I'm back

Hi lovely readers,

I would like to reintroduce myself. I'm Stephanie Cross, a solo parent, and empty-nester. I currently have a bookkeeping & accounting company, Cross Professional Business Services LLC that I officially started in October 2021. More on that later.

This is my first post since my 5th Anniversary post on April 24, 2010. A Joyeux Blog was about all things weddings in and around Southern California. I had a some regular features: Beverage Monday, Venues of the Southland and Traditions & Superstitions. I might continue with Beverage Monday because it was fun looking for themed drinks. Since I'm no longer a wedding planner I do not get to see many venues anymore so I'll retire that. You can find the ones I featured under the venue tag. Although I've been kicking around an idea for a regular  feature on the museums around Southern California. I have been to almost all of them...

Anyways, I shut down my wedding planning business, A Joyeux Day Weddings & Events at the end of 2010. My son was getting to the point where I needed to be with him {drive} to various activities. My husband's career was taking off, and since we were in the same industry, someone needed to be home with our son. 

I also went back to school. I started and stopped going so many times I lost count. I really hated sitting in a classroom. Then by 2010, schools were offering online classes. Finally, technology caught up and I could go to school while sitting at home at my desk, and continue being a stay-at-home mom that has time to volunteer.

I went to a community college for a couple of years and then transferred to an university that offered a Bachelor of Arts degree completely online. Win-win for me! My major was Business Administration. I had already had opened one business, and almost started another one, so I thought that was the best track for me.

About that, my current business is the basically my fourth business. The first time I thought of being a business owner I was in my mid 30's. I was back living with my parents, and my older sister and her son lived there, too. She was, and is really into animals, so I though about starting a pet sitting business with her, Me & My Sis Pet Sit. Now, I had never really thought about being a business owner, none of my immediate family are business owners, so I am not really sure where the initial idea came for this, many years later. I thought that she could be the animal person, and I would take care of the business aspect. When it came to business know-how, I didn't have any at that time. I was a food server and had been doing that for many years. The internet was just taking off, and I was able to do quite a bit of research online. I also took advantage of business classes at the library. We never got it off the ground, and I ended up moving two hours away, taking the knowledge with me. 

My second go around was my wedding business, which this blog is named for. Actually, my wedding planning company was named after my mom. I went with the French spelling of Joyous, because the dot com was taken for A Joyous Day. I officially had it for almost three years, and did weddings on the side without the official name for some time afterwards.

My third attempt was with my husband. I had to write a business plan for an entrepreneur class I was taking, so we followed it and opened a catering & event business. He was the chef, and I did the event planning. We did great for sometime, but only as a side business, he was working as a chef in a sorority house at the time and had weekends off. The company went under and he went back to working weekends, so our little business had to wrap up.

Now, I am the proud of owner of Cross Professional Business Services LLC a bookkeeping & accounting company focused on midlife female entrepreneurs. I am also branching out into helping women start their business.

I started CrossProBiz in 2021. In 2019, I was starting to research what would be a viable business to open with my skill set after my son graduated high school in 2022. Then the pandemic happened, and I lost my husband at the end of 2020. I had to figure out what to do while in deep mourning. Fun stuff!! There was a bit of a learning curve since traditional marketing had evolved to mostly social media, and learning what a tech stack is and that, yes I do have one. I gathered all my new found knowledge and a shoestring budget to start Cross Professional Business Services LLC, which I hope is my last business!

Thanks for reading...