A rare look into the other side of my life with Dan – sans leopard and the cat ears!

Many eons ago in an uncivilized world, I had another life. A life that involved cats, but only in the sense they were beloved household family members and I had a different job. A job that entailed executive administrative and marketing work, but it was long before AOL dialup was introduced to the mainstream public, emails, iPhones, Internet, Google, blogs, and Facebook. Thankfully I did live in a world with running water, electricity, cars, air conditioning, televisions, telephones with long black cords, and computers with the ability to create endless excel spreadsheets to save on what was called a “floppy disk,” or I don’t know how I would have survived under such archaic conditions…

I worked for a body armor manufacturer back then and it was also then that I met Dan for the first time in 1999. I happened to be married at the time and our relationship was strictly one of co-workers and I did not give it much thought other than that. Completely unrelated to Dan, I went through a divorce in 2003 and it was shortly after that time that we realized we had a great friendship developing and started dating. Eventually we became engaged, he moved in, 8 cats later, we have been an inseparable team ever since.

While you know Dan for his stunning photos of the Zee/Zoey gang and the incredible videos he does of them interacting, he is a brilliantly creative man outside of that and has a marketing background a mile long of successfully branding and positioning companies to unprecedented levels. When he and I were both laid off in 2009 on the same day, from the same company (another armor company), we dabbled with the idea of starting our own marketing company, but the reality of an upstart hit us hard and we were forced to find outside employment to make ends meet.

Well, as happens in life, times have changed again and we have decided we really want to make a go of our talents and have taken the plunge to start our own marketing and consulting company called Gold Leaf Strategies, LLC. We have combined our 30 plus collective years of marketing, administrative, and advertising talents with the simple goal and premise of developing and implementing powerful marketing and advertising solutions across an ever-changing range of marketing channels and media to deliver maximum results for our clients. We think it’s incredibly exciting, but here’s where it can get even more exciting… or at least I hope so.

As you well know, making the world a better place for cats and animals is my true calling and anything I can do to help is a joy for me. As a way of giving back to the animal advocacy community, we are pleased to offer a referral incentive program called “Referrals for Rescues” and it really is quite simple. For any prospective client that you might know who could use our services that you refer to us, any income that is generated in the first 6 months, we will donate 10% of the profits to a rescue or shelter of your choice. There are no strings attached. No expiration dates. Nothing complicated. We welcome business from any genre – from new upstarts to established businesses looking for a new and fresh image. We are trying to build our business and are quite proud of what we do, but we also want to give back in ways that are most meaningful to us and this is our way of doing that.

Please take a look at our website to see some of the projects we have worked on throughout the years so that you can become familiar with the quality of our work and our integrated marketing style. We realize you might not know someone right off the top of your head and that’s fine. All we can ask is that if somewhere down the road, if an opportunity pops up that you think would be a good project for us, please keep us in mind with the understanding that you would be able to help out a rescue or shelter at the same time!

Thank you all for listening, I know this isn’t my typical Zee/Zoey type of post, but if we can make a go of it, it really is all about Zee and Zoey because all I’ve ever wanted is the ability to live my life with a passion for what I care about, which happens to be helping cats and immersing my talents into a venue that is best suited for my creative personality. As I said last week, it’s time to think like a cat. The only way I will truly know if the grass is actually greener on the other side, is if I dare to believe in myself and take a look.

Thank you again all and have a wonderful weekend.