How I got here.
Three chapters in my own voice. The Beginnings, China, Technology — the long version of how this platform came to be what it is. About twenty-five minutes. Self-paced. Chapters work alone or in order.
From art teacher to entrepreneur.
Twenty years of becoming.
The first chapter of an entrepreneur's story is rarely the moment they call themselves one. Mine started in a Maryland classroom.
I'd been teaching for quite a few years when I realized I wanted a family — but I didn't want to stop working completely. As a teacher you got two months off and then went back, or you left your profession for years. None of that appealed to me. I didn't think any of the normal choices were right for me.
So I went to Maryland Institute College of Art for their Creative Entrepreneurship program. I already had my Master's and Bachelor's, but I wanted to get into it. I was hooked. My professor was inspiring. This was before the huge entrepreneurship movement we saw later — it was about helping people who wanted to make things, or build things, or serve people in creative ways.
I learned from real experts. But it wasn't easy. I was working full time. The classes were in person and far. They covered every aspect of business — and still there was so much practical stuff that needed doing. The biggest thing I learned was how to create a business plan. I did. I received the top award from the school that year for the Creative Entrepreneurship program.
I opened my own art studio and school. For five years I worked two full-time jobs. One paid the bills, the other paid the dream.
From there I opened my own art studio and school. The market was tough. I worked full time while building it. I even took college courses for teaching certification while doing both. Meanwhile I was teaching myself marketing — not just the theories, but how to actually make it happen. We had the internet, but no AI. Research meant some online, but mostly books and magazines.
I spent time on boards of directors, networking with other professionals. Still working full time. I wasn't really seen as an entrepreneur the same way. There were some government-funded small business development places, but nothing like the support systems that exist now. Online courses were just starting to take root. Bookkeeping was challenging. I found people to help me. I was in business for about five years. It was so hard.
After working two full-time jobs for over five years, I went back to teaching full time. I decided to go abroad.
Two months in, the school that hired me — accredited, fully working, stable for five years — went bankrupt.
I was living through this nightmare of a school trying to stay open. The leadership all quit one day. I was offered the principal role. I said no. I knew the society wouldn't handle that well, and I knew there were business and finance things I wasn't ready to handle. So one of the math teachers — who had been in corporate America before retiring into teaching — I said to him: you need to be principal. I'll be vice principal.
I handled the leadership of trying to motivate the parents — they had to donate money to keep us going even more than the tuition they originally paid. We had to make sure the teachers were happy. The school had to function. I had no qualifications for it. But it taught me a lot about business as a part of service. Because when the business failed, the service of helping those kids and that school started falling apart.
So I came to China. I thought: okay, now I can put more business aside. But by then I had a little bit of a bug for it. At every school I'd worked at, I'd been creating curriculum. Every time I built something it would become well known. The department would get recognition. Then I'd leave. And one or two years later it dissolved.
I would spend three or four years of my life building something truly beautiful, and watch it disintegrate like an ice cube in someone's hand the moment I left it to somebody else.
There was no legacy to it. How was I going to build a legacy? Why was I spending all this time and energy building things for other people who wouldn't keep them going? While it still had good effects on the students who went through it, it didn't sit right with me.
So I decided I was going to do the entrepreneur thing. I'd already been teaching for twenty years. I was looking for a different kind of challenge. I'd become one of the top art educators in the world, with some of the top jobs. I wanted something with legacy. And I really did feel like the education system was limiting my ability to have impact. It was putting constraints on creativity. It was behind the movements that were happening outside of it.
I wanted to do a flipped classroom — students watch videos first, then come to class to discuss. I wasn't allowed. So I studied online education. I took courses. I learned Blackboard. And then COVID hit, and ironically I had to teach remotely anyway. I'd already studied it for so long that I became one of the main models for how my division handled online. It was easy and natural. I loved having students, creating online material, curriculum design. All of it fit.
I loved that it was a career I could create around my life — instead of my life being created around my career.
Looking back, even saying these words: how did we let this happen? How did we get to a point where a job is dictating the quality of our life and the way we show up for our family, our friends, ourselves?
After COVID I got another job — one-year position. Everybody told me to take something stable. I said no. If I wasn't going to have the stability of education — which was one of the main reasons I was staying in it — I'd do my own thing. I founded my own company. Finished my contract. Got my first own-company visa through my own company, in China.
That was almost six years ago. I don't regret it. I'm not saying things haven't been tough — there have been a lot of tough times. But I don't regret it.
That's the first chapter. Looking for change. Knowing that I belonged international. Knowing that something was different, that I was creative, that my life should reflect that. That I wanted to blaze a new trail. That wasn't typical. That allowed me to be innovative and find my authentic self — and express myself through my work, instead of becoming a mouthpiece for a profession.
Down to $4. Up to a movement.
The chapter the platform was born in.
The wellness center. The pandemic. The $4. The two-week pivot. The cat. And the realization that Flex My Career was the answer to a question I'd been asking for years.
Once I started my company, I didn't have a safety net. I didn't have savings. Maybe a couple of months — the bare minimum. I had to stay in China because of the pandemic, the cost of living, everything. I didn't have enough money to move anyway. So I said: okay, I'm just going to keep going.
One of my friends asked: what would you really like to do? At that point I'd just spent time in Thailand during the pandemic and I really wanted to create a wellness center — but online. She loved real estate. So she said: let's do it in person. She agreed to front the money. We found another investor.
That was quite the journey. I built it hands-on, with a small team — some volunteers who could use the center as part of the trade. The strange thing was that on this journey, I had to create the brand more deeply than I'd had to before. When I'd had my art center in the US, I'd built a brand — but it didn't have to be as technical. When you have investors and you have a property in Shanghai — almost the New York of Asia — you can't leave a single T uncrossed.
I focused on letting my intuition guide me. But I also threw myself into upskilling. Coaching certifications. Marketing in the West and the East. China business. China entrepreneurs. Joined the organizations. Networking several times a week, on top of a full-time job, for the first six months.
We opened. Two months later the pandemic came back. One month closed. Open again for a month. Then a more restricted situation — we had to be in our homes for several months. That killed it.
I got down to 30 RMB — about $4. I let myself cry for two hours, because I didn't know how I was going to feed my cats. Then I shook myself out of it and said: okay, let's find a solution.
I got a mastermind of people I trusted and respected. I put them in a group and got their opinions, thoughts, ideas. Each one called me. They helped me survive.
Because I'd had the wellness center — even just for a couple months — I'd done a pretty good job of marketing, creating community, getting PR. So I'd become known. As the business was floundering because we couldn't open, I started going online. Which is how I'd originally wanted to iterate this thing.
At some point we got asked to do a webinar for wellness — mental health was wearing on people. So I did it. It went so well that we ran a weekly show for two years, helping people learn from experts in different wellness areas. It was very popular. I got asked to do keynotes after that. It showed me the power of helping people.
It also taught me how to do online events well. How to coach entrepreneurs. Because a lot of the coaches who came on were great at coaching, but not so good at marketing — or designing a webinar — or creating slides — or doing sales — or even having products to sell at the end of their talk. So a lot of my time became upskilling the professionals around me — people I really respected, who still had a lot to learn.
I had to switch to full-time coaching and consulting. We had to close the place down. We couldn't afford it. We weren't allowed to be open. I had enough money for two weeks. It was heartbreaking.
So many people were there for me at the beginning, when I opened. But when we were done, it was just me. Renting a van. Packing all this stuff up.
I had to fit it into my apartment and figure out what to do next. Really hard. But in a way it turned out to be one of the best things — because the reason I'd left traditional teaching was that I didn't want to be tied to a place anymore. I wanted to travel a little. I wanted a different kind of schedule. And what I realized was: having a location like that was actually doing the opposite.
I think the idea of an investor partner had helped me feel like I was going to be able to do it. Part of me was afraid to do it by myself. Now I realize I didn't really need that. It was nice to do and great to try. It served its purpose. It helped a lot of people. But I still see a lot of people trying to partner when they don't need a partner.
I started making the money back by switching to full-time coaching and consulting. In two weeks I completely changed my business and my cash flow. That was another huge step. To realise: if you're creative, if you think about the way you can make offers — which are just opportunities for people — there's always a way to get a revenue stream. So I started focusing on stabilising with multiple revenue streams.
As I was doing this, I realised I'd been coaching entrepreneurs through this entire time. After COVID, more and more people were really thinking about it — they'd liked being home, liked the idea of being free, not having to go to the office. So I started Freelancing to Freedom, which eventually became Flex My Career.
The biggest thing was the need for a way to innovate your life — and make your work a support that helps you live the life you want. Instead of wrapping your life around your work.
The flexibility was what I wanted. And we realised it wasn't just freelancers. Some people want to create a little revenue stream. Some want a real side gig. Some want to start their own company. Some want to do their own company while they work. Some want to make the leap to full-time entrepreneurship. Some want to work in their jobs, but as contractors. Or in a way that's more remote. All of these are flexible ways to work. And the future of work is that.
As technology can do so many more tasks — as we have fewer survival issues, at least some of us — we can focus on being more creative and innovative with our lives. Work takes up so much of our lives. It's so important that we have some voice, choice, and creativity in how we design it.
Flex My Career exists because as I've lived through all of these changes — all the uncertainty, all the crazy things, all the resilience it took — I've had to be flexible. That flexible work and that flexible mindset has allowed my career to be flexible with the times, and authentic to living my life the way I wanted.
One of my cats. Nine years together. Then he got cancer.
He was like my child. My fur baby. If I'd been working a full-time teaching job, I would have either had to put him down early, or so many bad things would have happened.
But because of what I'd done — because I'd already built a flexible career — I had enough money and time that for the last couple months of his life, he got to be home. He got to be loved. He got to enjoy some moments. And I got to be there with him.
When the cash flow isn't as easy as a steady paycheck, I think about that time. How fortunate I was that I'd chosen a path that gave me the freedom to take care of a life that I loved. You can't put a price on that.
Now I get to partner with people I want to partner with. I get to have clients I want to have. I get to choose them. I get to choose the quality of what I do.
AI came along, and my AI mentor got me involved, and I had the time to learn it. Then I had the time to share it. And now I've become one of the major people who talks about AI in one of the biggest cities in the world. Never could have seen that coming.
The coaching and the psychology came in too. When I got my undergrad in psychology, it was more about education — I focused on kids — but we did some counseling strategies. As I've progressed in this profession, I've realised how much psychology is part of creating a flexible lifestyle. Because if you can be resilient, you can be flexible. If you can be authentic, it's easier to create the lifestyle that aligns with you. If you can face the things you do that sabotage yourself, you're more able to be successful as an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship — you've got to look in the mirror. You've got to be able to take feedback. Because you're using the design cycle. Design thinking. You try, you fail, you prototype, you try again, you get feedback, you try again. It's an endless cycle. Not just for personal development — for your professional development. You are always a work in progress. That's also a form of flexibility.
The reason I've created all of this is because it has taken me thousands of hours of learning. I'm fortunate that I don't usually need to sleep much, and I'm able to focus and learn fast. But I haven't had a lot of the constraints other people do. So what I want is to help people achieve this kind of innovation for creating their professional life — on a fast track. Take everything I've learned and put it together in a system.
Because the other thing is: when you become an entrepreneur, everyone tells you what to do. Marketing is important. Sales is important. Branding. UVP. MVP. KPIs. OKRs. You don't even know what half the acronyms are. All these things are important. But nobody tells you the priority. Nobody tells you the order. And on top of that, you're trying to learn the basics AND keep up with the latest. That is exhausting. That's why so many small businesses fail in less than five years. People burn out.
And a lot of people who become entrepreneurs are by themselves, or in small teams. They don't have the same support network. Bad day — you used to go to the cubicle next to you. Whine by the water cooler. Both order a coffee. Commiserate a little. Have lunch. A lot of people aren't doing that anymore. A lot of digital workers stay behind screens. Stay home. Which is beautiful — they can raise families, be with pets, enjoy their homes, save money. But where do they go to make connection?
Flex My Career is a movement. It's the future of work. And we get a beautiful chance to make it a work of art together.
So now as an entrepreneur, I want to give people what I've always wanted. A place where they can connect with other people. An organised, structured system that still lets them choose the paths best for them — curated learning paths to fast-track success without overwhelm. Better with teams, even if they don't want to be full-time entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial skills, because you need them. But also professional development for those who are entrepreneurs. Because we don't get corporate trainings. We don't have one-on-one professional development. So let's have a platform that does that.
It'll be twelve years this July 2026 that I've lived in Shanghai. One year in South Korea before that. So I'm in Asia for thirteen years — officially more than a quarter of my life. Imagine if everybody in the world could be doing work that they loved. That they got paid enough for. That could create beautiful ripples. And that they could talk about it — come together in a safe space online, not fueled by competition or comparison, but inspiration. It sounds like the seeds of peace could be sown that way.
Casio keyboard to AI trailblazer.
Fifty years of being early.
Casio. DOS. Sony Mavica with a floppy disk. Cisco's beta web design course. And one night in a co-working space, two thousand AI images later, the next chapter began.
A lot of people have asked me about my relationship with technology and AI — how all this came about. So I'll tell you. Way back, I was one of the first people in my neighborhood to have an electronic keyboard. A Casio. You might not even know that brand anymore. I loved that digital stuff. Lights. Animatronics — those were big back then.
As I moved into college, I was one of the first in my school with an electronic typewriter. My mother was very into making sure we were as cutting edge as we could be. So we got one of those green Apple Mac computers with the green screen. She had someone at her office who did computer programming, and she traded services with him to come give us lessons. We learned the original DOS. We learned how to use disks. That, I think, helped set my mind on being more of a trailblazer when it came to tech — open, an early adopter, testing things out.
Once I started working full time, one of the first courses I taught — in my first job as an art educator — was computer art and digital photography. I was teaching with the first publicly-released digital cameras: Sony Mavicas. Floppy disks. Ten photos at 1.44 megabytes.
I was only a couple of chapters ahead of the kids. I got some professional development. Practiced. Learned it. Fell in love with it.
I just loved the creativity you could have. I'd been into darkroom photography for years, but I loved what you could do with these cameras and Photoshop. Change things. Adjust them. Make old photos look new. The restoration was beautiful.
Then I was asked to teach web design. I took one of the original web design courses by Cisco — a beta test format. My brain was never great with math or code. I didn't have the headspace for it. I wish I'd spent a bit more time on it back then. But as I moved forward, every job had different tech platforms. Every time something new came in — a new platform, a new program, new software — I'd try to figure out: how could I make this work for my department? For my team? For our school? For my students?
That's where my nickname trailblazer came from. I was always trying the stuff out. The tech department often had to call the software creators, and we'd have meetings, because I'd say: well, it can do this — but can it do that? Sometimes they even had to tweak the software to get it to do the cool things I wanted. That was a cool journey — to see, hey, this is a creation too. There's design thinking to it.
Until then I hadn't thought of technology as a work of art. As I started using it — as I saw UX design help me find solutions — I realised it was a beautiful tool that was a work of art in itself.
I started doing more and more — portfolios, that kind of thing. As I moved into entrepreneurship, I started looking at all the LLMs and the different platforms. Social media was big. Content creation was big. I'd already taught photography. I was already a writer. Content creation came naturally.
When I finally went full time into entrepreneurship, everything is so overwhelming that if you don't find ways to make things systematic, you get buried. You can't keep your head above water. I found some really good ways. I got great at making presentations. I found a flow for that. Documents. Templates. Lesson plans. I got really good at Microsoft, some Mac products, and Adobe.
Then AI came along. I was working in a co-working space — I had my own office in it. One of the gentlemen there became a friend. He'd taken time off from all except essential projects so he had enough money to survive, and focused on learning AI. This was before it was really big. He said: I know this is going to be the next big thing. So he took time off and got super proficient.
In the early days, when we were just starting to make images, he showed me some of his work. Finally, one day, he showed me a few of his images. Because I'd taught digital photography, I just said: well, I'm hooked. I've got to try this.
I went home that night. I couldn't sleep. I made about two thousand images. Bing image generator. Just kept prompting. Trailblazing again — because the images were beautiful.
I realised — there's so much in my imagination that if I just did it by hand, or with Illustrator or Photoshop, it would take so much more time and energy. And sometimes it's hard to get your vision out, even if you're skilled — to really get everything the way you wanted it in your head with the details. I found there was so much less friction now to go from the cool images in my head to seeing them.
I made a whole water goddess series. I loved it. It was beautiful. To make an entire series like that and direct it — it would have taken me years before. I saw AI as a way to speed up creative productivity. And I thought: if I can do this with images, I wonder how this will work for the rest of my business.
I started using it to draft things. Learned what I should do and shouldn't do. I was constantly getting updates from my AI mentor — shortcuts, things he was learning. I had an inside track. Then I started experimenting so much that sometimes I was giving him tips he didn't know. It took a couple of months — then it became a peer situation. He does more of the coding and learning the platforms behind the scenes. I'm learning the front-end ways of dealing with them.
As time progressed, people started seeing me do this and asked: can you show me how? I said sure. I decided to do an online course — a kind of cheap one. It took off. So many people wanted to learn AI but had been intimidated by anything bigger. I made it simple. I can translate the tech. Make it more easily digestible. I started very early with workflows and processes — because I'd learned that through my teaching.
It's kind of funny, because it took a couple of years until everybody else was really doing it that way. But now everybody's talking about that. Now they're using agents for it.
Three years in. Probably a thousand hours saved — at least. Over a hundred hours a month. Quality up. Things I never thought I'd be able to do.
I'm so glad it can be part of Flex My Career — this practical AI, this technology. Even just using things like CapCut, or PowerPoint. There's a lot of technology besides AI that people need to know. We want to not only flex our career — we have to flex our tech. That's another beautiful tool that helps us innovate our professional life.
Now I'm finding ways to automate and make things more agentic. Because I want less time on screens. I love AI. But now I'm getting to the point where I'm like: we need to have better work-life balance. Been in this business — again, full-time entrepreneur — for almost six years. It's time. And now agentic AI is helping me make that dream a reality. The online platform too.
For those thinking about Flex My Career: I've been on the journey. I've been where you are. I've looked at my life and said — this is not exactly what I want. This is not what I signed up for. I've looked at people around me and said — there's nobody around me who has the life that I want. And now I've found some people who do. We get to build our future of work together.
I'm not going to lie and tell you it's going to be super easy. If anybody tells you something's going to be super easy, it's because they're trying to manipulate you or sell you something. I don't really have any desire to do either.
I can just tell you this path is worth the work. You'll learn more about yourself, more about the world, more about people, and more about the way things can align if you start re-engineering your professional life with a little bit of creativity, innovation, and passion. You can find your ikigai. You can find your reason for being. Your purpose.
You can live a life that makes you feel like you have meaning and value. And when you do that, you start attracting people who appreciate your value and meaning and impact. It can all come together.
All you need is to take the first step. And commit to doing the work. And be ready for the learning and the growth that comes along the way. Because no matter where you end up, if you do that, you're always going to be moving forward in the right direction.
Where do you fit on the path?
The three chapters are mine. The Pathway is the framework for yours. The Assessment places you on it in about six minutes — twelve questions, your placement before anything else.