Sunday, December 30, 2007

Rediscovering my blog almost 5 years later!

This is bizarre! I was posting a comment on someone else's blog earlier today and had to login to google to post. I decided I would start a blogger blog, so I typed in julieteaston and it said that name was already taken on blogspot. Who could have taken my name?? Well, when I typed the url into my browser window, I started reading and was like wow this sounds familiar, and soon rediscovered a blog that I had started almost five years ago with only one post! I had totally forgotten about it! So I am going to try to resume where I left off.

It is really ironic because my first post was written when my former business was at its height - between $60-75,000 per month in revenues. I was going to conferences (at least once a month) and had a staff of 5 full-time and 7 part-time employees. The funny thing is the entire reason I created that business was to fund a nonprofit program to teach entrepreneurship to kids. I got so busy with the business that I never got around to creating the nonprofit program. The first post on this blog was written about what I was really wanting to do, but not doing - yet!

By March of that year, things were starting to go downhill with my company. I had too much overhead (esp. payroll), too many projects in development (none quite ready to launch), & my main source of revenue almost stopped overnight - not a good combo. Long story short, I tried to hold on for almost a year after that, but the business tanked and with $150,000+ in debt and no more income, I had to declare the big B. That was a very humbling experience!

A lot has happened in my life since then, including getting divorced & remarried. I kept the same last name as my kids, Easton, to make their lives easier (plus do you know what a pain it is to change your last name??) I finished my graduate degree and have been doing volunteer work & serving on the the board for Athens-Clarke County Family Connection/Communities In Schools of Athens - http://athensconnection.org/.

I am now finally ready to launch my dream - eBiz4Youth, a nonprofit program for at-risk youth. The website is not up yet, but I will post here when it is.

My next post should be sooner than 5 years from now!!

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