Build A Legacy

Talk About What Matters

Give A Fuck

You know how to survive. But you’re ready to know what it feels like to thrive. And to get there, you need to stop hiding, stop apologizing, and take up the space you were born to take up. You’re ready to have a mentor, skills, and a community of like-minded women at your back that believe in you, see you for the amazing human you are and are not going to let you off the hook. If you’re ready to live the dreams your childhood self had no ability to imagine, you’re in the right place.

The Unofficial Bio

A HUSTLER

I grew up in San Bernardino, in California’s Inland Empire. It’s the second poorest city in the country after Detroit (but I know you’ve never heard of it.) People from the 909 wear that like a badge of honor. I know what it’s like to grow up around poverty, gang violence, and to spend a lifetime watching the system failing people you love.

I also know what it feels like when 'making it work' is your only option, because you cannot survive if you stay where you’re at. When I say I started my business with no access to capital, I mean it.

If you feel overwhelmed by an entrepreneurship world that seems to speak to women who were born into money and connections, but that is not the way you’ve done things… welcome home.

A Builder

I started A Practical Wedding on my kitchen table in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis, quit my day job when I was supporting both myself and my husband, and grew it to the largest independently held wedding publication in the English language. The company has gone on to make millions of dollars in revenue, while remaining entirely self-funded. I also have written two best-selling wedding books that have sold well over 100,000 copies.

I started Practical Business School from the same table, this time pushed in the corner of my crowded living room, during shut down of 2020, while I was trying to keep my kids alive and my business working, because I knew, in that moment, that my job was to take the knowledge I’d gained over the last decade (plus) of running profitable businesses, and help other women do the same, in this moment of crisis.

I start businesses when the world is falling apart, what can I say?

I’m not here to tell you that it’s easy to build a company without investors, capital, and high-powered networks. But, I am here to affirm that doing it on your own gives you the freedom to build something that’s fully yours. And at the end of the day there is real value in that.

A Permission Slip Giver

A shortlist of things I have done that I had no formal qualifications to do: Written two best-selling wedding books, penned viral articles for Buzzfeed that garnered well over a million views, had my creative direction featured in AdWeek, collaborated on a plus-size wedding dress line that was featured in Vogue Business, pitched two reality TV shows, been quoted in nearly every major US publication, been a keynote speaker on many stages, pivoted a business over and over, and oh right, been the Editor-in-Chief of a major publication (while being dyslexic).

I am not interested in what the world says you’re qualified to do. I’m here to remind you that you have permission to do the things you need to do and create what you’ve been wanting to create.

A Feet First Jumper

What is my formal training in? Experimental Theatre. Was that a practical major for someone who knew they had to earn a living the second they graduated? No. Did I do it anyway? Yup. My career has been a series of plunges into the deep end and learning to swim after.

But that doesn’t mean it’s ever been easy. When I actually learned to swim, I was so paralyzed with anxiety (hello, undiagnosed anxiety disorder) that it took weeks of standing on the end of the diving board before I jumped again. Once I did though, I never looked back.

I am here to lovingly talk you off the diving board because I know that once you hit the water, you’ll swim like you were born to do it (because, you were).

Here To Help You Take Up Space

My Guiding Principles