Entrepreneurship – Page 3 – Coastal Carolina Soap Blog

Making the Change, pt. 3

You can read the first part of this saga here, and the second part here.

I was sitting at the beach, and I’d lucked out on a bench swing overlooking the ocean. The air was nippy (it was April), the water was a beautiful greenish blue, the sky was a crystal clear gradient blue, and the wind whispered through the sea oats on the dunes. I closed my eyes and allowed my other senses to study my environment. My mind went back to countless beach days – warm beach, friendly kids for the girls to play with, sand in the bathing suit (hey, it happens), sunscreen. And there it was. I would make soaps that capture by scent my memories and associations of various North Carolina beaches, and this would be my niche.

I already had been making one soap, Crystal Coast Morning, that was inspired by wonderful memories of waking up at Emerald Isle in the late autumn (think early December) when the air is clean and brisk and the beach is silent but for the waves and breezes. Kure Beach is kissed with a bit of sunscreen and a little sand. Outer Banks is wild and primitive – sudden storms, cedar-sided houses, the ghosts of pirates. And Ocean Isle has a hint of fruity drink (with an umbrella, of course) served ocean-side.

These four soaps form the heart of my new niche. A surprise gift of 5 pounds of Bolivian pink sand were the inspiration behind a new type of salt scrub, also in these fabulous scents (though, being a “man scent,” Outer Banks isn’t yet available in salt scrub). You know how your skin feels after you’ve been at the beach? That fine layer of sand exfoliates your skin as you wash it off. Then you wash off all the sunscreen and salt, slathering on the lotion afterwards, and you feel sun-kissed, moisturized, and completely luxurious. That’s what Bolivian Pink Sea Salt Scrub does for your skin.

From my niche came my conception of my ideal customer. It was the oddest thing. I was transferring soaps from table to rack late one night before bed, and I started talking to her in my mind. In a flash, my ideal customer came to me, and I knew everything about her. Experts put out worksheets to help businesses identify their ideal customer, but I kept getting stuck when I’d do them. Apparently, though, at 11:00 while I’m doing mindless tasks, I can come up with lots.

Anyway, moving on… (I just get really excited about my new products, if you couldn’t tell!) We’re moving forward on this rebrand, right? I had the blessing of 1 1/2 weeks without the girls to make products, take pictures, talk to my web developer. Things were looking good! I would take a few pictures a day as soaps cured and were close to being ready for sale. My web developer and I worked hard, troubleshooting and setting things in place. The launch date was 1 June, and I was trusting him to be working his coding magic behind the scenes while I dealt with the front-end and administrative tasks.

Then another one of those screeching halts came at the end of May. My husband and I both lost two people close to us – his mentor/friend and my grandmother. My work time was then pushed into traveling, and I pushed the launch for the following Monday, giving us the weekend for final tweaks and adjustments. I wasn’t hearing anything much from my developer, so I took deep breaths and trusted that all was going fine on his end. Then Monday comes. And Monday goes. No website, and nothing at all from my developer. It’s like he’d dropped off the face of the earth. Panic ensued. If this site was going to be ready for the grand new business launch, I was (a) going to have to build it myself, or (b) pay someone big bucks to build it for me. I knew I couldn’t afford option B, so A it was.

I started with my shopping cart, a trusted one that I’d used for years with my old site. I was familiar with the admin, was pretty comfortable navigating the cpanel, and I was ready to roll. The first problem hits. No big. I go to the support forums, find the solution, fix the problem, roll on. The next problem crops up. Same thing. By the third problem, I had figured out I was in over my head and started exploring other shopping carts. Getting started and through the first three problems took me… probably about 20 hours to deal with, and I hadn’t gotten very far at all. I found a new shopping cart, scrapped those twenty hours’ worth of work, installed the new cart, and after about another six hours’ work, had a rough but working website. Score one for the not-developer!

Several more hours, messages between the shop’s developer and me, even more hours, and the site was done and ready to launch a little over a week later. Given that website development really isn’t my forte’ at all, I really have to be proud of the fact that the launch was only delayed by two weeks, and for the most part, I built my site by myself (though again, with valuable help from the template developer’s team and my own friend Bobby). My web developer is still MIA.

Even while all that was going on, I ordered note cards, postcards, and business cards. I invested time in sending personal notes to some of my customers. I set up email addresses… And to my surprise, last Monday, one of my customers who received one of those notes talked about it in her own blog. You can read about that here.

So, that was pretty much my rebrand, start to present. There’s so much minutiae to doing this – opening new accounts, changing account information on websites, making it official with the state – but that’s boring stuff. However, if you’re rebranding or launching your first new brand (the steps are quite similar), be sure to include these tedious but necessary tasks on your task list so you don’t forget them.

If you have questions about rebranding I didn’t address, please leave them in the comments below.

Making the Change, pt. 2

In the first part of this account, I shared my thought processes behind rebranding my business and went over the “why” and the “how.” Not just a few business people have expressed interest in what was behind all this and how I did it.

The What – There were two necessary tools I used the most in all my plotting and planning, and I carried these tools with me everywhere! They went to my parents’ house, my in-laws’ house, church, the orthopedist, my best friend’s home, and sometimes even to bed. What was so important that I couldn’t leave them behind? A legal pad and a pen. So cheap, so simple, so necessary. If I go through the muscle exercise of writing something down, I’m going to engage with it more. Plus, computers crash; I’ve stuck with hand-written notes (think HOURS of research in Div school) even when most people are keeping their notes on their tablets or in their computers.

The first thing I had to do was decide on a new brand name. Since we live at the coast and want to stay at the coast, it had to be something to do with the coast. But what part of the coast? We live in the Cape Fear Region, but we want to live in the Crystal Coast. Given that, the brand couldn’t be specific to either area, because then I’d have to rebrand yet again, perhaps before I’d be ready to, business-wise. Christmas night, I was in bed at my parents’ house thinking about a new name and Googling my ideas on my phone to see if they were already in use. Luckily, Coastal Carolina Soap Company was free, so I claimed it.

(I’m outlining the big steps, but in the background, I was reading articles, listening to recordings of industry success calls, watching webinars, etc. And always – always – making notes on my trusty lavender legal pad. So while I’m not going into great detail about my accessing those resources, that was a huge part of the process.)

Next came determining my niche, and this process took a few months, to be honest. OK… Coastal… Beachy… Salt bars? Pain to try to swirl and temperamental to make. Make soaps with sea water? Hmmm… Winter. Beach and ocean are COLD! Knee wasn’t quite recuperated enough to be traipsing on loose sand down to the ocean. Extra labor time sterilizing the water leads to higher product costs… Nothing was quite clicking, so I pushed that to the back burner, trusting that the answer would fall out of the ether eventually.

Business was continuing to go on for Sara’s Soaps ‘n Such – restocking ingredients, making products, filling orders. For all anyone knew, it was still business as usual. I wanted an image to go with this snazzy new business name, so that was the next step for me. I’d conceived of a logo and my older daughter sketched it out.

The first conception of my logo. I’m thinking about framing this for my office.

I found a graphic designer. I answered his 15-or-so-question design questionnaire (after writing the answers long-hand in my pad). I sent him the file for this image. Let’s just say that he didn’t quite grasp the vision, and after a couple of weeks of frustration, it was time to move on. A fellow Indie recommended Natalie Dalton of Natalie Dalton Designs, and within the agreed-upon time period, magic happened. The logo she’d created based on my daughter’s drawing and my affinity for Art Deco literally took my breath away. I remember being at my parents’ house when I opened the file and getting to share this beautiful design with the three females to whom I’m closest – Mom and my daughters. Even my older one who’d drawn the design agreed that Natalie’s design was fantastic. And she’s a bit embarrassed at the idea of my wanting to hang her drawing up, but she’ll get over it.

Natalie’s logo design. Soooo pretty!!!

Next came what was probably the most arduous part of this whole process, and that was, setting up my property on the World Wide Web. I’m no novice when it comes to websites, but website design is far from my forte. I purchased my domain and rolled up my sleeves over our Spring Break, ready to get started. Only… <eeerrrrk!> Screeching halt as I was unable to get into my new store’s admin (the back room of the site where a lot of the work takes place) and my web host was far from helpful. My launch date was tentatively set for 1 June, the beginning of my business’s anniversary month, and my web developer Donal and I had 10 weeks to get this site built, developed, tested, and live.

Weeks went by in which I was still getting no practical help from my host. Donal, in the meantime, was having health and family issues, so neither of us could get anything done. I wasn’t sweating it; he’s good at what he does, and we had a plan in place. After way too many weeks of wasting time with my host, I shopped for and signed on with a new web hosting company. I installed the shopping cart I wanted to use, and Donal and I spent a few afternoons a week for a couple of weeks fine-tuning the vision while the girls were vacationing with the Grands. We were looking good for the launch date.

Backing up a bit… Being slowed down and in the company of my beloved daughters day-in and day-out for a few months had begun to wear on my mind and soul. Don’t get me wrong; my daughters are fantastic – smart, creative, compassionate, loving, innovative, and beautiful – but they are sisters to each other and sometimes drama ensues. (And I think I need to take Drama Appreciation again, because apparently it didn’t take effect the first time.) So after church one Sunday, I zipped down to the beach for a few hours, just to sit, meditate, and pray. My prayers consisted of “thank you”; I couldn’t think of a single supplication to make beyond the on-going prayers for sick loved ones. In the midst of this time, it came. The focus. The niche. I breathed the air and felt the sensation of being at the beach, and suddenly I figured out what sorts of soaps to make.

That’s long enough for today, don’t you think? Stay tuned for the next part, coming up soon. Be sure to subscribe to receive articles delivered right into your inbox.

Making the Change, pt. 1

The idea had been germinating for a while. Do I change the name of my business, or keep it? My business was over thirteen years old, steadily growing, increasingly successful. Would I be shooting myself in the foot by rebranding at this point?

As you know, if you have followed me from my Sara’s Soaps ‘n Such days, I spent the month of December sitting around delegating like a boss (haha!) with my right leg up, my knee in a brace following a patellar sublimation right before Thanksgiving. Idle hands lead to active mind, and I had nothing to do but sit around and think. Sometimes I dreamed up mischief, sometimes grand ideas, with the grand ideas quickly dominating my thoughts. It was in this time period that I decided to rebrand my business.

Why? My original business, Sara’s Soaps ‘n Such, spun off of a hobby. My name is Sara, I made soaps, I made other stuff (the “‘n Such”), and it seemed like a good name at the time. Over the years, though, it became so cumbersome! It’s long, it’s ridiculously easy to mistype, and it didn’t really reflect what my business had become. I went from a hobbyist-turned-business owner to a full-time business owner with large order accounts. My business had grown up, so it was time for the name to grow up.

How? Starting in 2014, I had developed strategies for growing my business in different directions, shifting my focus from primarily retail to primarily wholesale and private label, and along with this, I set annual goals for how I would accomplish this, and I wanted these strategies to manifest themselves this year (2016), which they have. Sitting around on my duff for 6 weeks afforded me many opportunities to catch up on educational opportunities related to my business and taking it where I wanted it to go. These educational moments highlighted for me the mistakes I’d made previously, but you know what was so cool about this process? It was like getting a second chance to start a new business, but in addition to the great new resources I had, I also had 13+ years of mistakes and experiences from which to draw.

Stay tuned… Part 2 will come up soon!

Hard Business Lessons

I’m a great business owner. I’m far from perfect, and I certainly make mistakes. But I’ve got a good deal of experience behind me, enough that people come seeking my advice.

Know what ticks me off? When a customer gets under my defenses and stomps all over my boundaries – and I let them! I’m ashamed just admitting that this happened to me, but it did. I want to share with you the learning opportunities I had from this experience.

First, a little background. When this wholesale customer came on board, I was making cold process-method soap, as well as melt & pour novelty soaps in various shapes. When the customer wanted some of both kinds of soaps, I had no problem making and selling them. When she wanted to add other novelty soaps, I shrugged and said, “OK, sure.” Then something happened. First, she wanted soaps in shapes and designs that simply don’t exist, and she didn’t seem to understand that I couldn’t purchase a mould that doesn’t exist. Second, I changed; something within me changed. These soaps that I used to enjoy making were now making me miserable. They took forever to make, were really vulnerable to moisture in the air and dings, and I had to clutter my work space with my wrapping system, because it’s important to wrap these almost as soon as they come out of the mould.

You know what? Life’s too short to be miserable doing anything. I own my business and I work for myself, not for any of my customers. This means I choose what I offer and what I make. It took a variety of very unpleasant emotions for me to buck up, pull up my big girl panties, and put a stop to all this unhappiness.

And I did. First, I chose not to let this customer dictate my day’s agenda. She wanted me to drop everything – taking care of my younger, teaching my older, maintaining my schedule and goals for a particular day – to do something for her that would take an hour or two of two hours I had left to meet my goals for this day. I promised I’d make what she asked a priority for the next day. This wasn’t an urgent thing for me. The task was out of my hands and out of my control. (That was a win for me.) She didn’t communicate with me at all once I’d fulfilled my commitment to her; she was mad that I’d set and maintained that boundary.

Second, on the urging and encouragement of my awesome business colleagues, I set new policies in place. They, apparently, were tired of hearing me talk about how much I hate making these novelty soaps. I drafted a memo outlining my new policies regarding the novelty soaps. Following the practice and teachings of one of my grad school deans, I sat on it for 48 hours, sending it out yesterday morning. Then things started feeling “off.” The customer tried to manipulate me, but I could fall back on my company’s check policy.

Finally, I decided it was time to fire the customer. This isn’t ideal to have to do in any situation, but to everything there is a season. With resolution, I sent a professional, polite, brief email stating my intent to dissolve the business relationship.

My mistakes in brief…

I allowed a customer to dictate what products I would make and sell.
I didn’t set boundaries against the text message blitzes I’d endure during my working times, teaching times, and late at night.
I didn’t listen to my gut soon enough.

The take-aways…?

Have policies in place. These policies should outline what products you’ll sell, which products, if any, will be exclusive, and policies regarding payments. This way, instead of arguing with a customer, you can simply say, “It’s a company policy.”
There are some great apps out there (I now have one on my phone) that will block texts and calls with an automated message, and you can write your own custom message and decide during which hours texts will be blocked and which numbers will be blocked. This saves me much anxiety in the evenings, so I know if my phone chimes, it’s a soccer coach or friends.
Some people rely purely on logic and rational thought processes to the exclusion of everything else. Our guts – those visceral feelings we get – are there for a reason. Once that starts flaring (and it’s not heartburn), we need to attend to our visceral feelings, analyze them, and take action.

Raising a glass of sweet white wine to ends of chapters and beginnings of new chapters

The dissolution of the business relationship didn’t exactly go smoothly, and it wasn’t particularly pleasant, but it’s over and done. I spent my evening celebrating the lessons and relief with my family and friends, and I capped the celebration with a glass of wine and some dark chocolate.

How to be an Overnight Business Success

Are you ready? Got pen and paper? Here it is…

Buy a kit, make the stuff, price it exactly as recommended by the wholesaler from whom you bought it, rent booth space, sell it (along with at least a half dozen other people who had the same idea as you), and voila! You’ll be a success overnight. Or maybe that’s just for overnight.

My dear artisan friend Denise and I joke, “It takes a long time and a lot of hard work to become an overnight success.” Newbie crafters/hobbyists see what we’ve achieved over years of owning our businesses and want what we have, only without the hard work, trial-and-error, discipline, learning, or experience. It really does take a significant amount of time and unique experiences to achieve success in business, and I’m happy to show those off in my blog, newsletters, website, and social media outlets. Today, though, I thought I’d share with you some of my flubs that have led me to where I am now.

“Do a show!” I was brand new in my business, and the ink on my business license was barely dry when a lady recommended I participate in a huge selling event. It cost me $325 to rent a booth for the 4-day weekend, and I made probably around 1000 bars of soap for it. Imagine my joy – how thrilled I was! – to see this line of people at my booth. Only, they weren’t at my booth; they were in front of it, in line for the gourmet candy apples next door.

Surround yourself by people who want you to succeed. Or something. It was a year later, now 2003, and the memories of that awful event were still plaguing me. It was my first time doing the EPA show with Mom as my sponsor and right-hand woman. We were two hours from the end, and business had been quite good, when Mom started offering discounts without consulting me. I was like, “What are you doing?” She said, “I thought since you weren’t making a profit, yet, that you’d want to liquidate.” It takes 3-5 years to turn a profit in business, and she’s been a super-tremendous help since.

Then there was the grand mal soap seizure that turned the beautiful funnel swirl of my plans into “murdered Mardi Gras clown soap.”

Over the course of a few years, that first EPA show led me to markets and monthly artisan events, which, in turn, began to lead to other opportunities. An artisan potter was opening up an incubator co-op and invited me to join for $100 a month. I was spending $20 a month to sell for 4 hours, and this way, my wares would already be set up, and I wouldn’t have to worry about doing the selling. It seemed like a good idea. It’d be nothing to sell $100 of products a month, or so I thought. I discussed it with my husband – I was so excited! He didn’t really think it was the best idea. I persisted. It was fun doing the Art Walk, chatting up customers, and just being in that atmosphere. I made $100 one month of the six I was there, and I pulled out after six months. That was the only year my net profits went down since my first year in business.

I’m pretty sure at this time I may have still had a few soaps from that first event left over. I’d systematically melted most of the soaps down to cats, because I quickly discovered that cat soaps sell very well.

So many scents! So many soaps to make! And bath salts and bubble bath and bath bombs! And no one in that area really takes tub baths. Plus there was a drought in the state that effected us for a couple of years. So. Much. Inventory leftover! I still have some of those bath salts and bath bombs, because I don’t often get time to take tub baths, either. It’s so important not to get carried away with making stuff. I have over a hundred fragrances still, and I’m selling them or using them in very limited edition soaps – or simply in soap for us.

Event A, Event B, and Event C, all carrying high costs to do. While there is a formula to determine if a show has been poor, fair, good, or excellent, there comes a point where I had to say, “Nope. No more.” Because it’s not just the expense of the booth fees, gas, food, and possibly lodging to take into account, but it’s also the intangibles – child care, labor of workers, and just the pure pain-in-the-butt it is to schlep tables, canopy, and products, set it up, work all day, and tear it down. Given all this “invisible” expenses, it just stopped being cost-effective. The day before the first of these events I gave up, I waltzed around town with the same dopey smile on my face my mom had her first day of retirement.

Selling on consignment is another one of those flubs. The seller doesn’t pay me for my products until they sell them, so they have no personal investment in my wares. I lost inventory to shop-wear, sun fading, and age. It’s so much better financially and for my stress to sell the products myself retail through my website or via one of the two events I do each year, or to one of my stockists and be done with it.

It’s now been almost fourteen years since I officially started my business. I have an online soap boutique, three private label accounts, and I’ve had a number of wholesale accounts as well. My net profits go up every year, which is good; it means I’m selling more products, but also managing to buy smarter. I have faithful, loyal customers. Judging by these factors, you could say I have gained a measure of business success. It hasn’t all been easy, though, and I certainly have made a slew of mistakes, er, “learning opportunities,” along the way,

If you’re in business, what, um, “learning opportunities” have you encountered that have led to your success?

Three Reflections on My Rehab

Last Tuesday was a stupendous day! I tossed the crutches to the side, lost the brace, and experienced leg freedom for the first time in six weeks. I met my new orthopedist who was nice enough, but who I labeled the gatekeeper to hell after my first day of rehabilitative exercises.

My orthopedist likes to draw on people. I got a setting Mayan sun with muscle groups labeled. The vastus medialis (inside quad muscle) is the focus of our attention.

It just feels great being able to move around more, sleep the way I like, and exercise those muscles more intentionally. A sad event had me going home-home (my parents’ home – which in grad school was the place where the laundry was free and the food was cooked by someone else) and the rehab kicking it up a notch. My dad’s a physical therapist, and I’m pretty sure that if I do what he says, my knee will feel 18 again by the beginning of spring (which they haven’t seen in over 20 years). As I was lying down and counting off reps Thursday afternoon under his watchful eye, and then as I was standing against a wall doing therapeutic squats, a few realizations came to me.

I’m pretty sure The Complete Works of the Marquis de Sade are required reading for PT School and most doctoral programs in orthopedics.
When writing about the circles of hell, Dante stopped too soon. I found the tenth circle of hell; it’s called therapeutic squats.
The handy blanket I got at a conference that doesn’t squirt out from between my thighs like my daughter’s soccer ball did.
Walking step-over-step to go up or down stairs is a big deal. As I was climbing the stairs at my parents’ house and was able to go up with the left foot, then the right, then the left – you know, like non-gimpy people do – I remembered an encounter I had with a lady at church one Sunday. I was in grad school and had shown up for church. My dad had some home health patients in that town, a few of whom went to my church. This older lady was climbing the steps on the side of the church to go in and she said, “Sara, make sure you tell your Dad that Edna Smith (not her real name) walked up these steps by herself!” I was happy her recovery had gone so well and she was strong enough to do this – in a nebulous sort of way; I didn’t really know her. As I walked up and down the stairs almost normally and finally with more grace than Boris Karloff‘s portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster, I realized what a tremendously big deal that is.

Now I’m home with two adjustable 5-pound ankle weights, some exercise bands, a bolster, and notes on my exercise sheets indicating the purpose of each exercise and when I can start some of them. Ibuprofen is my new friend – that and ice. It’s frustrating that I still have to stop to rest, to apply ice packs. As I laid on my bed after church, bolster under my knees and 1/2 pound of iron strapped to my ankle, I could hear Dad pushing me to “straighten that leg, give it that last little bit of oomph,” followed by a “There ya go! That’s it.” I’m proud to say I didn’t scream at him, cuss at him (all’s fair in rehab and therapy), or accuse him of killing me. From being his patient previously, I know the pain is well worth the results, and I can get through even the torturous squats if I focus on having stronger legs with no pain.

This Knee Brace Wasn’t What I was Thinking

Back in October, I pulled the troops together for a family meeting. The gist of this meeting went something like this: “I’m tired of being so busy during December, running my business, chauffeuring kids around, doing all the cooking, teaching, and keeping the house running. I never get a chance just to rest and relax. While y’all are playing games, watching specials, and reading, I end up worn to a frazzle. Things are going to change this year. We’re going to work as a team and get things done together so we can all enjoy the season.” And work we did. We started doing the Fly Lady thing every weekend, and with tremendous results. Fifteen, thirty minutes of cleaning as a family followed by standing back, admiring our work, and patting ourselves on the back.

Things were going along rather swimmingly. We were knocking out the cleaning and the cooking, preparing to decorate and for our trip to the Crystal Coast Christmas Flotilla. We had food in containers and food in bags in the freezer. Then a crisis hit.

It’d been a good day. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving, and I’d taken the girls into the closest city to shop for their Christmas dresses and to return a certified pre-owned Nook to Barnes & Noble that the company had sent me by mistake. I guess it’s not nice to mess with the minds of low-wage retail workers (“You want to return this? I need to talk to my manager about this. I haven’t ever had a situation like this before.”), because doing so must’ve been bad karma or something. The girls and I returned home with our purchases, and as I was walking across the kitchen floor, I slid down and dislocated my knee. Oh, sweet heavens, was THAT a new and unique kind of pain!

The girls were amazing, I met some pretty nice EMTs and emergency room staff, and I finally came back home around 8:30 that night with a shiny pair of crutches and a referral for an ortho follow-up. The next day I went for the appointment and left with a sexy black peek-a-boo knee brace (the perfect accessory to all my holiday wardrobe essentials)

and instructions to wear it for the next 6 weeks, 23/7. When you dislocate the patella, there is damage to the soft tissue where it lands, and there’s also damage to the soft connective tissue that holds the patella in place. These tissues, the ligaments especially, take a long time to heal, but with proper care and attention, they heal fine. I’m about halfway through my healing process. Oh, plus there’s the addendum to those instructions regarding the brace: “Stay off of it as much as possible.”

Squee! That means being still and resting all through Advent! That means staying off my feet and letting people take care of me. So far I’ve gotten to play on NORAD every day with my youngest. I’ve knitted. A lot. I’ve done Christmas cards; blogged; and spent some very valuable time brainstorming, reading, and preparing for some amazing changes in my business in the New Year. This has been incredible! Sure, I’ve missed making soap and baking, but perhaps the Good Lord knew that I wouldn’t stop as planned without something major happening to me.

My family has been great about taking care of me and everything else. Mary has been grooving on the soapmaking, really coming into her own as a soap artisan. My best friend drove down last week to take the girls and me to finish our Christmas shopping. Thanksgiving was awesome, because we were home with my parents. I don’t care how old I am or how many boo-boos I’ve kissed myself; I’ve got a major boo-boo myself, and I needed my own Mom. Even just having Mom air around is somehow healing. My dad is a very well-respected physical therapist, so that just added another layer of incredible healing mojo to our visit. I was slightly amused – and touched – when my dad offered to help me navigate up the two steps to their porch. I’d been gimping up and down our stairs in our 2-story house for 3 days at that point. But he’ll always be my dad, and he’s a physical therapist even off the clock, so such is to be expected. I’m lucky as all get-out to have him, because he’s given me pointers, suggestions, exercises, and prayers for my patience. He’s done more to help my healing progress than my orthopedist has. When I go back to the doctor in a hair under three weeks, I’m hoping he’ll be wow’ed by my progress.

While a knee brace and crutches weren’t quite in my grand plan for this Advent season, I’m finding the blessing in being able to take it easy. The family is getting a great learning opportunity as they experience my duties and responsibilities. My best friend got the unusual opportunity to take care of me (generally, I’m doing the caretaking). While the boredom really gets to me sometimes, I’m looking for the silver lining, and I think I’ve found it.

How do you take it easy in the craziness? How do you make sure you get the rest and relaxation you need?

3 ways to track Santa from home

One Important Trait of Billionaires

Optimist or pessimist? Or just a completely pragmatic realist? I’m determined to go into the coming year letting my Tigger-like optimism merge with my pragmatic strategic thinking to push my business further. No more “what ifs” or “if onlys.”

One Trait of Billionaires from Sara Nesbitt on Vimeo.

Are you a Piglet or a Tigger? Or, like I’m striving towards, a Tigger with some of his bounce tamped down?

Thinking Strategically | Scott Adams Blog

Striking the Work-Life Balance as an Entrepreneur

You just know it would work out this way. Three weeks of fall break, three weeks of fun, canning, movie watching, and not a peep out of my large order customers. We’re talking crickets, folks. Crick-ets! Days before it ended, orders started rolling in right and left. What??? Now?! And it’s not just that orders started rolling in, but they came in with announcements of preorders. Three weeks of “Oh my gosh, I’m so bored!” now has given way to some serious hustle, right as we’re resuming our second term of school.

This past weekend was especially busy as I worked to fulfill last week’s orders. The biggest thing is, though, I wanted to clean off the dinette table. Two batches of soap, lotion bars, and lip balms, and there wasn’t room for a dirty thought on that table, let alone room for a person or four to sit and dine. In the midst of all this, I really want to put forward with the great cleaning-before-decorating thrust, as well as begin our holiday cooking. My girls like helping me cook, but the younger one, especially, just wants to sit down with me and watch a movie, read, or snuggle. It’s so hard finding the time to do everything while still attending to the family as they need, but over the years, I’ve developed my own tricks for making this work for us.

Lists. Lists help me visualize what tasks I need to accomplish in what order. I’m a bit obsessive in my list making, thinking always in a linear fashion: A then B then C then D… And D can’t happen until C happens. Lists are a great way for anybody to square up their work priorities, but it seals the deal when I’m trying to balance work and family life.

Lists are a great way for anybody to square up their work priorities.

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Working ahead. When it’s at all possible, I take an hour or two at a time to knock out something ahead of time. Maybe it’s a batch of soap that’s that customer’s standard order. Or perhaps it’s 100 tubes of lip balm for this customer. Those tasks don’t take a huge amount of time, but doing them sooner rather than later can free up a huge amount of pressure and stress later.

Prioritizing my day. When it comes to my day, what’s most important to me? Usually it’s breakfast, shower, exercise, and the girls’ education. Then what comes next? Production, newsletters, blog posts, marketing, website work. Somewhere in the midst of this comes a huge pair of brown eyes and a sweet voice saying, “Mom, can we _____?” No, not right now… Wait. What. Is. Important. To. Me? Is it crucially, vitally necessary that I change my slider on my website right now, or can it wait til tonight after the girls are in bed? The point at which I start making my business more important than my family is the point where I need to give up the business. The business will be around a while, but my daughters won’t be little girls forever.

The pnt at which I start making my biz more impt than my fam is the point where I need to give up the biz.

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Taking time away from the business. This was probably the hardest decision for me to make. Once upon a time, I was all about doing everything possible for my business and my customers, regardless of the sacrifices I had to make. I started last Christmas when I shut down my business for two weeks. I still received large orders from customers, but all that was required of me at those times was a quick email assuring them I’ll process their orders when we reopen. Once I made this decision, I realized it was the best one I could have made for my stress level and my family.

No. Such a small word with such great power! Actually, I say “no” by saying “yes.” To the last-minute request to add soaps to an order… “Sure, and I will add two days to your order processing time.” “I’ll happily take care of that after my vacation.” “I’ll process your order when we reopen early in January.” These boundaries are my way of saying, “No, I won’t let you make further demands on my time.” Work Me ends here, and Family Me begins here, and Family Me wants to savor this time.

Family Me is now in high demand, so Work Me has to clock out for a while.

Just Chill!

One woman, many hats. CEO. Teacher. Home manager. Wife. Minister. That’s a lot for one person, and the potential for me to get super stressed out is high. Obviously, stress is neither good for myself or for the girls, so I have to find ways to reduce stress in ways that don’t involve eating copious amounts of chocolate. At the same time, I want to do things that are good for my brain, good for my body, and somewhat productive. But not soap. Ninety-eight percent of the time, making soap is for business, though I do enjoy playing with it occasionally. I choose activities that can stand separate from soap.

For my body, I’ve been doing some resistance exercises daily, and in the past week or so, the girls have been joining me, so we can count that as part of school as we learn about how our muscles work and how these exercises help us. I started out with planking, wanting to strengthen my arms and tone my core. Then I decided to add push-ups to the routine so I can get rid of annoying upper arm dimples and tone the muscles there. Next, I got this wild hair about doing crunches. Like that’s not enough, a friend posted on Instagram a brief video of her doing roll ups. If crunches are like a street gang’s tag artist, roll ups are Al Capone. Yep, that much more evil. Supposedly, each roll up is comparable to four crunches. This is what they look like.

I started with where I was then, even though my counts were pitifully low. However, I’ve steadily increased my counts, my seconds planking, and my strength. It feels awesome! My first goal? Get these arms toned to look great with my red sleeveless dress before attending a wedding next weekend and the abs smoother so I won’t have to wear a body shaper under it. My second and long-range goal is overall fitness and tone.

For my brain and body, I’ve been spending time knitting. Studies have shown that knitting is good for the brain, as well as stress levels which positively impacts the heart as well. I’ll knit about anything, and I’m constantly pushing myself to learning new patterns and techniques. Last week I finished a long-term project – my first lace shawl.

Lace scarf made of a black wool-blend yarn spangled with multicolored sequins

2015-10-01 10.42.09 — A close-up of the lace, both body and edge

Pair the relaxation of knitting with the absolute peace that comes from having a cat curled up next to you asleep, and that’s the way I end many of my days. I’m so chill by that point that I can barely make it upstairs to bed. This leads to a sound night’s sleep and a refreshed awakening, which is a great way to combat stress!

What do you do to just chill?

The Life of Al Capone through Vintage Photos

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