How Initial Creations Started

I can't remember when my mom, Sally, and I started talking about having a monogramming business, but I do remember sitting in her family room and talking hypothetically about how fun it would be.

Fast forward to 2016. I was 26 and working in marketing for a large real estate company. The company was sold and employees were offered a job at the company's headquarters halfway across the country or a severance package.

Everything I knew and loved was in Atlanta. My family was here, I was in a serious relationship (with my now husband!), and I had just purchased my first home. Needless to say I wasn't moving halfway across the country, so I opted for the severance package.

Before my former company closed its doors, I remember approaching my mom about that crazy idea we'd talked about years prior. I shared my idea with a co-worker who said, "There's no reward without taking a risk." She gave me this coffee mug from Anthropologie and I've never forgotten her encouraging words. I proposed the idea to my mom that we split the cost of a new machine, and as they say, the rest is history!

We went to a local sewing shop in Atlanta and had absolutely no clue what we were looking for. We knew nothing about embroidery machines and had not even started researching what we wanted. That day, on a whim, we decided to purchase a Brother Entrepreneur Pro 10-needle machine. Did I mention we had no clue what we were doing? Or that I had just purchased a house and had a mortgage to pay? We had no business name, no merchandise, and didn't even know how to thread a needle!