About Cathy Mitchell

When I left corporate to start my career as a Stay at Home Mom I had visions of creating organic, non-GMO, home-grown and hand-made baby food while my perfectly behaved infant watched in wonder.

Come to think of it, there was also gingham and sunshine everywhere.

Then I discovered not only is motherhood completely devoid of anything or anyone perfectly behaved, it’s also devoid of any mental stimulation. This spurred me to create a small eBay shop (before Etsy) called “I Can Do It” kids charts and organizational items.

Later on, I tried consulting in the insurance field and later, writing children’s curriculum. The reasons were varied, but they all failed.

Then I heard about this ‘blogging’ thing. If a country girl like Ree Drummond could do it, how hard can it be? In the process of learning how to blog (unsuccessfully) I began tweaking my WordPress site. When I couldn’t find a theme I liked, I would go digging into the code.

Once I delved into CSS, I was hooked. Each experiment led to another – HTML, PHP and all the alphabets.

It was a giant jigsaw puzzle and I was in heaven! This coding thing was the antithesis of cleaning smooshed cheerios off the highchair and listening to Barnie for hour after mind-numbing hour.

When I started helping friends with blogs, I thought I hit the jackpot at $20 per. A year later it was time to go back to work. Or start treating this designing-thing as a real business.

I ordered a dozen or so books on the subject of small business and began studying. I followed every single word of Chris Brogan, Michael Hyatt, Five Minutes for Mom, Desperately Seeking Sanity, Copyblogger, Problogger, Brian Gardner and many others.

I hit the jackpot again when I landed a complete stranger as a client! Yes, she was the mother of a client, but I didn’t know her!

Fast forward 12 years and I’m very happy to report this small business endeavor has finally stuck! Not only is there always something awesome to learn – there is flexibility to raise my kids and an amazing WordPress community.

Of course, I have BIG dreams for this year and the next and the next. Follow along and see what happens!! 🙂

With love,

Cathy Mitchell (& family)

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