When I was born, my mother was unmarried and sixteen years old. I was just about two and living with my grandmother and aunt in an apartment they shared when she decided to put me up for adoption. My aunt could not see me being adopted by strangers, so when she married and moved to her new house, I went with her and she and her husband began taking the necessary steps to adopt me. By the time my adoption was legal I was five years old, and my sister was born just a few weeks later.

For a long time we lived the “American Dream”. Dad ran his own plumbing company, Mum stayed at home with us, and weekends were filled with tennis, piano and horseback riding lessons for me and my sister. When Dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 1982, things started to fall apart. I got my first job at a show horse stable, working before and after school, and on weekends. At age 13, I took a job at a woodcarving shop. I met some amazing people, helped teach 65 people a week how to carve, and developed an interest in marketing and advertising. We made all the signs for “The Witches of Eastwick” movie, did work annually for Rosemary Clooney and Clint Eastwood, and once even Steven Tyler of Aerosmith came in! When I left home at the tender age of 17, I rented a room in my boss’s attic, and had no idea the things fate had in store for me.

When the owner’s of the building we were working and living in decided they wanted to tear down our building, they repeatedly raised the rent until we couldn’t afford it anymore. Since we had no money, my boss, his son and I went to live in a Native American teepee in May of 1989.

We finally settled in Carver, Massachusetts in a privately owned campground with its own lake. Every day, we made the trek from Carver to Scituate to set up our “shop” on the porch of the Quarterdeck – a small local shop. We fished for our dinner every night, I studied up on Native Americans and learned beadwork, tanning hides, carved a bow and arrows from an ash tree, and read all about how Native Americans lived. I gave two Girl Scout troops tours of the teepee and explained how they work and some Native American history to them, and got so tan from being outside every day people thought I was a full-blood Native American!

Even though the teepee was quite comfortable with our woodstove, it was somewhat of a relief to move back into a house in November 1989. After we rented a new shop and our lives started to get back to “normal”, I decided to attend Butera School of Art in Boston. While attending school, I met my future husband.

Around 1994, I realized I had no choice but to go digital with my artwork and design skills, so back to school I went, enrolling in a Graphic Design course at a small school in Cambridge. I adapted to digital design quite easily, and was the first in my graduating class to land a job…running the entire design department of a print and copy shop. My job there evolved from merely running the design department to virtually all aspects of running a print and copy shop. I helped make major equipment purchase decisions, maintained all of the Mac, PC and Unix based computers and network, and developed a training program for our new employees.

My husband Lee and I were married in 2000, and bought a house, which led to a couple of job changes and me getting back into the sign business. When our son was born, I stayed home as long as I could, but our economic situation required me to return to the workplace, and Connor ended up in daycare. After being in daycare for about 3 months, Connor began to get sick on a regular basis, each time being worse than the last. He suffered a continuous ear infection for four months that affected his hearing, and developed fevers and bronchialitis every time he caught a cold. I debated whether or not to quit my job for months…the company I worked for treated even it’s best employees as if they were expendable, and Connor and I were both miserable with the whole situation…but, we needed the $100 a week I brought home after daycare and travel expenses.

The last straw was two weeks before Christmas. We had both been sick for more than a week, and I was due to return to work on a Friday. Connor’s bronchialitis wasn’t getting any better even with albuterol nebulizer treatments, so before work that day, I decided to drop by the pediatrician’s office with him. The doctor listened to his breathing and called 911 to report a toddler in respiratory distress! She then had an ambulance come and pick us up and take us not to the emergency room 5 miles away, but to the one 25 miles away because they had a better pediatric emergency room. I called my boss from the back of the ambulance to let him know what was happening, and his reaction was to tell me to take two unpaid weeks off – knowing I couldn’t afford it.

Well, we spent about 13 hours in the E.R., giving Connor oxygen and albuterol treatments every two hours until his breathing improved and his oxygen levels returned to normal. We brought him home and I took the two weeks off. After speaking with my husband, we decided our best decision – even though it was going to kill us financially – was for me to quit my job. The day I was due to return to work I didn’t even give my employers the courtesy of a phone call. I sent them an e-mail stating simply that I felt we would both be better off if I looked elsewhere for employment. I wasn’t rude or angry in the e-mail, even though I had every right to be after the way they had treated me for seven years, but boy did it feel wonderful to click the send button on that one! Connor finally got over his bronchialitis, and hasn’t had anything worse than a slight temperature and the sniffles since, so my husband and I know we made the right decision as far as Connor was concerned.

Even though I had been looking for a way to make an income from home for more than a year prior to quitting my job, I then began to look in earnest – our home and financial well-being depended on it. I had tried several multi-level-marketing opportunities that had given me little to no results, and I really didn’t have time to mess around trying opportunities until I found one that worked. I dove head-first into studying Internet Marketing and starting your own online business, and all I can say is WOW. I swear I spent six months in information overload – trying to figure out what all these people who were so successful were talking about! I attended webinars, downloaded every free e-book I could find, bought marketing systems we couldn’t afford…but my brain couldn’t handle all the information, and I’d be surprised if I retained even a sentence of what I read or watched that entire time…and one day, it just clicked. Suddenly, all the pieces began to fit together like a puzzle, and I haven’t looked back since.

I am now a founding member of the A-List Ladies, who are all working together on the internet and helping others learn the ins-and-outs of starting a business and marketing online. If I can help you in any way, feel free to drop me a line at cheryl@cherylannmarble.com.