Building My Business: Week One

I hadn't anticipated myself being here; on the precipice of thirty, the unmarried, unemployed mother of three. I imagine so many of us experience this feeling that somewhere, somehow we must have taken a wrong turn or made some fundamentally flawed decision which forever altered the course of life, but without the faintest idea of what that might be. That basically sums up my life lately.

Facing single motherhood seemed hard enough after a decade of cohabitation, but with the added stress that came with 2020, I must admit the prospect has been overwhelming, to say the least. This year has brought challenges in the form of COVID-19, distance learning, business closures, event cancellations, and we have all been affected in tremendous ways. I have joined the ranks of the unemployed due to the combination of single motherhood and school closures and spent months waiting before I saw a dime of unemployment insurance. In this time I scoured the internet for a home-based employment opportunity which would allow me the freedom and flexibility to help my kindergartener through distance learning while earning a living wage. I'm sure you've ended up here because you've done a similar search. If not, let me save you the time on Google. It's "slim pickin's" as they say.

I have always known I'm rather untraditional, so I decided it was time to take things into my own hands and be my own boss. Nobody else was able to give me what I was looking for, and I have always wanted to sell my art, so I decided to follow that old adage "there is no time like the present" and launch my own business online!

If you would like to do the same, there are some things you must first ask yourself.

1. What can you provide, that is of some value to others?

I want to provide beauty and share my art with people. Because this is rather general, I had to narrow things down further and choose one craft to focus on which I felt provided value to others. For this reason, I chose to open a jewelry store, which will allow others to enjoy my handiwork on a regular basis and provides enough freedom that I can stretch creatively while staying in my lane.

2. How will you sell your product/service?

I have explored many options for starting an online store before beginning my business. I suppose you could say this was inevitable. But I always felt there was too much that could go wrong when purchasing white label products from China (forget customs, what about ethics??), or shipping products off to be fulfilled by Amazon (IF they were ever purchased, that is...) and I knew I wanted more control over my own business. This is the part where you learn I'm a control freak. I wanted to know my products were being shipped safely to their new owners, which products sold best, how many I had left, and all without checking some third-party application. I wanted to have access to my stock, to sell products in person, to have my cake and eat it, too!

So, I did the only logical thing there was to do and spent hundreds of dollars on a WordPress website and domain hosting, which supports plugins such as WooCommerce, so I could control everything about my online store myself. Which brings me to the final question you should ask yourself before you jump in...

3.Who will run your site for you?

I don't have the extra money laying around to hire someone to design or run my website for me. I have very limited experience in website or graphic design. I wanted the best, but I also needed to decide between investment in time or money. Would I invest money in hiring someone to make my site look professional, sleek, flawless? Or, would I invest time in learning how to do that myself?

You're here. I am sure you know which I decided was more well-suited for my needs. And I'm guessing if you stuck with me this far, you probably have a similar hurricane of thoughts whipping through your mind. Don't worry! I'm going to share with you my whole journey as I build this business, learn how to set up my website and store, and go from "unemployed" to "self-employed" in 2020! And probably well into 2021, since we are already approaching the holidays.

After getting through this little self-check-in and purchasing my plan with WordPress I was faced with a startling reality: I actually have no idea what I'm doing! I've never gone to business school nor taken a single marketing class. I have never even worked for a company with less than 1,500 employees, let alone been left in charge of everything from assembling products to creating a system to give those products SKUs for tracking sales and inventory online. It seemed like there were a million things to do. So I listed them. I really like to-do lists. And in the process, I decided that it would be good for me to have a weekly check-in to share my progress and upcoming tasks.

So many people seem to think there is not enough to go around. I very strongly resonate with something a friend shared with me last year, which is that if you live with the attitude that there is abundance, you will find abundance. I do not want to guard "trade secrets" or compete with anyone. I want to create beautiful things and help others with similar aspirations to live untraditionally. I am an artist, not a salesman, and I hope to help other artists find abundance in their own lives.

Does this sound like you? Come along with me on this journey!

Next week on the to-do list: Website Basics. I plan to get my site's skeleton in place, in preparation for adding products to my store. I will need a home page, a contact page, and a functional theme for my website.

I'll see you back here next week. Same time, same place.