Friday Spotlight: Stacy Fiske, 8 years retired from the corporate world and counting…

Friday Spotlight: Stacy Fiske, 8 years retired from the corporate world and counting…

In 2008, I found myself an unemployed single mother of a one year old daughter, requiring a substantial six figure income. My story started years before when I graduated from the University of San Diego with a Bachelor of Accountancy and began my career as an auditor with KPMG LLP. I spent six years at KPMG, during which I became a CPA and advanced to a management role serving retail and finance clients. I then spent the next 6 years at HSBC Auto Finance where I continued to climb the corporate ladder in a variety of roles and departments including fraud risk management, project and demand management, and product development. I spent my last two years at HSBC as the VP and Director of Product Development responsible for $6 billion per year in new originations. Throughout my 12 years at KPMG and HSBC, my primary focus was to be a top performer and progress through higher levels of management.

However, after 6 years, HSBC decided to close down their Auto Finance operations in the United States due to the struggling financial market and the US economy. In many ways, I am thankful for the turn of events at HSBC because it gave me the opportunity to re-evaluate the priorities in my life. I decided that the most important aspect of my next career was that it needed to be flexible enough to allow me to spend more time with my daughter and to be present for every important (no matter how small) milestone in her life. Because I had become accustomed to a substantial six figure income (and had the related mortgage and expenditures associated with that previous income), I knew that I needed to find an opportunity that would not only allow flexibility and control of my schedule, but also the opportunity to earn significant income. That is when I decided to build my own business.