Danielle's Story

After years of being in and out of school and working minimum wage jobs, Danielle wanted to make some changes in her life. Not only was she feeling the money crunch, but she had begun to yearn for something more, especially more direction in her career. Above all, though, she wanted to make things better for her family. As Danielle herself puts it: “My kids were a major source of motivation for me to change my life and make things better.”

With her new outlook firmly in place, Danielle came to Momentum to see if she could get help with her plan to start a business (a tattoo studio) with her husband. “I was serious about this, so I had already written a business plan and I thought it was pretty good,” says Danielle. “I thought it was good, that is, until I enrolled in Momentum’s Women's Venture Program, where writing a business plan is part of the curriculum. Thankfully, I soon realized that had I gone forward with my original plan, it would not have worked, and what little money I’d had to invest—I would have lost.”

In the Women's Venture Program, Danielle learned to make financial projections, to do proper business research,  to learn from industry professionals, and to create a realistic business plan that would lead her to success. “As the course progressed,” says Danielle, “I began to truly understand what starting my own business would involve. I began to see it very clearly. And now, here we are just six months later, and my husband and I are actually running a business!”

When Danielle looks back on her experience, she says that what Momentum taught her the most, in addition to all the practical business knowledge, was confidence. “I’ll always be grateful to the wonderful people at Momentum because they taught me so much,” she says. “Not just how to start a business, but how to believe in myself and what I could achieve.”