In the early summer of 1997, my husband and I found ourselves in the backyard of an empty house on a quiet street in Sierra Madre, a suburb of Los Angeles. The backyard was Southern California’s oldest private Japanese garden, an oasis of ponds and pines that had stood mostly intact since 1916. It seemed like paradise with our name written all over it. We knew in our bones that the place could only be ours, and with it, the little house alongside it. The next day we put money down and a month later, moved in.

When I first started my business in 2003, I didn’t truly acknowledge that I was indeed in business. I was just a creative person who liked to coach people and who liked to make art. I was simply following my passions and helping people. I didn’t think of myself as an entrepreneur, especially since I was doing all of that on the side while I continued to climb the corporate ladder. But when I finally took the leap from my day job in 2006, I knew I had to start taking my business more seriously. Now that I’ve been in business for more than a decade, I’ve seen my business mature into a system that needs to be consciously tended to and cared for in order to continue thriving.