As an expectant mother, there’s nothing like having your first ultrasound and getting a glimpse of your baby. However, the experience can be shocking when, instead of glimpsing one baby, you glimpse two. That’s what happened to Amy. Before that day she was happily, or so she thought, working for an email marketing company. The job paid well and she was respected by her peers.
But receiving the news she was having twins turned out to be a catalyst for starting her own business. She knew she needed her schedule to be extremely flexible and she wanted to be able to be home with her children. So she turned to her real passion – interior design.
Amy was scared to make the change and compared it to jumping into an abyss.
Ultimately, she understood she had to trust herself and her instincts and just do it.
Although she didn’t have a degree in interior design, Amy had a degree in business and communications and knew all she needed to to run a successful business. Her big break came when a close friend recommended Amy to decorate her colleague’s bachelor pad. Carrying her two month old twins with her, she completed the project in only 3 weeks, AND with a broken back! The client absolutely loved it.
Now that her feet were officially wet, and her roster of clients steadily building, she decided to get her interior design degree and went to the Heritage School of Interior Design, taking evening and weekend classes. As is Amy’s fashion, she completed a two year degree in only 4 months and began the slow transition out of marketing and into designing full time.
At the beginning there was a lot of uncertainty, a lot of hard days, and a lot of mistakes made.
Amy built her business out of her home for the first 5 years and then, once she had proven to herself she could be successful with her designs, she rented a studio space in Portland’s trendy Pearl district. Once her studio doors opened, business exploded and has been steady ever since.
In 9 years of running her business, Amy’s biggest triumph came when she won a contract to design the interiors of a 10,000 sq. ft. custom home and beat out two other designers. She learned she was chosen not because of her portfolio or fancy downtown studio, but because she formed an instant connection with the builder and homeowners before the project began.
Her biggest regret? Not walking away from a project where the client was overbearing and wouldn’t listen to a thing Amy said.
I asked her for three lessons from her journey:
- Understand your exit strategy. Be ready to fail often, before you succeed.
- Get support from your family. No man is an island. If you don’t have a support system, don’t do it.
- Do what you enjoy and follow your passion.
Visit Amy’s website: amytroute.com.
Have you ever faced the decision to change career paths? How do you make the choice to pursue your passion and start from scratch? Share your journey on my Facebook or tweet me @PamDidner!
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