Hazardous Waste, SCUBA Diving & Entrepreneurship: The Road to Becoming Cheryl

Hello Steemit community, I am so excited to be here!

I’m Cheryl Campbell and during the 34 years since I earned my degree in Marketing, I have been the Director of Regulatory Affairs at a hazardous waste facility; an Open Water SCUBA Instructor; the owner of a Custom Upholstery and Interior Decorating Firm; a Trainer in OSHA Safety; and a Marketing Consultant to small business owners. Today, I refer to myself as an online entrepreneur.

My path may seem a bit unconnected and even haphazard, but when you connect the dots, it tells a story of someone simply trying to figure out where they fit in, and who they are meant to be in this big beautiful thing we call life… it’s my journey to becoming Cheryl.

The Younger Years in Rural CT: Growing up on a family produce farm surrounded by 3 dairy farms was a bit lonely, but the perfect place for youthful contemplation.

Straddled with a speech disorder from my first word, I became painfully shy and kept mostly to myself which was not a difficult thing considering where I lived. I didn't mind though, growing up on a farm is awesome when you love the outdoors as much as I do.

Some of my earliest memories are riding with my aunt on the back of a Farmall feeding seedlings to this hungry contraption that placed them into the ground, forming these neat little rows. I also have wonderful memories of the tomato fights I had with my cousins while we were “helping “ to harvest the fields, and picking wild mushrooms with aunt Dolly in the fall.

When I hit my tween years my dad became involved with Providence College Basketball. We starting going to all of the games, both home and away. It was back in the day when Dave Gavitt coached and the players were the likes of Ernie DiGregorio, Marvin Barnes and Kevin Stacom.

I often sat with the players on long flights across the country, chatting away like they had nothing better to do. Eventually they got in the habit of tossing books into my lap in the hopes of shutting me up long enough for them to study in peace and quiet.

They had me reading the likes of John Paul Sartre at the ripe old age of 11!

I’ll always be grateful, because it nurtured my love of learning and started me on a journey of self discovery, opening my mind to the endless opportunities that life sends our way.

Twists & Turns, Careers & Hobbies That Shaped Me Along The Way

Hazardous Waste & Spill Control

It was 1982 and I was fresh out of college with my shiny new marketing degree when I was approached to manage and plan a 4 day international Hazardous Materials and Spill Control Conference.  With no experience to pull off something like that, I chose to accept the challenge anyway.  What a game changer!

It opened a door into the Regulatory world of HazMat. It was a relatively new field back then, and I was one of the first females in the industry here in CT. Heck, a few years into it, I spoke at an ILTA conference in Texas where there was only a handful of woman among a 1000 attendees...

And I was THE ONLY FEMALE SPEAKER!

Scary stuff. Shaking in your boots scary, since it was my first speaking gig and the memories of being ridiculed for that speech disorder I mentioned earlier were always near the surface. Glad to report that all the years of speech therapy paid off :)

Over the next several years I went on to become the Regulatory Director for a Hazardous Waste Facility and continued to run conferences for a variety of environmental groups I volunteered for.

PADI SCUBA Instructor

During the HazMat years a friend asked me to go on a diving trip to the Caymans so I decided to get certified for the trip.  I loved the sport so much I became a “Pro” within the year, first as a PADI divemaster and then a PADI OWSI.

Can you say obsessed? That was me, totally and completely obsessed with diving.  OMG I can write a book about the beauty of the underwater world… and the dangers. Take a look at the pic above - can you guess what kind of dive that one was?

So many stories to tell. Underwater and topside, life lessons were thrown at me with every dive.

I learned to handle just about any type of crisis and I discovered that people will always surprise you. Gruff tough guys that were really teddy bears.... then there was the sweet young twentysomething that sued me for SAVING her life. Go figure.

Private Parties and Wedding Cakes

Some may call cooking a hobby, for me, it's a passion. I started cooking when I was very young and throughout the years it's played a big role in my life. I have hosted anniversary parties, bridal showers and dinner parties for as many as 150 guests. I've taught cooking classes just for the fun of it and have made a few wedding cakes for friends. I'll never forget how nervous I was transporting my first wedding cake to the reception venue for my stepson's mom!

Then, somewhere around 2011, I started experimenting with what it took to get on the Amazon Bestseller List. My previous two books had been about marketing, but since I had a trip to Italy planned for later in the year I decided to write and publish "the Italian Series" of cookbooks.

All four cookbooks made it to the #1 spot in their category, staying there for a brief, but wonderful, day or two. Yup, I managed to figure out how to get them there, just not how to keep them there.

Ciao Amazon, nulla è per sempre!

My Gift to You

They’re not for sale anymore but if you would like to download a copy of my first one, just click here and save it to your desktop. If you do, be sure to try my Scungilli Salad with Shrimp and Calamari, it’s one of my favorites!

Community Work

I believe strongly in giving back to community. I’ve been a member of Lions International for over 20 years and spent the last 15 fundraising for my local club while mentoring the awesome kids of the DHHS Leo Club.

Recently I had to put that on hold because of my work with Madison Community Services Inc. MCS is a non-profit here in town that I run. We provide numerous programs for adults and kids including a food pantry that distributes over 3500 pounds of food every Wednesday. Not bad for an all volunteer organization that’s 100% privately funded.

Even though sometimes it feels like a full-time job, I’m so proud of everyone that works so hard to make life better for our neighbors in need.

Custom Upholstery and Interior Decorating

It was 1999 when I officially incorporated Four Winds South and became a small business owner. A few years earlier I stood up in the middle of a board meeting and announced I was resigning from a large environmental group I co-founded. That led to my walking away from my career in the HazMat field altogether.

It was unplanned, but not unexpected. The hazmat world was changing, and I couldn’t take the bullshit and underhandedness that went along with it. PLUS, I really didn’t like the person I was becoming. You definitely don't want to be around me when I'm stressed out, talk about scary!

1997 found me trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Then one day life threw me a little curve via an unusual circumstance and it resulted in me having the opportunity to learn custom upholstery from an old timer.

I went from a high profile, high paying job to working for less than minimum wage as an apprentice to a trade. So call me crazy. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Late 1999 found us moving to where we live now and we built a shop in the lower level of our barn. Our property had been called "Farm of Four Winds" for over a century, so we celebrated the changing of the millennium by forming a LLC and Four Winds Custom Upholstery was born. I spent the next several years getting great satisfaction breathing new life into old furniture.

Our Rescue Dogs

Blu, our first rescue dog, was such a love, we went on to adopt 3 more within the next ten months (there’s that obsessive behavior again; I’m seeing a trend here). Our pups have been my teacher in more life lessons than you can possibly imagine. One in particular was not only a life lesson it was life changing for me. I could write another book about that alone.

Online Entrepreneur

I built my first website in 2004 for the upholstery shop and started to promote my business more and more online. Within a few years I had several affiliate sites and was so invested in the crazy world of online marketing I shut down the shop and switched careers once again. I also changed the name of our LLC from Four Winds South to 4 Winds of Change and never looked back.

Since I love to share what I know, I started to speak and write about online marketing, reaching out to local businesses owners and women entrepreneurs alike.

Today, I have several online properties in a variety of niches, all monetized in different ways; I dabble in e-commerce by importing an awesome chemical free product from Morocco and sourcing a BBQ Cooking Mat here in the states, selling both on Amazon; I also publish a digital magazine about Internet Marketing.

Life is pretty darn good, but I struggle everyday with how I can do better and be better.

I’m still striving to become the Cheryl that I know I am meant to be: wife and mother; teacher and student; speaker and author; mentor and leader. Some of these things I have achieved, some I am still aspiring to become, yet I love the person I am today.

One thing I know for sure is that at 56 years young, I’m not yet done becoming Cheryl.

It’s good to be here with you on Steemit and I’m looking forward to learning things from you and excited to share the skills & life lessons I have learned along the way.

Please say hello in the comments below and let me know what you would like to talk about!