A Change of Season
2020 became a year of many changes for me and the business.
There are various people that have significantly changed my life over the years; Amy Dacyczyn of the Tightwad Gazette series, Barbara Sher author of “Refuse to Choose”, Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay and most recently Dave Ramsey. These books altered my life forever and pushed me in directions that helped form the woman that I am today.
I went through a divorce in 2012 and moved on to a difficult and challenging relationship in 2015 that taught me so many life lessons. I came out the other side somewhat broken all over but still I had the fight left inside me to carry on. Some personalities simply don’t work together. What stayed true to myself through all of this was my passion for saving history through the business of estate liquidation. It’s what carried me through during the difficulties. I spent hours alone in the warehouse showroom with boxes of people’s belongings. I would bring each item out, carefully unwrap them and wonder what these special things meant to the person that had owned them. In my own pain, I often cried wondering how my life would turn out. Through working with estates, you realize how quickly life passes. What would happen to mine? I held onto my business knowing I had visualized the idea and turned it into a reality. I financed it and I wanted to see it continue no matter what. I wasn’t going to lose it despite losing a part of myself.
Dave Ramsey is a financial guy who went through bankruptcy in his early 20’s and later came up with a system to get out of debt called the Baby Steps. After reading the Tightwad Gazette newsletter in my teens and the book series in my 20’s, I developed a relationship with money that created a feeling of safety inside of me. My mother was an excellent role model when it came to finances and taught me early on to live within my means. I lost that for awhile. I was always working too hard, a full 7 days a week and couldn’t understand where the money disappeared to. I spent so much of my savings building a business that was my life’s passion.
In January of 2018, I took my daughter to the airport where she was headed back to college in Seattle. We stopped at a bookshop in Walnut Creek and I discovered the book by Chris Hogan, Everyday Millionaires. In a life where I struggled to pay both business bills and personal rent, I guess I was reaching for a pie in the sky when I bought that book. Yet Chris Hogan led me to Dave Ramsey and Dave Ramsey eventually led me to financial freedom. The safer I felt, the better my decision making process became. The smarter my thinking became.
I made the choice to go solo with my business in the beginning of 2020. That way all moral choices were mine. I stood by integrity because that is how my father taught me to be.
Covid hit and the business in the middle of separation was shut down. Bills stopped being paid, inventory filled the warehouse and I spent hours healing and creating a magical vegetable garden. My best friend David, who I met through our warehouse sales as a customer, in some ways saved my life. I’m old fashion enough to say he became my night in shining armor. My dad, my two children and myself look up to him as our hero. Yes, it sounds a little like a Hallmark movie but I don’t mind. Sometimes when you are drowning, you need that hand to pull you out of the water and save you. Together we took reins of a business that was struggling through the Covid shutdown. More of my savings was used to pay all the debts as well as the growing legal bills to take full ownership of the company.
On 8. 8. 2020 David and I married and I became Selena Cate Green. Life became a bit of a fairy tale after years of struggling. My new husband was the perfect business partner. I can be at times a workaholic. I will push myself until a job is through. David was cut from the same cloth. All the sudden it’s as if I were cloned and he and I worked side by side with the same conviction and dedication. We laughed, we played and we enjoyed the work.
When I took full control of the company I owned the name Whitcomb and Cate Inc and all branding that went along with it. There is so much SEO attached to the name that I continued using it. After all I had personally invested so much money in starting the business and eventually taking it over. It’s a brand that our community recognized though. The business was brought back from debt to thriving with our most successful sale of all time in Windsor this past October. I debated about whether to change the name or not. After all the business consists of what’s in my heart and the work that I put into it every day. It’s the hours I spend at the warehouse staging sales, it’s the real estate ready clean up job I do at buy-outs, it’s the social media branding that I work on each week, it’s the dream of this business that originated in my early 20’s that came to fruition in my 40’s. David quickly became as much a part of Whitcomb and Cate as I was. He became the voice behind the phone that answered calls from potential clients and he became the front of house. His personality is warm and compassionate which resonated with clients. I could see that with my own eyes. He listened and heard what people were saying. I was delighted that he fit so perfectly into Whitcomb and Cate where I felt I had a weakness. I will admit that I am shy and somewhat introvert. I don’t even really enjoy the sale days. I enjoy working with inanimate objects. I actually crave the research process where I uncover the mystery of an item. David and I fit so well together with our strengths and weaknesses. We empowered each other to be our best self.
I love and adore my new husband that I decided, after watching a film on the law of attraction (The Secret), that I wanted to take a positive stance on our future. We are strong enough to hold this business up high on our own accord and we didn’t need an old name to do that any more. Out of respect for David and how hard he worked on rebuilding this business from the ashes, I am changing the name to reflect our work, our relationship and each other.
Green and Cate Inc.
A clean slate based in love, integrity and an adoration for preserving history.
It’s time to cut ties to the past and move forward with a positive spirit and light.
2021 will be a new year for us as we venture into our first full year of marriage, it’s where we rename our company to reflect our combined values, it’s where we change our model of the business in a time of an epidemic.
We most look forward to continuing to help our clients empty their homes and bring those items to our customers as an inexpensive alternative to retail shopping. Thank you again for all of your support during the last year. We greatly appreciate it.