Untapped Potential was born!

As I reflect on the first 5 months of owning my own business I couldn’t help but feel it deserved its own blog post.

So let’s get down to the story behind creating Untapped Potential. If you’ve read my first blog post, then you probably remember me mentioning that I’ve always had many different creative bones in my body. It quite honestly isn’t just my bones, it’s my blood! HAHA OKAY OKAY, I’ll stop this body analogy now. But for real, it is in my blood and I owe that to my parents. My parents are incredibly creative, handy, hardworking, frugal, problem-solving individuals. They may not have worked glamorous jobs or ever thought to be entrepreneurs, but they were always creative and made things work so their life could be beautiful and comfortable.

For example, my dad is what most people call a “jack of all trades”. I grew up knowing I could always ask “hey dad can you help me with ______?” and he always figured out a way to build it, fix it, or make it happen. To this day, this is one of the things I appreciate most about him. He may get tired of every family member asking him to fix everything, but dang, we would be lost without his help and it’s much appreciated.

Moving onto my mom, a woman who let me be creative and never shied me away from it because she is uber-creative herself! In her lifetime she has designed her own stained glass works of art, oil-painted tons of pieces that my grandma still holds onto, altered/sewn her own clothing if it needed a change, been a wedding florist (mine included), and many more things.

On top of those talents, she is the person who taught me my thrifting ways! I kid you not, I was taken out to the thrift stores about a week after I was born. My mom, grandma, and aunt brought me along on their weekly shopping nights where I learned how to be a super thrifter and clearance rack all-star!

(Pictured: my aunt holding onto me and my grandma.)

So even though I may not have had parents encouraging me to become an entrepreneur, since they didn’t live entrepreneurial lives, I instead had parents laying the foundation for me to be successful without them even realizing it. I witnessed hard work and smart financial decisions from them and that’s something I’ll forever be thankful for. I look at everything I have experienced thus far in my 25 long years of life as building-blocks in the foundation of what’s to come.

Now how does all of that play into why Untapped Potential started you may ask? Well, after the whole “getting laid off thing” happened I took some time to reflect on my “what now”. During this reflection, I was confident that I wanted my next job to be creative. I wanted to do something that excited me more than my last job, and I wanted to challenge myself in ways I never imagined I would. Lastly, I wanted to do something that felt entirely like ME.

All throughout my life I was known as a great thrifter. So much so, that many friends would ask me if I’d take them thrifting with me and “teach them my ways”. I would also have people constantly picking my brain about what to do with decor in their house when I came over. Or they would be in my home and say “wow I love the way you decorate!” or “no way, you DIYed this…how?”. So with all of these stars aligning around me, it just felt natural to follow what friends/family had been telling me all these years, to create a business that encompassed all of the above.

and…UNTAPPED POTENTIAL WAS BORN! Well…not immediately. Let’s remember that I went to college for Graphic Design. So starting a business meant a lot more to me than just blindly going in. I wanted to make sure that:
1) I had a great name that made sense for what it would currently be and what it could be in the future.
2) There was a business model/plan for what I wanted it to consist of and how I would execute that.
3) I created a cohesive brand for it consisting of the main logo, secondary logo, color palette, sales tags, social media look/feel, etc.

I had a blast being able to spend time creating this for myself. Previously, much of my design experience had been creating for other people so finally being able to make a brand for myself was invigorating. I am incredibly proud of what I designed for Untapped Potential.

Fast forward 5 months from the moment I launched my business and I’m sitting here able to tell you that I am happy. I am so so happy I took the leap to do this. Not only am I happy, but I am also proud of myself. The personal growth that I experienced in 2020 is immeasurable compared to previous moments in my life. Now, has everything gone exactly how I envisioned it to go? NO WAY, I am learning from everything and finding amazing insight with every mistake made. I’d say that’s a huge win! I put myself out there when I was very vulnerable, I committed and made Untapped Potential an LLC, and I have actual clients and followers that care about what I’m able to create. These are the things that I am holding onto as a drive forward with this business.

Everyone’s journey to finding their “what now” is different. I want to thank you for reading a little about my journey and how I got to this point.