Passion to Profit: Flying Solo, #1

By Carline Beaubrun

Each book in the Flying Solo Series brings hope and inspiration to those going through difficult life challenges. In this soul-wrenching story of survival, recovery, and transformation, Carline shares the deep, dark, and devastating effects of her experiences with domestic violence, divorce, single motherhood, bankruptcy, and self-discovery. 

 

In Passion to Profit Volume 1 of the Flying Solo Series, Carline takes you through her journey as a single mom entrepreneur who transformed trauma into triumph. Carline shares her expertise, giving you the tools and resources to rise above all limitations by turning your passion into profit. This book forces you to step out of your comfort zone and provides actionable steps to empower you to start living the life you desire!

 

THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU IF YOU'RE: 

• Dealing with life-altering challenges and need additional income.
• Ready to create an intentional plan and make the most of each day.
• Prepared to start believing in what you're truly capable of and who you can become.
• Ready to start a business but unsure about the next steps to take.
• Prepared to begin prioritizing something you're deeply passionate about and start making your mark on the world.

* As a bonus, Carline includes a complimentary digital and printable business launch planner you can use to apply the principles you're learning in this book. It is the ultimate business launch planner with over 200 pages of planning tools to help you effectively plan, create, launch and scale your business!

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Carline Beaubrun is a single mother of three children and a multi-business owner with an impressive professional background in the beauty, hospitality, entertainment, and non-profit sectors. She is the Founder and Creative Director of Events by Carline, a 20 year internationally operated, full-service event production company based in Garden City, New York. The co-owner of Classic Beauty Salon, located in Queens, New York. The Founder and Executive Director of a non-profit organization called Pajamas & A Purpose, Inc.​ Her blog, Flying Solo, is ranked by Google in the top one-half percent of all blogs.

 

Refusing to let life challenges defeat her, she decided to fight back, turning her trauma into triumph. Over the last ten years, she has coached girls, women, and aspiring business leaders to do the same. Her message of personal development, productivity, and leadership peaks success, performance, profitability, and fulfillment. She has empowered over 4,000 women and girls with diverse backgrounds and over 50,000 business professionals internationally. Nothing makes Carline happier than being a valuable resource to help others reach their goals to succeed and make a genuine, positive difference within the community. As a result, Carline has distinguished herself as an inspirational leader who has already left a lasting mark in society.​​

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carline Beaubrun
• Release date: Apr 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201305116

Book preview

Introduction

C

ountless books have been written to explain the entrepreneurship journey. The reality is that each entrepreneur’s journey is different. Jeff Bezos began his foray into the business world from his garage. Twitter was formed after a day of brainstorming sessions held by members of the podcasting company, Odeo. Two completely different beginnings that resulted in very powerful companies. Nothing about entrepreneurship is easy. It’s a road filled with rocks, boulders, and seemingly insurmountable hills. You must trudge through the mire before you can get to the pot of gold.

This book shares the experiences of entrepreneurship from the perspective of a single mother who is a serial entrepreneur, and who’s certainly been through the mire and knows what it’s like to hold that pot of gold.

My beginnings don’t look exactly like Twitter’s or Amazon’s, but I’ve still created successful businesses based on my passions. You see, passion forms the foundation of what makes a business truly successful. I firmly believe in the deeply ingrained power of transforming passions into profitable businesses. That power is what I’m experiencing today after more than 18 years in entrepreneurship.

This book has been deliberately structured so that you can get the most value from it. There are four parts. Part One describes my story so that you can get a clear sense of how I became the entrepreneur I am today. Part Two discusses the steps you can take to identify your passion. Part Three explains how you can transform your passion into a profession. Finally, Part Four explains how you can transform your profession into a profitable business.

Because I want this book to be a practical guide for your business’s success, I don’t focus exclusively on my own story. I know what it’s like to have been a new entrepreneur, one who was completely unaware of all the nuances involved in business success. I wish I’d had a book like this during those times so that I could have avoided some big mistakes.

As a bonus, I’m giving you a business launch planner that you can use to apply the principles you’re learning in this book. You can access the planner by scanning the QR code that’s printed at the back of this book.

For additional educational resources to help to support your entrepreneurial and business growth please visit my business academy at www.cbbusinessacademy.com.

I hope this book helps you become a successful entrepreneur. Feel free to share your feedback with me by sending me an email at [e-mail].

Part One

The Origin of Passion

Chapter One

The Seed That Grows

I

t takes time, care, and hard work to grow anything good. Till the soil, plant the seed, nurture it, and watch as the brightly colored flower blooms, ready to bring unique vibrance to the world. No matter how small, this seed can be your gift to humanity.

I’m a successful, independent, driven, determined woman, the owner of my own business, and the founder of a supportive women’s organization. I’m a single mother and a dedicated daughter. The oak tree of my life is mighty, but it started with an acorn, a seed, and that’s where we must begin.

I’ve somehow always instinctively known how to transform a room, an experience, or a project into something spectacular. I was five years old when I used whatever I could find in the house to decorate the living and dining rooms for my mom’s birthday.

A canopy constructed entirely of curtains, a well-laid-out table with a generous feast of food, and I placed other decorations throughout the space that made the experience magical. My mother was thrilled with it, and I felt I had accomplished something great because of how I made her feel.

As I grew older, I became the go-to person for event planning throughout my extended family. Birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas parties, Thanksgiving gatherings; you name it, I was the one who planned it.

I didn’t stop there. I was out to dress up any other part of my life that I could, including my school projects. I vividly remember a project my classmates and I were assigned by one of my favorite teachers in fifth grade. It was a simple task. All we had to do was write a report about Egypt. She didn’t ask for bells and whistles, only a simple written report.

That wasn’t enough for me. Typically me, I wanted the bells and whistles. These were the days before YouTube existed, so I had to figure everything out on my own. I was determined to build a life-like replica of an Egyptian pyramid. I knew it had to look and feel real, and I was excited about bringing my idea to life.

It started with a cardboard box. I cut and fit pieces of cardboard together to get the shape of the pyramid. That was my blank slate, the foundation I used to make the replica come alive. My next task was figuring out how to produce the brick-like appearance on the pyramid’s surface.

Sugar cubes! My parents drove me to the supermarket and bought sugar cubes. They didn’t know at the time that they were nurturing a part of me that would eventually become my career. Their focus was on helping me get the best grade possible to pursue a traditional profession such as medicine or law, and if that meant traveling to the supermarket to get sugar cubes, then so be it.

I encountered another challenge. The glue we had couldn’t securely affix the sugar cubes to the cardboard. We had to go to an art supply store to get the correct type of glue.

The glue worked, and my pyramid came together. I wondered what I could use to give the appearance of Saharan dust blown against the pyramid. Dirt was the first option that came to my mind. I tried it on a small portion of the pyramid, but it looked muddy. That wasn’t the look I was going for, so I tried something else.

Sand was the only other thing I thought of that might work. We didn’t live in Miami where we could get sand from the beach. I was a child in New York City, the concrete jungle. Buying sand from a store was our best bet. Home Depot was our next stop.

We got the sand, and I tried the same application strategy with the dirt. It yielded the same result, one muddy mess. I could have given up at that point and chalked up the hours I’d spent working on the pyramid as a lesson learned, but I didn’t. I had to give it another try.

Instead of using glue, I gently threw the sand against the sugar cubes, and it stuck. I added some landscape at the base of the pyramid, and it was perfect. My report on Egypt had moved from paper to a 3D replica of an Egyptian pyramid.

The report was due on a Monday. I remember walking proudly into the classroom with my pyramid in my hands and my written report in my backpack. Everyone’s eyes opened wide in amazement the moment I stepped through the door. My teacher was speechless. I heard my classmates saying things like Were we supposed to do that? Why did she do that? My teacher didn’t mind. She was awestruck by my effort, and I got an A.

It didn’t end there. A few weeks later my classmates and I were tasked with doing a project about Africa. We worked in groups, and everyone knew I wasn’t going to do anything inside the box.

I created an entire production for my group. We recited significant facts about Africa and even replicated the opening dance from Coming to America. It was an adventure! The performance was so good that our teacher asked us to perform it in front of the entire school at the general assembly the following week.

My teacher was determined to nurture my creativity. She became my original creativity mentor. I became the first student she called if the school needed help with a project. There were times when I would be the only student in a room filled with adults, but I was a student whose ideas were respected. My tiny seeds were growing.

Not too long after, a pivotal event happened in my childhood, directly shaping who I am and how I live today.

Chapter Two

The Budding Entrepreneur

M

y mother has been one of the most significant contributors to my entrepreneurial spirit simply because of the shining example she set. No woman or person has had a more significant influence over me and my life than her. She’s a no-nonsense go-getter who spent over 30 years building a successful brand. I am eternally grateful for the seed she planted within me.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; my passion for business came directly from her. Mom’s entrepreneurial journey began when she decided to go back to school. My dad wasn’t pleased about her choice. My dad was proud to be the provider and he didn’t want mom to work. He wanted to have that control over her as the domineering man, the ruler in the house. That however didn’t stop her. She was going to get that degree and become the independent woman she knew she could be.

I was in second or third grade when she went back to school. It felt like an indictment of my childhood because I was accustomed to always having her around. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time and it felt like she abandoned me.

There were three of us girls, and we had one brother. My siblings and I fought for her attention a lot. She had been home with us from the time we were born up until that point.

When she started going to school, that hindered our relationship a little bit because she was studying all the time. If she wasn’t in the books, she was in school. When we came home from school, our usual afternoon trips to the park became a thing of the past because she had assignments to complete. We used to cook together and learn things in the kitchen with her. A lot of the bonding time we spent with her was lost when we went through this transition.

It was tough to feel distanced from her, but in the end, it was all worth it because my mom graduated at the top of her class and secured a position as an elite stylist at a renowned hair salon in New York.

A woman like her could never have a mediocre daughter. I was young, but I knew that I had to become someone inspiring, just like my mom.

She started her hair salon in our basement while working full time at the salon in New York. That didn’t last too long though. That remarkable salon where she worked full time closed two years later, and my mom decided it was time for her to get a storefront. She had been diligently saving, so she didn’t need a loan.

There are pivotal points in our lives that stand out more than others—moments or single events that redirect our paths and transform us.

I vividly remember the day she went to a meeting with the property owners where she wanted to establish her storefront. She picked my siblings and me up from school, still in our uniforms, and right away I knew that something was happening. The air in the car seemed filled with anxious energy.

As she drove to the meeting, she hammered into our heads how important it was for us to be on our best behavior because she had to take us with her since there was no one at home. It was my responsibility to ensure my siblings behaved since I was the eldest.

We got to the office, and she told us to sit in the waiting area. It was an old, dingy-looking real estate office. The storefront my mom wanted to rent was in the building next door, owned by the two founders of the real estate firm. They also owned the building we were sitting in at that moment.

It was a sorry sight to behold, that place. The waiting area was dusty, covered by an ugly brown carpet, and the wall was lined with some of the hardest metal chairs I have ever sat on. Papers were strewn everywhere, and there were a few dirty beige metal desks where I’m guessing the real estate agents sat.

Sitting there on our best behavior was a big deal because we weren’t well-behaved kids. I was always given a hefty weight to carry as the eldest child. No matter what went right or wrong, it was always my responsibility. I needed my siblings to listen to me, even though they usually didn’t. Mom hadn’t told us why we were there, but I could see how important this meeting was for her. I focused on talking with my siblings the moment she walked out of sight.

Listen, guys, mom says we need to behave. Let’s be quiet and keep still. And we did. I made everyone cross their hands and just sit there like that so they wouldn’t touch anything or fidget around. We didn’t move. We didn’t ask to go to the bathroom, and we didn’t get up. If I saw they were uncomfortable, I got up, fixed them, and then sat back down. We didn’t say a word the entire two hours; we just sat there with our hands neatly folded in our laps and our lips sealed.

Everything went right that day. Mom walked out of the meeting with a massive smile on her face. She had signed the contract, and the people in the meeting were so impressed by how well-behaved we were. My mom was so proud of us. This was a big deal to me. Being the eldest, I was able to lead my siblings and see my mom’s dream come true.

It was a special and exciting experience for us. My mom walked out the door with the keys to her own business. We left that day with a whole new beginning, a whole new life. I didn’t then realize it but that was a pivotal moment in the path my life would take. It was the start of my journey, the beginning of an entrepreneur’s heart for me; I never left my mother’s side after that day.

My dad wasn’t too happy about this news. It became a big conversation piece in the house. Providing for her family was important to mom. When dad didn’t have enough money, he pushed things to the wayside, but that wasn’t good enough for mom, so she set out to make her own money.

Although she tried to get him involved to support her on this journey from the start, dad didn’t jump in and take her seriously until she received the keys, went home, and told him she’d gotten her own salon.

For me, there were so many lessons learned in that experience that I still carry with me, and they irrevocably formed the woman I am today. I was glad mom was happy. The fact that she stood up to my dad and said, I’m going to do what I need to do for me and seeing her accomplish everything she spoke about was significant to me. I learned so much from her.

In the earlier parts of her journey, I resented my mom for a little bit because of the time she spent away from us, but it all came together when I saw all that she achieved. Then I understood what it meant. I understood what she was doing and fighting for, and I was proud of her. It made all the difference in the world.

The reality of the shift in our lives didn’t truly hit me until construction started at my mom’s salon. I was nine. My school was only a couple of blocks away from the salon, so I started going there after school when construction began. I was awestruck. It was going to be my mom’s salon! Her own business! I was so proud of her.

It was a big deal to walk there after school; my parents were helicopter parents. They did everything for us, including picking us up and dropping us off. When I was old enough to walk on my own to the salon, I felt like such a big girl.

Business kicked off soon after opening day. I loved being there. The ambiance seemed magical to me. Conversations buzzed in the air, laughter created a festive atmosphere, and the women who came there freely enjoyed each other’s company. Those women supported one another, no matter where they came from. The conversations were rich and inspiring, even when they spoke about their struggles. It felt like I was in a place filled with powerful women.

It was good for me to be in the salon with my mom because I didn’t get along with my father. We butted heads quite often. He was the tyrant dad who drilled my siblings and me to only focus on three things throughout our childhoods—school, church, and home. None of us were allowed to have friends. Our focus had to be on studying or rehearsing for church performances.

Being born in a Christian Haitian household meant a twelve-hour day at church on Sundays. There was early morning Sunday School followed by the afternoon church service. We would then go home, change, and return for the evening service. There were also times when our church family would serve dinner at church so that we wouldn’t have to go home.

I never really got involved at church until I was about nine years old, around the same time when my class projects were big hits, and my mom started her business. Church members knew I could sing from an early age but soon realized I was also a gifted event planner.

I began to work with our church ministry to organize, decorate, sell tickets, and ensure everything happened the way it should for our fundraising events. The church benefitted from my leadership in many ways, from pulling people together for events to actively engaging the church’s youth in wholesome activities. The youth department significantly contributed to my leadership growth. I became the leader of the youth ministry, church concerts, and choir director from as young as 12 years old.

There were times when I needed my space and a break. I looked forward to the holidays when my siblings and I could watch TV at home. My dad, however, sometimes thought otherwise. As the eldest, I was always punished for whatever my siblings and I did wrong, so he would subject me to working at my mom’s salon as my punishment. Sure, I liked being with my mom, but being forced to help in the salon this way took the pleasure out of the experience.

My days in the salon were spent mimicking hairstyles on the mannequin heads, sweeping, wiping the countertops, and cleaning the windows. The hairstylists would always tip me whenever I swept up after they were finished. Whenever I was going to the corner store for something, clients would ask me to pick things up for them and they’d tip me for my help.

At that point, I was earning $200 per week at 13 years old. The punishment became well worth it. My parents never gave my siblings or me an allowance because they provided everything we needed. Those tips were my first experience with having my own money. That incentivized me to keep going to the hair salon and help as much as possible. My mom even started tipping me for cleaning up the store. I was able to buy my own snacks and clothing. Being able to buy my own clothing was particularly important to me as a teenager because I didn’t like what my parents bought for me to wear.

A lightbulb went off in my head. I was making several trips a day to the corner store for clients. It made more sense for me to set up a little shop in the salon so that clients could have everything they needed only a few steps away. I pitched the idea to my mom, and she gave me the go-ahead to start my first business, so I did. I called it Tropical Fantasy.

It wasn’t only about selling products. I wanted my customers to experience a bit of the Caribbean each time they walked into my shop. Granted, my shop was just a little booth set up in the corner of the salon, but it was the best booth I had ever seen. Another design success from a budding entrepreneur! I made a lot of money selling products from that shop, and it was there that I also learned the actual value of networking.

The Internet didn’t exist at the time, so the only way I could connect with local businesses was to find them in the phone book’s Yellow Pages. For instance, I found a guy with excellent prices for signs and hired him to create a sign for my Tropical Fantasy store. We established a long-term relationship and even my parents hired him to do their signs. We recommended him to other people and so on.

I was too young at the time to realize I was building a solid network by simply calling business owners using the Yellow Pages. Those business connections would become the people I called when I created my first event planning company years later.

Tropical Fantasy was great, but I still wanted to do more in the salon. I was 15 years old when I got my first chance to touch a client’s hair. It was a summer afternoon, and the salon was packed. The hairstylists were working feverishly to get more women from the shampoo station to the styling chair and then out the door, but there were more people waiting by the minute.

I needed to do something, so I asked my mom if I could help with shampooing. One of the clients heard me and volunteered since she’d been waiting for so long. I thoroughly shampooed her hair, and then she