I'm not only the Founder, I am first a client...

"You can lead only as far as you grow. And you will grow only as far as you let yourself..."

If you are a parent or a child of one, I know you've said or heard the phrase "do what I say, not as I do?" But how many of you have heard this one that I recently read it in Bob Burg's "It's Not About You.," and will certainly pass on to my daughter in the very near future? "When a boy starts talking to you, don't trust the lyrics - listen to the music." In other words, what they both are saying is while a person may say one thing, it really is all about what they do isn't it? What is their true intention?

One of our taglines here at Closet Creatives is "trust us to let YOU out of the closet." It's not just something we thought was cute or catchy (even though you'd have to agree it got your attention didn't it?) It is something we have a grounded belief system in and have built our very lives around. We share a little about how we have come out of our own Creative Closets in the "About" section here on our website. However, I wanted to begin the first blog with a real life scenario of how we here at Closet Creatives actually practice what we preach!

The Dilemma...Because you are here, you already know we live in a social media society. You can not be a fully functioning business these days, or at least one that will be taken seriously, without a social media presence. Which is actually fine with me. I absolutely love social media. On any given day at any given second you will more than likely find me lurking about. My go to's are Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Periscope (there are so many interesting people out here doing interesting things). When I'm bored with those I may scroll down Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or even Tumblr! If there is a new app to be had, I'm on it. I want to know what it is, what it does and how it will potentially make my life better. So it's safe to say that I am not intimidated by technology, right? Nope! During one of our business meetings Lovenia, whom ironically I'm trying to encourage to be more socially present, shared with me that she has a friend who's company may be interested in having Closet Creatives come and do a training workshop. But we needed a website to legitimize that we were an actual company. Well, I knew we needed a website. It was actually on my to do list. My intention was that once we had enough funds I would go and find one of those professional website designers who would brilliantly design and run our website. The problem was, we haven't made enough money to do that yet and we needed a website up and running within the next two weeks so that she could submit the proposal. Panic immediately took over. Look, I'm pretty tech savvy. Enough to know where I draw the lines between where I'm great and where I lack significant skills. Building a website is where I draw the line. It's where my creative talents are completely exhausted. I rank creating websites up there with quantum physics. I'm sure it is something I can figure out, I just can't. So here I am faced with the dilemma that unless a designer with a benevolent heart falls out of the sky and into my lap, I am going to have to create this website. UGH!

Doing it Scared... Now this fear is warranted! I actually had tried to design a site. I heard that Wix was super user friendly so I dove in with relish thinking I could do this only to have crashed either the Wix software platform or in the very least, my laptop! It was catastrophic and I'm being completely honest. The screen would freeze, none of my images would upload, and I swear after a while Wix locked me out for complete utter ineptness! So after that, it's easy to see how I decided this web design thing was a wrap. But I do love this Closet Creatives concept I've come up with and I do want to share my enthusiasm for creating and trying new things with everyone I can. Because of this, I knew in that moment that I was actually going to have to buckle down and get it done. Or in the words of another quote I quote, "do it scared!" It was time to put my money where my mouth was! I took a deep breath, blocked out an entire morning, set a goal of one page a day and opened my laptop. The first two hours were tedious. I spent a lot of time following the tutorials here and on YouTube and sweating. By lunchtime on the first day I had successfully uploaded the logo and tagline on the landing page with a decent background. The next day, plugged through to complete another page. As I worked through the fear or did it scared, I noticed something. I wasn't scared anymore! Not only that, but I was starting to have a good time. I looked up a week later and I had the skeleton of a pretty decent website. I sent it to Lovenia for feedback. By the time she sent back her suggestions, I had already did the first major overhaul. When she went back in the second time she exclaimed, "Melanee, you did a fantastic job!" How about that?!?! I had moved from a space of being completely scared and paralyzed as a result of it to securely satisfied in the matter of days. I was pretty dang on proud of myself too!

Now that you know this information, it may explain to you why the site looks a tad amateurish. But I promise you, keep coming back cause I've caught the bug and am now completely addicted to learning all I can to make it better and better. Watch out cause I may be adding Website Designer to my resume! I'm pretty stoked about what I accomplished and this is the same feeling we like to have each Closet Creative participant leave our Experiences with! If I can come out the closet, so can YOU!

See you at the next experience!