Written by Etsuko Tsukagoshi.

Last Thursday, I attended the Six Figure Moms Club event, 3rd Annual Making the Most of Your Personal Strategy New Year Kickoff.  It was a great event.

I met and reconnected with so many women who share similar interests and aspirations, and I created my vision board while delicious food and wine were served.  I came home exhausted but happy, and told my husband that finding the Six Figure Moms Club was one of the best things that happened after we moved to San Diego.

Let me back up a little and introduce myself.  I’m Etsuko, a friend of Angie’s and a member of Six Figure Moms Club. I met Angie in September 2006 at the Six Figure Moms Club meeting about 6 weeks after my first son was born.

I work for a Japanese school as Executive Director.  I was really happy about my job at that time, partly because I just started working there in Nov 2005 shortly before I found out I was pregnant.   When I joined the SFMC, the job was still new, interesting and very challenging.   I was simply looking for other working mothers to talk to, about the certain challenges we all share. But while I kept coming back to the monthly meetings, something happened.  I believe what happened was that this past 2 years, I was shown, by Angie and other members of SFMC, that more is possible.  Before I met her, I never would have thought that I’d come to want to have my own business someday.

I worked for the non-profit sector all my life.  I worked for United Nations before I came to US and my goal after coming here was to “find a good job at a good non-profit organization”. I achieved that goal, which I am very grateful for. But I am ready for the next chapter of my life, which is to become a successful business owner, teaching a parenting course and coaching.

While gathering the thoughts to write this guest post, a phrase came to me that I have read somewhere. One of the Buddhist teachers said “When you come back from a walk in the woods early morning, you notice that the clothes you are wearing got moist because of the morning dew”. This means that you should be aware of the environment, that is to say, type of energy you put yourself in. Without your realizing, the people and the energy in the environment will start influencing your thoughts. This is exactly what happened.  When I first stepped into the SFMC meeting room, I didn’t fully realize that I’m putting myself in a highly supportive, inspiring, energetic group of women, who will plant the seed in me. I feel so fortunate to be in San Diego and have met Angie, and SFMC members.

Now, we are talking about bringing this SFMC to Tokyo – as I plan to move there in near future – but I feel like I can’t wait! Since last November, I teach a parenting class called Redirecting Children’s Behavior in Japanese. When I meet with the mothers with young kids in my class, apart from the parenting stuff, I have this urge to also talk about all the great things we are doing, such as creating vision boards. Maybe I’ll start SFMC for Japanese speaking mothers even before I go to Japan. What do you think, Angie??

 You can reach Etsuko at etsuko@rcbjapan.com for more information about her Japanese language RCB classes (and it sounds like Six Figure Moms Club in Japanese language coming soon )