Yay! 18 years already!!! I can’t believe it’s been that long! I’m so thrilled to be celebrating this special occasion with you!  

But first, a bit of history:  

It all started in 2006, while on my first maternity leave. The birth of my daughter Amy coincided with the end of a 2-year contract at the YWCA Montreal as a community organizer/liaison officer/leadership trainer.  

While working there, I was surrounded by women trying to juggle work outside the home, young kids, and time for themselves. Even though it was a great job and it allowed me to use my leadership and organizational skills, once I became a mom, the idea of working outside the home no longer appealed to me. 
  
I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, but also wanted to work… If you know me, you know that I love to work and that I have a hard time sitting still. This caused me to make a drastic change and to launch my own business.   

The first 4 years were tough! And that is putting it mildly…  

Here a few of the high(and no so high)lights:  

• February 2006: Put on preventive mat leave, because I work in a high-risk environment. Spend two months at home, bored out of my mind 
• April 2006: My daughter Amy is born. Amy sleeps most of the time and I don’t know what to do with myself 
• August 2006: A friend reaches out to me for translation. Having done translation in the past, inside and outside of my jobs, I decide to launch a business doing just that 
• June 2007: I start working part-time at an optometry clinic in my hometown, because maternity leave is over and business is still slow. I insist on being added as a freelancer, and not an employee. They accept!  
• January 2009: My son Logan is born. I’m on maternity leave, promising to myself I will not go back to a part-time job and will put all focus on my little family and my business 
• November 2009: I get separated from my kid’s father. Enough said!  
• March 2010: the optometry clinic reaches out to me to fill in part-time for someone on sick leave. This is God sent, because I’m broke and broken! My parents fill in to babysit. Also God sent!  
• December 2010: I get a big translation contract that will keep me busy for the next 18 months. I officially resign from the optometry clinic… 9 years later, I translate their new website!  

Until 2015, it was pretty much me, the kids and a computer. Then I started networking. That was a game changer! I also invested all my savings in hiring a business coach and, to this day, whatever I invest in coaching and networking pays for itself (and more) in new opportunities, new clients and new connections.  

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of the people who have been instrumental in my business:  

• Leah Kosatsky Laprise 
• Sarena Miller, from the Academy for Business Betterment 
• Nathalie Dion, from B2H Conseils 
• Natalie Eckdahl and Elizabeth Cook, from Biz Chix  
• Nikki Rausch, from Your Sales Maven 
• Dahna Weber, from Minc Magic   

I learned very early in my translator journey that I needed to rely on the help of proofreaders to best serve clients. I’m blessed to have the best ones on my team! Birgit and David, respectively English and French proofreaders.   

I’m blessed to be working with an amazing clientele that is just the right mix of businesses, municipalities, and non-profits. As an entrepreneur, it’s important for me that my business and my work have an impact in the world. I feel it through the work that I do with organizations who aim to educate and raise awareness on topics such as residential schools, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, sick kids and their families, volunteerism and STEM education, to name a few.  

There’s a special place in my heart and my business for non-profits. Did you know that all of the non-profits I work with get 10% discount on my services? To find out more about the non-profits I work with, click here. 

To find out more about the non-profits I work with, click here.  

The last 18 years have been a fun ride and I’m excited about all the new opportunities that will come my ways over the next few years.   

Now it’s time to go out and celebrate!