Born and raised in Pakenham, I got my first job at 14 years old in the rental room at Mount Pakenham. Since this was a seasonal position, I needed somewhere to work in the summer. Then our town’s long-running ice cream shop went up for sale. My dad spent his whole life working all kinds of odd jobs from Scout Leader to Food and Beverage Manager at a country club. Scoops Ice Cream was his next adventure—and my next job! I worked there all through high school and made a few special appearances to help out while in college.

A new brewery opened up just outside of town and wanted to collaborate with Scoops to make a beer ice cream. Almost done with my first year of advertising at Algonquin College, I’d gotten practice making posters and signage so they let me design a sign for them to put up at Scoops! As you’ll see, the sign was nothing special, but it was this big tangible thing that I made and it was on display to my community helping a local business get word out about their exciting new product. And that was really cool.

After graduating in May of 2018, I got my first job in marketing in June with the City of Ottawa. My friend had actually interviewed for the position but realized it was a much better fit for me and put me up for it. It was part-time doing content creation for the recreation and culture department, as well as performing regular updates to Ottawa.ca. Since I had to help with web requests from recreation facilities, I had to work some nights and weekends. I split the time with another part-time worker. This also made it a hybrid position before it became popularized by COVID. The best part? There was another Laura on the team, so they asked me if I had a nickname. I did not, so they said to pick one.

The City of Ottawa hadn’t really invested in their social media before, so there were no frameworks or processes in place when I showed up. Ottawa Rec and Culture was only on Facebook and X (Twitter at the time). Once I developed a regular content schedule and convinced them we had the capacity to start Instagram pages for English and French accounts, as well as Meridian Theatre and Shenkman Arts Centre, the pandemic became an emergency and we all had our last day in the office.

Funnily enough, this was actually where I hit my stride in this position. They bumped me up to 30 hours a week and later gave me a different job on paper just so they could give me a raise. We were relying heavily on social media to stay connected to our community and I was given more and more responsibility. I was seeing our channels grow and watching my ideas get executed. I was regularly presenting social media metrics and trends to the team. I helped develop our team’s first-ever social media strategy document. I even started doing the occasional mental health presentation to build up that culture within our team.

Around the four-year mark in this position, everything started to lose its lustre. As we tried to continue growing and be “cutting-edge” ideas were trapped in the oh-so-many levels of approval. I lost my spot in French training since it wasn’t mandatory for my position—all while being reminded I couldn’t get on salary without being bilingual. I stopped learning new things and just felt stretched and trapped. I had squeezed every ounce of learning I could get out of this job. I loved the people I worked with; we were even nominated for the 2022 One City One Team City Manager’s Award for working collaboratively as a team.

It eventually came down to one thing—my potential is capped within an organization. My potential is infinite if I build something of my own. So after five years with the Marketing Communications Unit at the City of Ottawa, I quit.

It was now June of 2023. At the time I had one client and had just onboarded a second one. Plus, the second client knew someone else who would likely hire me as well. With these three clients, I felt like I was in a good enough position to go full-time with my business.

Within that first month of being out on my own Client One said there was a misunderstanding and could only pay half of what I was expecting every month. Client Two fell through and Client Three ghosted me. This was going to be harder than I expected.

I got to work on refreshing my online presence and setting up a bookkeeping and time-tracking system for myself. Come September the client who ghosted me finally got back in touch, fulfilled my invoice, and we got back to work on her business and on a client of hers as well. Plus, my parents had just met a business owner who needed help with digital marketing and talked me up! Even with the mishaps and another client refusing to pay for a month’s worth of work, things were starting to look up.

The first half of 2024 I was so focused on my fitness journey I let my business take a back seat out of fear of failing. When I turned 27 in July I wanted to reset and really try. Not just doing good work with my clients, but working to find new clients and learn new skills. Things were slow, and I got burnt out in the fall—not from working so hard on my business, but rather from the stress of it all. I felt isolated working from home all alone. Once again, the universe gave me another opportunity.

I had sent a cold email to a local business owner who turned out to know my mom, and while she didn’t need marketing her sister did! Then at the start of 2025, the little brother of my childhood best friend reached out because he needed help with marketing his new business. It felt like luck every time an opportunity seemed to fall in my lap when I needed it most; a sign from the universe. But really, it was the work I put in to make myself and my business known so people in my network could find me. It also helped that my mom had my back because sure enough, I got another client through her network. Thanks, mom.