

Winter 2021

I had my daughter in January of 2021, had an absolutely blissful maternity leave and came back to Acklen promoted into a new role managing our accounts for our staff augmentation line of business. My husband and I had the most wonderful babysitters who would support us during the week while still allowing me to be engaged with my daughter. My career was advancing and I was able to handle more tactical day to day issues operationally as well as client facing.

As an incredible surprise, when my daughter was 10 months old, I became pregnant with my second child and tried to quit working at Acklen and work at a small family business. Our staff augmentation offering was growing rapidly and I simply did not have the capacity to handle it. I was truly afraid that having two children would impact my contributions as an employee and honestly, I was resigning because I felt I was not being fair to my employer because I was a mother. I’ve come a long way since then & now know what incredible assets mothers are to organizations! I was convinced to stay and asked to give it 3 more months and see if something shifted. It did.

Acklen Avenue Sales Strategy 2022

8 weeks into my pregnancy with my second, Acklen hired someone new to exclusively run the staff augmentation line of business with me. He had built out similar organizations in the past and had ambitious goals for our offering. I was terrified he would think less of me if I revealed my pregnancy, so I hid it until almost 30 weeks. Through morning sickness and fatigue, our team built out an operation that recognized 400% YOY growth. Our headcount had almost tripled & we moved fast and furious. It was chaotic and scrappy and once again I felt that glimmer of entrepreneurship. My boss made me feel incredibly confident to make quick decisions, believed in my knowledge and experience & allowed me to execute quickly on our goals. I pray everyone has a boss like this at some point in their career!

I was privileged enough to leave on my second maternity leave in the fall of 2022 and 12 weeks later, walked back into yet another promotion - this time to Director of Customer Success, launching a new division within our company focusing solely on providing customer value & ensuring our contracts were hitting renewals. My newfound confidence in operations & execution found the prior year, and my confidence in my role as a second time mother has served me well this time around. Additionally, almost my entire team is young parents & we work incredibly well with one another. One of the main reasons I believe we are so collaborative is because we have clearly defined OKRs. We use an entrepreneurial operating system to keep us on track and accountable in our functions and it helps move the needle. I’m a big proponent of having well thought out quarterly goals and metrics that can support success.

I wanted you to have a more detailed and holistic view of my journey over the past decade that has lead me to where I’m currently at. I deeply care about my role as a mother, a wife, a friend & also a colleague. I love finding gaps in systems and problem solving to optimize new processes. I love serving customers well & providing value to them along their journey. I love helping companies hash out their parental leave policies to best serve their teams. I love connecting with and mentoring other mothers on their career journey. I am passionate about leadership in the workplace, intrepreneurship & entrepreneurship. I pray that every interaction I make in the workplace and out of it I am able to make impact with integrity. And that is how this site was born.

Acklen Avenue All Hands 2022

Coffee with my girl before work 2023