Happy anniversary to me!

This spring, I’m celebrating the 14th anniversary of my business, Garrett Public Relations.

As I celebrate another year of being self-employed, I look back on the years since I launched my business. Yes, the business climate has changed and PR is constantly changing, but I still get so excited whenever I remember that I work for myself!

I grew up in a household where neither parent went to work at an office or company every day. It never dawned on me how much this had affected my own view of the work world until the past few years. I started to wonder, where did my drive to work for myself come from?

My parents were both entrepreneurs, launching their own businesses. My father was well-known in our city for having his own produce business that he ran for 40+ years. Both my parents and all four of us kids worked there. That’s where my early lessons in customer service came from (and my ability to add without a calculator!). In addition to working at the market and taking of customers, I used to love to hang out with my parents in the evenings and help with the accounting side of things, counting money and adding up checks to be deposited. Later, my mother turned her love of antiques into a business, even opening a shop for a while, and she still buys and sells antiques all these years later.

This spirit of entrepreneurship was ingrained in me without me even realizing it. Even with all the headaches that come with being one’s own boss—the technology issues, the accounting challenges, the sales and marketing outreach, the stress of trying to take a vacation—there’s just something about hanging out your own shingle. The freedom that comes with that and the pride in knowing that you are controlling your own fate are priceless. I have to thank my mom and dad for teaching me these lessons. The interesting part is that I didn’t even know I was learning anything….it was just part of life at our house.

I wonder now what my kids will learn, as they watch their mom run her own business. I need to find ways to integrate them into the business so they get a sense of what it’s like. Maybe they’ll catch the entrepreneurial bug just like I did.