What is this?

When I was a little girl growing up in rural Iowa, I wanted to be a radio star. It's important to dream big.

I made it all the way to the airwaves of Minneapolis, which isn't bad, but eventually life (and ownership deregulation) overtook my aspirations and I started working straight jobs. I'd been writing for publication since the age of 11, when Highlights Magazine published a poem I'd submitted, so I kept freelancing all along: music features, celebrity interviews, trends and the occasional thought piece. I loved to tell stories but I wasn't a great journalist; by the standards of real journalists, I'm sure I'm still not.

Now straight work is steady income, and I've always enjoyed making money. At my peak I was earning over six figures, and I won't lie, I loved it a lot. I got pretty used to it, in fact, and thought I could be happy for the rest of my life traveling, paying my bills on time and spending $300 at Target without batting an eye (after all, is there anything you can buy at Target that you don't need?). But at 34 I was confronted with a few hard truths about myself:

• I didn't like corporate America
• Corporate America didn't like me
• I wasn't getting any younger, so...
• If I was going to try something big, starting sooner would be better than later.

So I did. In late 2002 I cashed in my tanking 401k and went halvesies on an an existing tiny tabloid monthly and a disadvantaged coffee shop with a crazy Persian genius named Mehrdad. In hindsight, it was absolutely the dumbest thing I've ever done. But it turned out to be a great decision and today we employ a handful of people, pay an unfair amount of taxes and otherwise positively contribute to society on our own terms - as the owners and publishers of VITAL Source Magazine in Milwaukee.

We recently sold the cafe for a fair price; the magazine and its revenue tributaries are thriving. I've learned an unbelievable amount about running what can still only be classified as a micro-business and I think some of my experiences might be interesting (or maybe even helpful at times) to other people who either are or think they would like to be in my position.

This blog is called Five Indians because that's the size of my staff. Together, we create, edit, design, sell ads for, print and distribute a city-wide magazine that just celebrated its sixth anniversary. We started in the back of the coffee shop, surrounded by crates of produce and sharing computers. Now we own a couple of fleet vans and have real offices with warehouse space and a loading dock. Significantly, I've held on to my house and am raising a great kid.

That's a little about me. Next time it's all about business.