How I recycled my life by helping others recycle theirs!

Let’s face it life can suck at times, reading others constant Facebook posts of their perfect families, perfect relations, and perfect lives we all know is not reality for most people. Life is a constant stream of ups, downs, plateaus and curve balls for the majority of mankind. I had spent the majority of my adult life married 15 years of it, shackled to my children home and husband. During which I had 3 children and had like a lot of women do, given up my career, to stay home and raise my children. I felt fortunate to get to stay home to raise my children, they are the children they are because of the time energy effort I was able to put into them. What I wasn’t really prepared for though was what happens when you find yourself divorced and by human resource department standards unemployable. Over educated lacking experience but with a giant 12 year work gap.
How did I handle this? Well I could lie and say I was the poster child for being strong and holding it all together but the truth is, divorce will bring Hercules to his knees. I was a mess, a crying, depressed couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t make a plan, non-eating, nonfunctioning disaster zone. Looking back I truly don’t know how I survived those months and years. My divorce was probably on the extreme side of messy, but no divorce is a good experience. In one of the darkest weeks, of the darkest year I had a dream. I literally dreamt that I couldn’t sell my engagement ring, not at a jeweler’s or pawn shop and I actually within my dream said “oh well I will just sell my ring and other peoples on my own website called Dreamsrecycled.com”. Upon awaking, I googled the name and saw surprisingly it was for sale. 13 days later I had incorporated my company and retained web designer to build, the first online marketplace specializing in selling items from divorces.

I really wasn’t particularly brilliant through the process of going from stay at home mom to tech start up Queen, but I worked hard, I daily educated myself, taught myself through the internet, all the working parts I felt I needed knowledge on, e-commerce, marketing, branding, SEO, social media, web traffic, google analytics I learnt it all, mostly at 1am while kids slept and I could focus. What I also started to do was research divorce. Divorce doesn’t really seem like a business but it is in fact a giant of an industry, 50 billion dollar a year giant in USA alone. I also started to see just how many people divorce effects, on average 98k a week who get divorced. Then I started to wonder why there is no website for this well-deserved community? No one in America can name a divorce website, but they can probably name 2-3 wedding ones. It quickly became a kind of obsession of mine, looking at divorce info connecting with divorced and divorcing people. Asking them for their input and listening to their tales of tears and triumph.
When the website launched I was unbelievably lucky my story was aired on Fox News and syndicated throughout America quickly I was in Huffington Post and numerous other outlets and I realized something amazing that my dream, a subconscious thought, I must have been having was correct in the business world, that if I needed this kind of website that then there are millions of other people like me who feel lost, lonely, and are in need of practical information, a place to practically sell off your items and connect with others.
Over the course of the rest of the first year I was contacted by thousands of men and women who simply wanted to share their stories and connect with me, some simple thanked me for inspiring them to recycle their lives after divorce. I love connecting with my users but what was the biggest miracle of that first year was that inadvertently, as I daily helped in a small way to recycle other people’s lives my life was being recycled also. My company gave me a career, a purpose a reason to get out of bed, a reason to connect, talk, and share with others. Each person I helped propelled me to make the website bigger and better, each story I heard inspired me to keep going because of course like everything in life and business, it has its ups and downs. My website inspired me to date again, how could I blog about moving on if I personally wasn’t attempting too. It made me realize I wasn’t alone, not even in my most dismal divorce moments, I was one of thousands of people feeling the same hopelessness frustrations and fears. I want now more than anything that Dreamsrecycled.com goes on to help as many more people sell off their items, move on and get support as possible. I think how much easier my divorce could have been if I had had a place to go to get practical advice in an upbeat positive environment.
My story may not be the norm in business, I had no tech experience, no start up knowledge, but it does show that if I can do it- anyone can, believe in your product, be passionate about it. Passion breeds passion into others who work with you. Most of all though when you ever hear anyone tell you can’t do something or won’t ever be able to make it on your own, feel free to stick your tongue out at them and say “You Just Watch Me!” Where there is a will there is always a way.

Tiffany Beverlin
Founder/CEO DreamsRecycled.com

tiffany@dreamsrecycled.com