Photo Cred: Chameleon FX
My name is Arnya Martin Davis the CEO of LadiCEO, LLC. LadiCEO., LLC embodies, LadiCEO, a boutique brand management and consulting business, A Confident Ladi, a Confidence Coaching business, AM Live, a media production business and my modeling and acting career. LadiCEO is formerly Monroe’s Marketing and Business Image Consultants. Many people would ask my thoughts and advice as they started their businesses. This is how LadiCEO, was birthed in 2012. Everyone did not have hundreds of dollars to hire a firm. Some just needed someone to bounce ideas off of.
As a boutique business, I am able to keep my prices low and provide an intimate service to my clients. Since I am a consultant and my prices are not as high as others, my clients do the work that we discuss. On the management side, I actually manage their business and/or personal brand. I take on a certain number of clients under consulting and management, this allows me to give my the right amount of attention to my clients.
A Confident Ladi was birthed in 2021 due to so many women inquiring about my confidence. My goal is to help women understand that we can be confident in many other things can not so much in another area. That is normal but not to adopt the mood or attitude of the thing that they are less confident in. AM Live was birthed from creating my former podcast, Theories and Thoughts. I learned so much during that experience and wanted to help others as they create their podcast or media experience.
Through the years I have had to change the number of services that I provide. Many times, when someone starts a business, they are very aggressive and would like to do EVERYTHING that their mind can come up with. Some challenges were tailoring LadiCEO to what it needed to be. It is easy when working a fulltime job and owning a business is treating your business as a hobby. That has been a big challenge throughout the years. A challenge that is the biggest hurdle is due to my pricing are low and the client having to do the work, is the peanut gallery of opinions. Others become an expert when they know you are working with an expert. If people prefer to listen to others, I graciously bow out because everyone knows how to do something but has not done it themselves.
In business my greatest accomplishments are when I can see or hear the light bulb going off in my clients head and they say, I didn’t think about it that way. This is why you hire a professional.
In my personal life my greatest accomplishment is my son, Major. Major entered this world on May 25th. Being a women with PCOS, we hear all the time that you may not be able to have kids. I was diagnosed in 2010 and thought to myself, who will want a woman who can not bear children. Up until that point I had been on birth control since I was a teen due to an irregular cycle.
As I as approaching my late 30’s I got nervous and wanted to look into options to have kids. I did not have partner at the time but still wanted to know my options. At the age of 35 I decided to visit a fertility doctor for the second time to learn about freezing my eggs. My first visit was a consultation to understand PCOS. After my visit to freeze my eggs, I got discouraged because I was single. I didn’t want to go through the process alone. I thought to myself, I never wanted to be a single mother, I wanted a family unit. If I got pregnant then it is the Lord’s doing.
At the age of 40 I decided not to get my IUD reinserted, I wanted to give my body a break from birth control. If I was to get pregnant, this would be the time but on my own timing. I was not very sexually active so what are the odds and I will be super careful and use condoms. One year later imagine my surprise when I took a pregnancy test and found out that I was pregnant. I was sad during my early couple of months of pregnancy because I was not married and Major’s father and I were not in a relationship. When people ask about him, I don’t discuss him. I have nothing really to say about him. He gave me the most beautiful precious gift ever, although it wasn’t the way I thought it would be.
Being 41 and pregnant and due to deliver at 42 had its own challenges. Having PCOS added its own challenges as well. I was told that I could not gain more than 10 pounds during my pregnancy. I was told that I needed to lost to gain weight. My starting weight was 271. I lost about 10 pounds. I was on Metformin at the start of my pregnancy, and I had to monitor my blood sugar by sticking my finger. I got a dietitian at the request of my OB to help me find healthy choices and to push me to eat more. I then had to go to see an Endocrinologist to help with diabetes and a Perinatal to monitor my baby. I was borderline diabetic and high blood pressure prior to my pregnancy due to PCOS. I later decided to allow the Perinatal doctor to take over the monitoring of the diabetes, after she mentioned she can monitor it for me.
My induction was scheduled for my birthday because I would be 38 weeks. I was not going all the way to 40 weeks due to being high risk. By the end of my pregnancy, I was taking Metformin and 4 shots of insulin. I delivered 2 days after my 42nd birthday. He is my biggest accomplishment because honestly, he wasn’t supposed to be. My Endocrinologist and Perinatal both asked if I had help getting pregnant. My OB calls Major my miracle baby because most women with the risk that I had, don’t normally have the outcome that I did. I didn’t have any issues that were not “normal” throughout my pregnancy.
Since Major’s arrival my plans for the future have changed a bit. I am still working my business and I have a couple of clients. I am not taking anymore clients until November. I can be contacted at arnya@ladiceo.com and found at LadiCEO on all social media platforms.
My goal in business and life is to show woman can do and be anything they want to be. Yes, we can have it all, everyone’s all different. Prayer is a part of my business plan and I am flexible and open to change. That has been a great thing in business for me, just like me my business is yet becoming.
