Entrepreneur Life: 6 Month Check-In
The key to success is to start before you’re ready. – Marie Forleo
You may have noticed by now that I start each one of these blogs with an “inspirational” quote that hints at what the mood or topic of the post will be. This week is no different; in fact, this quote accurately sums up not just the tone of this blog post but my personal mood for the last 6-12 months since I began the process of setting up and then launching my business. In honor of my upcoming business half birthday, I’m going to write a couple of posts about what my experience has been like.
I mentioned in my earlier blog, The Leap, that entrepreneurship was not in my initial post grad plans. Instead, I planned to secure full time employment in the field and gradually work my way into entrepreneurship but 2020 had other plans for me. It was around May 2020 when I realized that this pandemic was here for the long haul and wouldn’t be wrapped up with a neat little bow by graduation in December 2020. It was time to plan for the new normal and what that actually meant.
Thankfully, while in school, I was fortunate enough (maybe a little bit of foresight) to secure a summer internship with a Charlotte Interior Designer in Summer 2019 and I’d continued to work for her part-time once the summer ended. Not only was I gaining valuable experience in the field, but I was also fairly confident that I could continue to work for her in some capacity upon graduation while I figured things out (I was correct and still work for her a few days out of the week when she needs an extra hand). I’d learned from my first foray into higher education that the degree alone is not enough and waiting until graduation to gain experience was a fool’s errand. *Tip: If you’re going to risk it all and start over, DON’T make the same mistakes you did before. Not to mention, it just hits different when you’re paying for the courses out of pocket. I was definitely more motivated to take advantage of ALL available opportunities. I had one piece of the puzzle partially solved.
I still had one major problem to solve however, if I couldn’t secure a suitable job then what? I want to pause here and put some additional emphasis “Suitable Job” and my earlier tip about not repeating mistakes. I made several mistakes coming out of undergrad but the one that had the greatest impact was not identifying what an ideal career looked like for me and making sure that the jobs/roles I selected aligned with that vision. Admittedly, at that time I literally had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, much less what an “ideal career” looked like. As a result, I was moving through life, doing what I was “supposed” to do and taking jobs and promotions as they presented themselves to me with the only real constant being that any new position needed to come with a significant bump in salary and expanded responsibilities. Well, we see how that ended.
I was determined not to have a repeat of that so I took the time to identify ideal criteria for any job that I would take. I was REALLY selective about the jobs I was searching for and applying to. I immediately noticed that the available jobs that met my criteria were significantly less from what I’d seen the previous fall when I started to do some preliminary searching to see what jobs were out there/what I felt would be a good fit for me. It was at that point (Summer 2020) I knew that I needed to start making some alternate arrangements. I started to do some research on what type of business I could create that would have minimal start-up costs and overhead while allowing me the continued flexibility to continue to seek employment and/or continue to work once hired. I decided on e-design which was ideal for the pandemic since it’s a totally virtual process and I can easily scale it to include full interior design services when the time is right. It took me most of the summer into the fall to get all the necessary items for business creation filed and squared away, identify/ define my workflow processes and to get to a point where I felt that I could finally start operation. (Refer back to starting quote).
Now that I’m nearly 6 months into the operation of my business I can really understand how true that quote is. Although I thought I had all my ducks in a row I quickly realized that there were gaps and/or inconsistencies in my processes that could only be identified through action, not theory. There have been SO MANY moments where my expectations simply did not match the reality of the situations. This blog is getting kind of long, so I think I’ll pick up there with next week’s blog; Entrepreneur Life: Expectations vs Reality.
Before I go, I’ll leave you guys with one of the most surprising instances of where my expectations and the reality just completely missed each other.
Expectation: As a creative, one of the byproducts of this business I was most looking forward to, was the opportunity to finally have a creative outlet with the bonus that I’d also be compensated for my artistry.
Reality: Although, working on contracted client spaces is rewarding I still have the desire/ need to create beautiful spaces with complete creative control even if these spaces remain purely theoretical.
Solution: I started to create design boards and fill them with pieces of furniture, rugs, or artwork that I loved but simply didn’t work for whatever client project(s) I was actively sourcing. Eventually I decided to create whole spaces around some of these pieces with complete creative control; just making art/beauty.
I’ve decided to start making these designs available, here. I’ll be adding new content regularly as I use this to free up some creative mental space when I get stuck in a rut on client projects. These boards will all be shoppable so if you happen to fall in love with a particular piece, like I did, you can get it for yourself.
Sharing an example of what you can expect to see below. See you guys next week!
This page includes affiliate links, which means if you choose to click and/or purchase I may receive a commission at no additional cost to you.
