Shame. Part One Point Five.

Alternatively titled: the stupidity continues...in Reno!

Ah, the oh-so-glamorous Reno, NV where I landed after fleeing my very first grown up job… 

My then-boyfriend-now-husband had said ‘come live with me, you don’t even have to work, you can just take care of the house and do whatever you like’ (you see kids I could have been a trad wife if only I had wanted it bad enough!) so naturally I secured employment before I ever crossed state lines. 

Still feeling weary of the hospitality industry and snobbish of working at a casino hotel after the elegance of the Sofitel, a boutique French property, I switched industries all altogether and ended up at the Reno Gazette-Journal (a paper just a few notches below the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, or the San Francisco Chronicle.) 

Fortunately, journalistic excellence (or integrity) didn’t matter to me one bit as *I* was hired to do ad sales. 

Picture me: driving around the biggest little city with my Mapquest printouts of the businesses I had to frequent in my sales territory. A territory that included not one, not two, but three(!?!) strip clubs (a story for another time I promise.) 

Despite this newspaper’s lack of prestige or pedigree and the nonexistent enthusiasm from almost all of the businesses I worked with - one dude routinely referred to it as the Reno Gazette Urinal, I was good at this job. Like, exceeded-my-sales-goal-fourteen-out-of-the-sixteen months-I-was-there and double-my-salary-with-the-bonuses good. (Oh and fun fact: this was the early 2000’s so we had to convince people to add ‘online’ ads to their standard print ads- which meant I had to explain to cranky cowboy boomers how “the internet” worked…and let’s be real I was bullshitting big time since I still don’t really know how it works twenty years later.)

I was (by all visible metrics) super successful. 

Also? Super miserable.

So, I plotted my exit. 

(Because who wants competence and financial rewards when you could suffer and be an absolute novice struggling to make ends meet?)

The Gazette was running a series following one local young couple as they planned their wedding: choosing the dress, the cake, the venue, and so on. I had the ingenious idea to offer this couple my services as their wedding planner for free, in exchange for the publicity of being featured in the paper.

And thus my entrepreneurial journey at the supremely experienced age of 23 began.

To be continued…