About
I’ve been creating websites since 1996. My introduction to the Internet was my first semester at Brigham Young University (BYU) when I took an intro to technology class as a requirement for the English Teaching degree I was pursuing. I spent 10 hours to make a one page site. I was hooked. I used view source to figure out how to do all the “cool things,” like flashing text, scrolling text, frames, auto-start midi music, counters, animated backgrounds–well okay it wasn’t that bad, but let’s just hope I’ve come along way since then.
While job hunting in the newspaper for my boyfriend at the time, I came across an ad to create web pages for Galaxy Mall starting at $6.00/hour. I jumped for it. I took a pay cut from Target and started working there part time. It was there that I learned about creating shopping carts, selling on the Internet, and really learned HTML. That job then led to a higher paying one at iMall, doing the same thing of creating storefront websites. After a year of working for iMall, we were bought out by Excite.com. It was great to be a part of something so well recognized. Now days people probably have no idea what Excite, Altavista, and Lycos are. There was no Google and the top dog was Yahoo! I remember how cool it was to be able to get two links in Yahoo! for LDSTalk.com. Back then every site in Yahoo! was selected by a real person. It could take months or years to get in. Most sites never got in.
During this time I continued to build by own sites. I created several LDS related sites, including LDSTalk.com, ChatLDS.com, and LDSUK.com, none of the sites are in operation today, other than LDSTalk which is now LDS.net. While working for Excite I started to get more into graphic design. I taught myself Photoshop and Flash and started creating shopping carts in Flash.
I married John in May 2000 and became Major Accounts Manager at Excite. A year later, Excite, which was now Excite@Home, fell victim along many other Internet companies to the dot-com bubble burst. I was out of work and decided to pursue my own business. I started up my own company doing web design and became a pro at selling on eBay and Amazon. I spent some time doing testing for online games and continued to develop LDSTalk.com which had been steadily growing in membership since it’s inception.
During this time I also began to teach myself how to create DVDs. I took all of my families home movies and transferred them to DVD. I spent a lot of time developing my Photoshop skills and creating artwork for the case and DVD. Once I had finished the family videos, I started up my own business called DVD Memories. To date I’ve created over 1000 DVDs with killer menus and label/case artwork. My biggest hits were our Christmas Newsletter and second son’s birth announcement on DVD. I never thought I’d have people ask to be added to our mailing list for family announcements.
In 2007, More Good Foundation came calling. They are a non-profit that helps Mormons (common name for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) share their beliefs online. MGF wanted LDSTalk.com. After finding out more about their mission, I was willing to sell it to them. After they got LDSTalk.com, they then wanted me to come on board and run the community sites. I jumped at the chance. I knew it was an opportunity of a life time creating websites for something so important.
First thing I did with MGF was develop LDS.net with the membership of LDSTalk. I then have gone on to create and design sites like Christ.org, MormonMusic.org, MormonBeliefs.org, MormonPreparedness.com, MeetMormonMissionaries.com and MormonBloggers.com. I maintain and have built hundreds of websites and dozens of video channels, in over 10 languages. I’ve created several highly viewed videos in YouTube and spend a lot of time training and creating screencasts for translators and writers. In the beginning of 2009 I become Vice President of Technology. Working for More Good Foundation has definitely been the most rewarding work I have ever done.
John and I will be celebrating our ninth wedding anniversary on May 6, 2009. We have two amazing boys. Our favorite thing to do is spend time together as a family. We’re also huge board game geeks and have game nights with friends at least once every two weeks. I love to cook and watch TV shows with John. I’m sure we’d drive anyone nuts to watch with, because we tend to hit pause on the DVR and discuss what is going on and what we think will happen next.
I just got into selling Scentsy. In someways I think I’m completely nuts to pick up one more endeavor, but I don’t plan on spending that much time on it. I really just love the product and want to get it cheap. I know there is that entrepreneurial side of me that is just never going to be satisfied unless I’m doing some kind of business on my own.