"Embroidery looked tedious until I tried it."

Before I started working embroidery, I was working at a museum. I really wanted out. I was very unhappy. I was underpaid, underappreciated, and it was not a creative outlet for me.

I had thought about working embroidery for several years before I actually did, because I thought it looked tedious and time-consuming and difficult. But when I actually tried it, I realized it was relaxing. And I had, in a very short period of time, several family members that either died, or were in hospitals. My dad was very ill -- he was in a coma for quite a long time. And I started needleworking, and it was something that I could do when I was in the hospital. It was the only thing that really dealt with my anxiety and nervous energy in a way that nothing else had.

"A newfound passion."

Needleworking became a career when I got addicted to it and wanted to do it every day. And I wanted to be able to have unfettered time to be as creative with it as I wanted to. This was a real surprise to me. It was like this newfound passion that I discovered while looking at the market and thinking, "Well, you know, the market does not really offer a creative platform for hobbyists my age and younger. They're not doing this type of work." Plus, I love to draw. I thought maybe this would be a way to gain some independence.

"People make the leap all the time and make it work."

I had been working towards the goal of leaving my job, but it's kind of like, one foot on the dock, one foot on the boat. And you really don't feel like you can make that leap. Are you going to be on the street? But I just kept telling myself, "Well, people do this all the time and make it work."

And I really felt that I could, and I knew the resources were out there. Not only that, I really believed in what I wanted to do. I loved it. Right at the point when I was trying to get the gumption to quit my job, I was very fortunate to get laid off. When they laid me off, they even told me they were surprised I was taking this so well. And that was because I knew that it was going to make it possible for me to transition into doing Sublime Stitching full-time, and that's what happened. That was the thing that gave me that little push out of the nest. And it worked.

"Helpful tips for starting a small business."

I knew that there were incredible resources for starting a small business. I don't have a degree in business; I know nothing about starting a business or running one. But I knew that the resources were out there, so I started talking to people that have businesses, asking them how they got started, and at what stage they went from the DBA to incorporating.

I had a book called Smalltime Operator by Bernard Kamoroff. It was my bible. A friend of mine recommended it to me when he heard I was starting up. And it was very practical information on how to keep books, how to pay your taxes, why and how you register a business. That was my starting point, and it has always been a book I recommend.

"Doors started opening."

When I started working on embroidery, there was such a response to the work, to the ideas, that I saw these doors opening. I had never had that experience where all these doors are flying open and I just said, "I'm going to run through them," and everything started happening.

People were contacting me about the work. People wanted to hear more about it. When somebody writes me and tells me that they like what I do, that really invigorates me. So all these things contributed to moving it forward.

"Unexpected opportunities appeared."

I started getting a lot of magazine coverage. Actually the first media outlet that contacted me was Entrepreneur and I thought that was a good sign. I was really amazed when Chronicle Books contacted me. They said that they had been watching what I was doing -- and it had only been about a year --- and that they had a line of craft kits. The knitting one just came out, and they thought I was the person to do the embroidery kit. That was a pretty huge. I thought if I had gone after this, I don't know if this would have come about this way. And that was what was so surprising to me. Instead of me having to really chase down these things, I felt people being drawn to what I was doing and that felt very different from anything else I had done before.

"Needing to act like a bigger business."

I never thought that I would become an embroiderer, much less someone who runs a small business, but I've definitely reached the point now where it's bigger than I am. I have two assistants who are indispensable to me. I have a team of advisers, from a bookkeeper to an accountant, and a financial adviser. Where I'm at now, it's gone from being a small business to needing to be a bigger business, and needing to act like a bigger business. It's kind of like starting all over again. I'm having someone else to do my website. I'm moving into a fulfillment warehouse, a company that will warehouse my inventory process and do my orders, and do customer service for me, so that I can take on the other things that I need to pay attention to.

"Me then and me now."

When I was working a 9-to-5 job, I was far more stressed out, and I was not satisfied. It feels kind of like a grey period to me, because I really did not know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I did not want to be working for someone else. I knew that I did not want to be making a less than livable wage, which I was. I knew that I wanted to be doing Sublime Stitching work full-time.

Since childhood, the only thing I knew how to do and wanted to do was to be an artist. I knew that there was a practical, very real way it could be done. And then once I was in it, I could not be happy doing anything else. When I think about myself at the museum, I don't want to say it was directionless, because I was really seeking a direction. It was a pretty good job - it's very unconventional doing museum work. But I knew it wasn't what I wanted to be doing. In comparison now, the stress is there, but it's a more satisfying kind of stress.

"Get to it and do it."

I used to just say, "Get to it and do it" when girls would write me, because I would get a lot of email seeking advice, and asking, "What's your motto?" I say, "Get to it and do it."

The other one is, "Failure is only guaranteed if you give up."

Persistence is the key. It really is. This is only going to end if I decide to stop doing it. And really, Joseph Campbell's Pathways To Bliss is really there. I think that is what you've got to find. And it's not easy to find it. You just have to be true to yourself.