Daily Inspiration: Meet Kirby Haines

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kirby Haines.

Hi Kirby, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory. 
AJA House was born out of my desire to have a “passive” income stream outside of my 9-5 corporate job. I was looking for a product on Amazon and couldn’t find one that met my needs and desired design, so I decided to make one! Fairly quickly, I learned that passive income isn’t really a thing (yes, the internet lies!) but I was already passionate about my product and the customer I was designing it for, so I decided the extra hours would be worth it and kept going! AJA House creates products and resources for the modern woman who is juggling a career, caring for a family, and maintaining all of the calendar magic and mental load that comes with that! 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My natural tendency is to do a lot of research and evaluate options before making a decision. I am fortunate that the research I did on my income stream and product was accurate, and it paid off in the sense that launching and sales have been relatively smooth. I know this isn’t the case for a lot of small business owners, so I am very grateful – but as I work to scale my business, there are ALWAYS obstacles and challenges. The biggest challenge that I had to overcome along the way was my mindset: capital money investment to produce the product (with no guarantees of return!), and that I am the ONLY one who is responsible for my success or failure. There will always be some type of hiccup that comes up in business, but the mindset that I’ve since adopted is sometimes you just have to pivot, and that it’s almost always figure-out-able. 

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My background is in Medical Imaging – I worked for 10 years as an MRI technologist. My current job is now in Healthcare IT, and I manage an awesome team of analysts who maintain software applications related to diagnostic medical imaging at a local hospital. When you go to the ER, and they take an x-ray, that image gets stored in an application that’s critical to the function of the entire hospital, all the way from the ER to surgery to your follow-up appointments. We manage several applications that help the clinical teams help the patient, and it’s highly rewarding!!!

I’m most proud of the fact that the work we do still connects us to the patient, and we have the ability and perspective to influence the direction and implementation of healthcare at a higher level. I think one of my greatest soft skills is using my clinical experience and understanding of technology to act as a liaison and translator between our clinical end users and the software analysts designing and testing the application. I’m detail-oriented, organized, persistent, and have a pretty high tolerance level for chaos (haha!) I’m fortunate to be able to rely on my colleagues and my team to help me fill in the gaps. 

What was your favorite childhood memory?
I grew up in a very small, rural town in Southern Colorado. My favorite memories as a child are all outdoors: riding horses through creeks, riding our bikes everywhere, chasing minnows in lakes, sunflower-lined dirt roads, playing in stacks of haybales, and pretending to camp out underneath trees in our backyard. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shopajahouse.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shopajahouse/

Image Credits
Tara Keator