I’ve run a variety of businesses over the past 18 years – Airbnbs, manufacture and importing, online retail, social selling, course creation, a pub…
I’ve made a lot of big mistakes over the years too. From sinking huge sums of money into launching untested products and having them tank, to not pricing products correctly, to not charging enough for freight, to neglecting to properly quality test a new manufacturer, to opening up paid pre-orders only to have the stock delayed by a further month…
Sometimes it’s felt like if it could go wrong, it would go wrong.
I spent my entire 20s and 30s building businesses while raising babies and it’s something I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, despite the plethora of mistakes. I’m an entrepreneur at heart and I love the flexibility of being able to work my businesses from home. If I had my time again, I’d change a lot of things. Mostly I’d avoid the mistakes!
But as I close the door on my longest running business – a cloth nappy company that I started 18 years ago – it’s not the mistakes I remember.
What I remember are the things I’ve learned, the ways I’ve grown, the impact our nappies have had (and will continue to have for years to come), the fun I had growing a business while my husband was away with the Army. It absolutely kept me sane during those long lonely evenings when the kids were little and he was away for weeks and months at a stretch.
I will truly miss my business and it’s ever so tempting to just reverse my decision to close, to relaunch my brand, to keep doing what I love and in a way, it would be better to be leaving on a sour note – then I might not miss it as much.
But as I sit here feeding my 8th little one, I also know it’s time for a change and time to see if I can find contentment in a (slightly) slower pace.
Anyway I’m definitely rambling now… I guess the point of this long-winded post is just to remind myself that’s it’s ok to let go of things, even if they’re truly good things, to make room for different good things that God might want to send my way. Or to just make way for nothing new but to embrace what’s currently before me.
