When I was very young, I orchestrated my own painted rock business. With my employee, my little sister, we gathered rocks, painted them and then went door to door selling our masterpieces. We didn’t quite make the money needed to pay for college, but we cornered the painted rock market on our street.
I’ve always had a heart for people who are chasing what they love. Those who are putting themselves out there to create and/or build a business.
My sister writes. She doesn’t dream of writing, she DOES it. I love that and like to encourage her. I built her a website. I’ve talked to her about publishing, publicity, and performance. She communicated, not with words exactly, back off chick, I’m doing this for myself.
I had a friend a while back who had a business idea about boats. I won’t out the idea here in case he’s still working on that, but he’d share his business plan. We’d talk marketing, scale-ability, strategy, etc. I loved brainstorming with him and working together to flesh out his ideas.
When we moved to Wyoming, I started a blog to keep our friends and family up to date and to share the adventure of moving to what is still, very much, the wild wild west. Other than moving the blog didn’t have much of a focus. I did think that I could turn it into a business so I started photographing and writing about my dinner preparations and latest crafts. I learned about search engine optimization, affiliate programs, Google Adsense, and other mind-numbing digital tasks. I spent hours, many many hours, with the inner workings of the business. It was mostly marketing, but also accounting, photo editing, the speed of the website, etc.
It was the boat friend who asked me about the business a year or so in. I could hear his voice through LinkedIn sounding excited to hear about what I was working on. I rambled on with a very vague description that I still look back on thinking about unprofessional and unfocused it sounded. I’ve kept that description in mind as my business has changed and grown. I often think about how I’d answer that question now and it’s allowed me to focus my work, weed out the things that weren’t working and enjoy what I’m doing so much more.
After we moved to Indy, I chased a few jobs but nothing panned out. I restarted my antique mall booth and online business, Purple Monkey Manor.
A couple of weeks ago, I made the decision to become a retailer for a paint line that I love. This required about $1300. Before I’d allow myself to spend this much money, I had to promise myself that I’d approach this thing like a business, not just a hobby. I will put in full-time hours. I will be strategic with my time and resources. I will write and stick to a budget. I will write a business plan. I will organize my space. I will spend spare time educating myself with blogs and podcasts of business people who are killing it. I will not be derailed by things like how I look on camera, setting up systems that will work for a 50 employee business when my simple spreadsheet does the job, for now, the new season of whatever Netflix show I love, or all of the millions of things that I allow to hold me back.
I’ve decided to take my heart for helping entrepreneurs and focus it back on myself and Purple Monkey Manor.
