September 22, 2007
A Real Life Inspiration for Any Entrepreneur
I have been reading about Ashley Quells on several different money blogs recently and I find her story very inspiring. She went from divorced parent family that was struggling for money to owning her million-dollar business and her own house at the age of 17. That’s pretty darn impressive if you ask me!
The Money Blog wrote a fantastic post in regards to it and those tips are very applicable to any small business owners or entrepreneurs. His tips resonate with me a lot when it comes to running my own staging business in the industry as a young single woman who didn’t have a lot of support from others or someone who didn’t have a very strong network that applies to my sphere of influences (come on, how many 20-year-olds need staging services?). I also love Ashley’s story because not only she is a woman, she is young. People often doubted my abilities when I first started because I looked very young and a woman. It was definitely tougher to do business.
Moreover, you can tell Ashley is really passionate about her hobby, which she then turned into a business, then into an expanding empire. I think My Money Blog’s observations are just right on the money (no puns intended) 
Enjoy his post here:
She grew up in a working-class household near Detroit, with divorced parents who argued about unpaid bills. At 14 years old, she had to ask her mom to buy an $8 domain name for her. Today, at 17, she owns her own 2-story house and is head of a company that earned over $1 million in revenue in 2006, with even more projected for 2007.
Who is she? Ashley Qualls, owner of WhateverLife.com, a MySpace-related website that get over 7 million unique visitors each month. That’s more than Oprah.com and CBS.com. She’s had a multi-page profile done in Fast Company magazine and has been written up in other local publications. I actually saw her story highlighted briefly while watching CNN.
This piqued my interest – I mean, she seems like a good web designer with decent graphic design skills. But good designers are everywhere now, she had to do something special in making her millions. What was it?
She piggy-backed onto the next big thing
Without MySpace, this whole thing might not have happened. I mean, I still do not understand the appeal of MySpace. It’s cluttered. Music plays automatically when you visit someone’s page. The blogging platform is confusing. Who wants to read 100 people saying “Thanks for the add!†or linking to the same 10 blinking images over and over?
Click here to read more about how Ashley banks her first million at The Money Blog
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