On this episode I speak to Julie Vandingenen, a Senior Sales Consultant at Google. Julie is also the founder of Lovingly Box, a passion project and business that sells care packages with an aim to support loved ones going through difficult situations. These include break ups, illness, depression and bereavement.
Julie was inspired to start this business, in 2017, after she lost her fiancé to cancer. Julie composes Lovingly Box to contain some of the items that made her days a little easier, a little more bright, and a little less lonely.
Initially, I’d intended for this episode to be all about starting a side hustle while working full time. After all, Julie started her business and has been running it while excelling in a demanding role at Google. And while this episode is a must-listen for anyone with passion project ideas, it’s also relevant for anyone in hearing about building resilience through challenging seasons and finding purpose through pain.
Career Queens Podcast is a business podcast that spotlights career conversations with millennial women making moves in tech.
Hear how Julie started her passion project while working full time
Quotes from the episode
I couldn’t allow all that pain, and all that sadness and experience… just be there without me doing something with it. So, in some way, I was like… I’ll just [turn it into this passion project]. So it was a way of coping through my grief. And so I started a company.
After Louie had cancer… we got flowers. It’s amazing that people do that but I was thinking, ‘what’s something else that you can do for someone when they’re sick… grieving, or… just in a really bad stage in their life… that’s not flowers?’
If you’re interested in starting a passion project, you may want to check out a blog post I wrote about starting Career Queens Podcast.
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