CJ Fox: I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I’ve always wanted to help people and find something that I can do both and be able to give back to my community.
I’ve done various things in my life. I opened a business when I was 21 years old. It was a bridal and formal wear shop that was named after my daughter and when I started to expand my family, I decided that I wanted to go back to school to become a teacher. So, I taught school for five years. I taught high school History in West Point and then I taught third through fifth grade Special Education in Madison.
That was a very rewarding time for me because of the situation that I came from as a child. I wanted to be able to inspire other kids and help them through a potentially vulnerable stage in their life. Not just through teaching, but just through being a mentor for them.
Five years was up on my license and I decided that I wasn’t going to go back to renew it. I wanted to do something a little bit more to be able help people that had a little more flexibility. At the time I was a single mom of three children and simply put, I couldn’t afford to teach anymore.
I was actually working about two or three jobs at the time and I was approached at Biaggi’s. Somebody actually overheard me say that I had just passed my insurance exam, which was a huge deal for me. They said, “You know what? We overheard you talk about this. We actually are with New York Life and I’d like to bring you in.” New York Life brought me in initially. I got licensed through them and then it felt like I was kind of on the right path in being able to continue to help people and have that flexibility and provide opportunities for my kids.
I’ve been doing that now for six years off and on. I’ve done some other things kind of in between. I’ve been a sales manager for an assisted living community.
It seems like all of these things are so vastly different, but the commonality is that I still get to work with people and help them achieve whatever goal it is that they have.