Ever since I was two years old, I knew I wanted to be a singer.
But somewhere between childhood and adulthood, a lot of us learn to trade the things we dream about for the things that seem practical.
I grew up with a strong military influence. Both of my parents worked in the medical field, and I admired them tremendously. Naturally, for a while I thought I would follow in their footsteps and join the military too.
But the closer I got to actually being shipped off to boot camp, the louder this little voice inside me became. It was a wonderful path for many people, but deep down, I knew it wasn’t mine.
So there I was in college, studying my backup plan, biotechnology, seemingly on my way toward the kind of “degreed and stable” life we’re taught to want.
And then, much to the surprise of pretty much my entire family, I dropped out.
Something kept tugging at me, telling me this wasn’t my path.
I joined a band and dove headfirst into experiencing life and getting to know myself outside of who I thought I was supposed to be. I explored every creative avenue that interested me and, for the first time, really gave myself permission to let my creative inclinations flourish and lead me wherever they wanted to go.
If I wasn’t singing, I was in Photoshop designing show flyers for myself and my various bands. This was also the MySpace era, and I became fascinated with the idea that I could use the internet to shape how I presented myself as an artist.
I would stay up until the wee hours of the morning “Google schooling” myself in HTML and CSS, learning enough code to completely customize my profile and make my little corner of the internet feel like me.
Without realizing it, while I was pursuing one creative dream, I was developing an entirely new creative skill set.
During this sabbatical from school, I auditioned for everything from American Idol and The Voice to Las Vegas shows, cover bands, and anything else that might give me a way in. I was singing more than ever, but I still wasn’t quite fulfilled, and I definitely wasn’t making the kind of money I needed to build a life.
As the years went on and the setbacks and “no’s” started to pile up, the dream of making singing my actual career started to feel more and more impossible.
Eventually, I reached a point where I stopped believing it was going to happen.
Deflated and ready to accept that music simply wasn’t going to be my career, I let the dream go.
I went back to school, this time for another backup plan: web & graphic design.
I figured if I couldn’t make a career out of my first love, music, maybe I could build one around this new love I had discovered during the MySpace era: creating things online through code, graphics, and design.
And then the recession hit.
While I was waiting tables to put myself through school, my husband and I lived in a tourist town, and seemingly overnight, the income that had been enough to sustain us disappeared.
We were both let go from our jobs around the same time, and to make matters worse, a loan modification company had just scammed us out of the last of our savings while we were desperately trying to save our house from foreclosure.
We eventually lost the house, and the whole experience brought us to our knees.
It was sink or swim time.
So we swam.
My husband went out and sold a website before I technically even knew how to build one.
I didn’t even own the computer I needed to build it on yet.
But we had a client. We needed the money. So we figured it out.
I stayed after school to build the site with my teacher’s help, using the computers in the school library.
That became the beginning of our web development business.
During that period, we both dove heavily into personal development. We were hanging on for dear life and diving headfirst into books, mindset work, and anything that could help us believe we were capable of turning things around.
And slowly, we did.
The mindset, resilience, resourcefulness, and willingness to figure things out that were forged during one of the hardest periods of our lives began to pay off.
That web development business we had started as a desperate lifeline grew into a six-figure company in just two years.
And I’ll never forget sitting in the office space that our once-fledgling little company could now afford to rent, looking around at everything we had built from essentially nothing.
And that’s when it hit me:
If I could do all of this for my “backup plan,” what could happen if I gave my actual dream this much of me?
We hadn’t known how to build a company when we started. I hadn’t even known how to build that first website when my husband sold it.
We figured it out because we had decided we had to.
For years, I had treated music differently.
I thought I needed someone to choose me.
A record label. A television show. The right audition. The right opportunity.
Some gatekeeper who would finally open the door and make my dream a legitimate career.
But building that business had taught me something much bigger:
I didn’t have to wait to be chosen.
I could build the door myself.
For the first time, I had the courage to find out what would happen if I approached my childhood dream with the same determination I had given my survival.
So we sold the web development business, and I went all in on music.
That decision opened up an entirely different life for me.
With the sale of the web development business, I had three months to “figure it out,” so I began working professionally as a session vocalist, singing for video games, movies, television, animated films, and more.
Over the years, I’ve recorded thousands of songs and built a career completely outside of the traditional music-industry path. I’ve had my voice and music show up in some of the coolest places I could never have predicted.
I started gaining so much business that I eventually needed to create a vocal house with other singers to help me complete the work.
And eventually, I found myself with my SECOND six-figure business.
Except this time, I had built it with my voice.
As cool as this all was, I knew it wasn’t the finish line.
I had learned so much along the way and felt a deep desire to put those lessons into song: the power of perseverance, mindset, self-belief, and intentionally creating a life you love.
So I started creating my own music with a very specific purpose.
I call what I make High Vibe Soul Pop.
Music built around affirmations, personal growth, self-belief, and becoming the person capable of creating the life you actually want.
Today, I think of myself as an INNERtainer.
Entertainment is the vehicle, but the INNER work is the point.
Whether I’m making a song, speaking on a stage, or helping my community turn their dreams into action through tools, guidance, and accountability, the thread running through all of it is the same:
Helping people get clear on the life they actually want, believe that more is possible for them, and then take action toward creating it.
My life has taught me that the dreams we have as children don’t necessarily disappear when we grow up.
Sometimes they just get buried underneath practicality, expectations, fear, and all the evidence we collect about why they probably won’t work.