Our Entrepreneurship Journey So Far

Fresh out of a Utah high school at the age of 18, I wanted to travel, serve my country, and go to college.

 

Except 7 days after enlisting I found out I was pregnant with our eldest son, Randy. (LOL and yes the Navy did even give me a pregnancy test, it was just too early to tell)

I was scheduled to head to basic training a week before my baby’s due date in June 2009.

 

Needless to say, I didn’t end up in the military afterall and received a general discharge.

 

Chase became a father on Father’s Day 2009. I ended up getting a job as a Data Entry Clerk for the IRS after getting fired by my Mormon boss for getting pregnant before marriage lol.

 

It was then a year later in Oct 2009 when I started my journey into hospitality, sales, and marketing after moving to Las Vegas working for companies like MGM Resorts International (MGM Grand & Monte Carlo now known as Park MGM), JC Resorts, and Advantage Sales & Marketing.

 

In 2011 we had our second child Aiden. And Chase ended up working for his dad in the early days of his new mobile app agency launch program and getting his first taste of entrepreneurship.

 

In 2014 I got my first taste of entrepreneurship when my husband and I started our first business together, a web development agency.

 

We designed and programmed our websites from scratch using HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP.

 

Around that time, we also decided to put out little indie short films and skits on YouTube with some college friends from the Art Institute where we attended from 2013-2014 to learn Game Art & Design.

 

We thought we were skilling ourselves up to become Game Developers it was fun though! Chase Snow ended up making like 30 games!

 

In 2016 I started diving into Social Media Management and organic content strategy and began helping some local businesses with getting their businesses onto social media.

 

By the end of 2016 we launched our first Ecommerce store and started dabbling into Facebook ads where we helped local businesses expand their lead generation efforts.

 

Around this time Monte Carlo was undergoing their remodel and rebrand to Park MGM and I knew what was coming. Layoffs.

I started looking for jobs all over Vegas and even in Orange County CA. I went through DOZENS of interviews at several hotels, casinos, & resorts… but to my dismay I wasn’t chosen dozens of times over and over.

 

It shook my confidence to the core. I was always such a great hard worker, who gave it my all, was always a team player and Innovative.. but just like it was when I was a kid in school I was never “in the clique”.

I wasn’t friends with the “right people” and despite my skills and track record, others always got squeezed in..

 

I’m sure I also had a little bit of an ego around then…. but still I felt I truly deserved plenty of the jobs I applied for but never got chosen for. I began feeling so much resentment towards the company I had given 7 years of my life.

 

I took it as a sign that I was meant to take the severance pay I was offered by Monte Carlo and move back to Utah.. so that’s what we decided to do.

 

By Nov 2017 I returned to the IRS and my husband just 3 months after did as well, where we worked in the business tax division helping business owners and their representatives with their payroll, unemployment, and income taxes.

 

I decided though when starting that job that I didn’t want to overachieve or overdeliver or make real friends with anyone.. I just wanted to show up, make my money, then go home.

 

I did good at my job, still was one of the best performers with amazing reviews and numbers.. but I didn’t really try too much or put much care into it.

 

I was starting to get nice and comfy in my reliable job though. It paid the bills, it had benefits, and gave us a comfortable pathway to continue growing our family.

 

We decided we were going to try to have another baby and it didn’t take too long, we welcomed our third baby, our daughter Akira on Halloween 2018.

 

With my other two babies I had to go back to work 2 weeks after having them. At least now I could “borrow leave” to take extra time off with my baby girl. I planned on 2 months.

 

At this time, we also decided to start a photography business while I was on maternity. Then the longest government shutdown happened and I luckily got an extra month with her due to it. I went back to work in January 2019.

 

By May 2019 we finally were planning on becoming homeowners… we put an offer down on a house. They accepted our offer! We were so excited and began making our plans for how we were going to fix the place up and sitting down to sign the paperwork.

 

I ended up signing every paper… but something didn’t feel quite right. I talked to Chase about it. He agreed. Something told us to back out of this deal and that we shouldn’t buy a home right then.

We couldn’t explain why it didn’t feel right, but we figured with time it would become clear.

 

We soon found out we were expecting our 4th child, our youngest son Jon.

 

During our time working at the IRS from 2017-2020, we learned that most business owners are totally winging it and many are clueless when it came to running their business.

 

We could see they needed help.. but it also proved to us that we could run a business full-time and we didn’t need a job.

 

The straw that finally pushed me into getting so sick of working a job was getting a new bitch of a manager. She treated me like a child. She constantly micromanaged me. I just couldn’t stand how it felt being around her. I was always civil but it made me completely despise going to work.

 

I was 8 months pregnant with my absolute hardest pregnancy to date and she constantly criticized me and my authorized and valid use of FMLA.

 

I vowed to myself that once I went on maternity leave, I wouldn’t ever go back. and just weeks before the end of 2019 we decided to start a digital marketing agency alongside my brother Brycen, and January 22, 2020 was my last day of work at a day job.

 

Our baby boy Jon was born on Valentine’s Day 2020 … then COVID happened! We thought there’s no way they’ll shut everything down, just to be proven wrong the next day.

 

We had no idea how our new business was going to thrive.

It was an uphill battle constantly.. we worked for 7 months without being profitable (since we were having to fund our business and expenses with our own money) but we went into debt, maxed out our credit, and stayed committed.

 

It was July when we finally got our first distribution of $400 each lol

Then we signed our biggest client to date.

 

We finally got our passports that we had applied for back before all the shutdowns happened during to the pandemic but finally 3 of our passports arrived. At this point, we began playing with the idea of moving to Cabo San Lucas Mexico

 

By August we decided to move, started selling all of our furniture and excess things.. and on Sep 16, 2020 on Mexico’s Independence Day we crossed the border!

 

It wasn’t until I was in Mexico for 4 days until I finally officially QUIT my job as they were expecting me back by the 9 month postpartum mark. Instead I gave my resignation letter.

 

We became Digital Nomads! We then worked and ran the marketing agency with my brother who did sales, while I did the marketing & client success, and Chase did the systems..

 

We just lost 2 clients and were struggling to sign more new ones (back down to 3) until we decided to sell some strategy sessions which got us enough capital to sign into the Agency Lab coaching program (7 Figure Agency at the time)

We spent ALL the money we had left, our last dollars and put it all on the line to learn from a group of several people who had previously done what we were trying to accomplish.

 

Soon after we upgraded to their next level program RISE Mastermind where we have now attended several mastermind workshops and events with them. This made a huge shift in our ability to sign new clients and fulfill well.

We began getting great results for our existing clients and things were on the upward trend until iOS14

After the iOS14 update happened we ended up jumping ship on Facebook ads and moved into learning Google.

 

At this time is when Chase and I swapped roles and it made all the difference. Now I focused on Systems & Operations while Chase focused on the Marketing.

 

We ended up scaling our agency in our tiny niche and built up an effective saas product (HL Snapshot) that solved many of their business, sales, & marketing systems. That’s where all the passion started to lie. Sure I could generate leads… but I really wanted to begin to focus hard-core on building a good brand and systems that actually nurtured prospects through the buyer’s journey until they were ready to convert..

 

Then to find ways to overdeliver on the fulfillment and experience so that the buyers then wanted to send their referrals back!

 

After working with many other agency owners and coaches we realized that we had built so many skills over the years that put us in quite a unique position to help them do this exact thing as well.

 

Now with nearly two decades of experience between us, we’re poised to provide a new unique wave of systemizing businesses.

 

Chase and I approached Brycen about potentially pivoting niches since when we decided to step up our content game it wasn’t SMP artists oaying attention to us… it was agency owners, coaches, and consultants primarily. Brycen said he wanted to continue working with the niche we were in.. but Chase and I ultimately decided we wanted to pivot and launch a new systems consulting firm.

 

So that’s what we did. We took another leap. We left the agency we had been building and scaled for more than two years and decided to put it all on the line again.. but this time bet on ourselves and jump in the driver’s seat of our new journey.

 

Here we are today, continuing to build our skills, to continue building our team, to create our future, but most importantly to enjoy each and every day & how far we’ve come and be grateful to wake up each day with the opportunity to continue pressing forward.