I graduated from college in June 2018. My first blog post was published on May 25, 2019. Let’s talk about the time in between. I graduated all bright-eyed and ready to take on the world and got knocked onto my face directly after. Instead of working in a “glamorous” $45K per year job in DC, I was working part-time at a coffee shop while taking my EMT class. This wasn’t what I expected to happen. I figured it would take a long time to get a job after obtaining my Bachelor’s degree. But I didn’t suspect it would take 2 years worth of applying to hundreds of jobs online. I can’t even lie, I was really considering changing my name on my applications and not putting my race on there either!
I’m one of those people that had a 20-year plan for myself, thinking nothing of what could possibly go wrong. Stuck, frustrated, depressed, and unhopeful, I needed to find something to take my mind off of not having my dream job.
I actually made my first website during my summer internship in Nashville, TN. Around this time, I was working part-time in a fitness childcare center for way less than what helped with bills and transportation. Anyone who knows me best would know this isn’t the best job for my temperament. The kids loved me but I was tired after 2 hours worth of engaging the little ones and that was only 1/3 of the shift. (I don’t know how parents do this full time.)
I was also hoping that the internship would lead to a job related to my field. NOPE. However,I had this idea tucked away in my list of business ideas for a couple of years while in college but I never acted on it because I didn’t think anyone would be interested in what I wanted to write about.
Here's how I came up with the name. I wanted to create a name that represented wellness as a journey and not a destination. You're constantly flexing to your circumstances with wellness and productivity. But there wasn't necessarily a word or phrase that I thought would be appealing, for one. For two, I loved words that had the -esce ending. Any google result will show that the -esce ending acts as an inchoative verb. This means that the -esce ending creates a sense of beginning a process. Where's the word for beginning the process of wellness? I had to create it. The closest word we have is "convalesce" which refers to beginning the process of recovery. However, that didn't fit the bill so I just combined the ending with wellness to create a play on the word to make it a verb. Technically, it should be "wellnessesce" or "wellnesscence" to make it noun-like. But "wellnesce" makes it more appealing to the eye. And so "wellnesce" was born
I decided that if I created my own side hustle I wouldn’t need to be so worried about the rejections. If no one else gave me a chance, I was going to take a chance on myself. (Random: I’m definitely still getting rejections from places I applied to last year. Ain’t that something? What kind of application etiquette are these folks using?) Anyways… I put up my first blog post during my summer internship. Mostly because I needed the extra money at the time. Sadly mistaken once again, I didn’t bring in 10K in 3 months like the most established bloggers tell you. Might be common sense to some of y’all but folks ain’t telling the whole story sometimes. The headlines say you too can earn 10k a month, but don't tell you that it took them months or even years to get there.
After going through a couple of renditions for who my target audience would be, I decided that I wanted to work with Black Women in entrepreneurship who want to maintain their personal wellness while keeping their biz productivity. I figured this would be best since us Black Women tend to enter entrepreneurship out of need. For others, entrepreneurship could help you escape office politics. Entrepreneurship for Black Women means having full independence and not being at the whim of employers. You know, when you have your own business, no one’s telling you how unprofessional your hair is or telling you to smile or be nicer.
In my case, I wanted to create an online community to monetize in the future, to inspire women like myself who want to achieve work-life balance while taking the world by storm, and to have an outlet for post-graduate depression. I lost my identity as a student and gained so much more.
What questions would you ask our founder about creating this brand? Comment below!