Do you live a purposeful life? Do you consciously make decisions based on your purpose? Are you aware that you are more powerful with purpose?

I've lived an interesting life. Like many entrepreneurs I have gone from having an idea to seeing it through, having another idea and seeing it fall in a heap and then the momentum of building a business to heights that you actually have never imagined.

"The new girl is always prettier than the girl you took to the dance" Canadian-born Australian entrepreneur Jack Cowin once told me when I first decided to expand internationally. As my mentor he was right, and though I listened at the time, I did it anyway. 

In the end, we were both right. Expanding to the United States was singularly the bravest thing I ever did, and it has set me up for profitability in the company in US dollars while the Australian dollar remains weak. Our offices make money and it has been an absolutely amazing journey. I have met some phenomenal people, all of whom have added to my life.

It also lead to a bit of "excitement" in my life. I was at a stage where I needed something to lift my game and expanding into the US market did exactly that. 

In the past few years I have become an exporter of marketing services. I became one a few years back when I decided to expand Marketing Eye into new markets. The most suitable market after much research was America, so I did what any buddying entrepreneur would do and I completed a market research study to make sure that if I started a business there, it was not set up to fail. Market research is crucial! 

A mixture of gut instincts, business acumen, networks and of course a business model that no-one else had, gave us a head start. I also chose a city where the cost of setup was low, the Australian dollar was sitting pretty at $1.06 to every American dollar, and where few people knew who I was.

December was a short month in the office; only two weeks in length, yet it produced the most sales on record. We surpassed our sales forecast by 62 percent in the first week, and finished off hard with two contracts coming in from Geelong Grammar and Parramatta City Council on the last day in the office.

Internationally, we are in a fast-growth phases and this holiday has been spent working out how we will accomodate the extra sales and at the same time keep moving forward, leveraging our unique positioning. 

We now have three inside sales executives in the company, with that set to double by the end of the first quarter next year. This investment has paid dividends as it allows marketing managers to focus on their jobs and not be tied down by talking to prospects that are warm and not hot. They no longer put together the proposals or the contracts, which are all done by our well trained inside sales executives.

 When I started Marketing Eye more than 9 years ago, I had a vision to be the world's best small business marketing firm. I dreamt that I would open offices all over the world that would sell marketing services backed by sophisticated technology platforms, media and education, to businesses that had revenues of $1 million to $200 million.

Primarily, the companies that would be ideal clients were one's that were entrepreneur-led, like me, and who had a dream to significantly grow their businesses and mostly be industry game-changers - although the latter wasn't exactly necessary.

In the early days, we had hurdles. The first was our own mind-set of being use to working with funded startups or medium to large corporations and shifting the way we interacted, engaged and nurtured our clients to success to cater for burgeoning SMB market.

It took time. More time than I ever imagined.