01 | My Story on How I Stumbled Upon Website Design and Branding and Am Now a Showit Designer
01 | My Story on How I Stumbled Upon Website Design and Branding and Am Now a Showit Designer – Brand Me Gorgeous | Showit Website Designer, Canva Creator, Honeybook Educator & Brand Business Coach
Welcome, welcome to my very first episode and my very first podcast. I’m Mindy, a designer who builds websites and brands. I’m a certified Showit design partner who helps brands get a website that alines with their brand goals and growth.
Going back to my high school years, I took Auto Body and painted cars.
It’s probably a shocker, but it’s what I took and wanted to do. I am the kind of person who really loves seeing something that has a before and after, and Auto Body fits that mold for me. Another reason I went into the auto body field is because of my father, who did auto mechanics and auto body work. He passed away in 1995. I was around. 13 years old. I just thought it would be really neat, and I thought it would be something that he’d be proud of me for. So I took that, and then I decided that it was not something I wanted to do when that was all done. It was very tough, very, very tough being the only female.
Heading on after high school to my college years, I went to school for several things, such as medical, coding, billing, and human resources management, and I even went for design and photography. ( I forgot to mention this in the episode, but I will do a whole episode on this soon)
After college, I decided to do something that would forever change my life, and this is when things started to fall into place.
See, my husband has always been in the medical field, and he just kept getting laid off, so it became time to do something about it and think outside the box.
So, what we did was we came to Florida, and we just went on vacation and took the kids. And that’s when it all clicked; we loved Florida; it was the air, the beaches, and everything to do with the weather. After the vacation was over and we got back home to Ohio, the sky was gloomy and dark, and we just wanted to go back. We thought to ourselves, why do we live here? So, within two months, we decided to rent the biggest rental truck, pack it to the rim, and move. When we got here, I had a friend who let us stay with her until we settled.
Next, I enrolled my kids in public school, but to make a long story short, that didn’t pan out well, and my kids wanted to homeschool. I was very unprepared for that, but after convincing my husband, I pulled them out and started homeschooling. They were at the age where they didn’t really need supervision a ton with school work, so it was time I decided what I wanted to do with my life when it came to working. Because, at this point, I had just been a stay-at-home mom and college student online. In Ohio, I did photography, so I began picking that back up and did a few sessions and weddings and some photography for the local school. As I was picking up some photography, I realized I needed a website, so I headed over to good old Google, landed on Etsy, and came across a website template for Showit.
I had zero idea what Showit was, so I looked it up and did a free account. I purchased the template I found on Etsy. Then Showit was something completely different than what it is today. It was called Showit5, and it was a flash-based program. I caught on quickly, and then I hit what felt like a brick wall.
Without too much TMI here, I had some female issues and started having a very long menstrual cycle; basically, it was backward, and none stop. I began to feel like garbage. I had no energy, which mentally put me in a bad place. After a few hospital trips, seeing several doctors, and being misdiagnosed, I was put on bed rest as the doctors thought I had a uterine AVM. If you don’t know what that is: It’s where an artery and a vein meet, and if it ruptures, you will bleed to death. Hence why I was put on bed rest. Thankfully that wasn’t what was wrong at all, and I had a uterine fibroid instead. But it wasn’t that easy because I guess I am unique, and mine prolapsed, which ended in immediate surgery.
Through all that, I went from learning to build in Showit to making entire photography and photo editor websites because I pushed myself and had something productive and proactive to do. I gained a handful of full-time photo editing clients for whom I edited their photos. My editing clients started asking me many questions about my website, and once I told them I designed it, that opened up a whole new world for me.
So here I am helping photographers build a website plus edit their photos.
Once I realized that website design was amazing, it made me feel like a human with a purpose and was needed. I was feeling pretty dang gorgeous about myself; that’s how Brand Me Gorgeous was born.
I thought long and hard about the name Brand Me Gorgeous because I also wanted to make clients feel gorgeous about their brand and busines. I had no idea something that could bring me joy and happiness would be in design, but it truly helped me feel better about myself and my situation.
Shortly after opening up Brand Me Gorgeous, I had surgery to fix my fibroid, but unfortunately, within a year, I ended up having another one. And so I had to go through the same problem and surgery again. However, I wouldn’t trade the experience because it leads to an opportunity.
Now I am a certified Showit design partner, Canva Creator, Honeybook Pro, and educator and course creator. If you would have asked me 12 years ago, “where do you see yourself in ten years?” It wouldn’t be this. I didn’t have the drive before this, nor did I think I would move my family several states, start a new life, buy a house with a pool and be a dance mom. haha I mean, honestly, I didn’t see any of this coming. But I wouldn’t trade any of it, and that’s my story of how I became a designer.
January 3, 2023
xoxo,
Mindy
