Mmmmmm, breakfast. I pretty much must have breakfast in order to start my day. It's a 100% necessity for me. And when things get super busy, even then, I still make time for it. I think we all have those things in our life that are non-negotiable, even when life is busy and you don't have enough time in the day for everything that MUST get done, let along slowing down to nourish yourself. While I might fall off of my meditation, or stretching, and god knows I haven't truly exercised in what feels like ages, I'll always make time for breakfast.
The last two months, I've been working on setting up my wesbshop here on the Tangleweeds website. I knew it was going to be a huge undertaking, and I think it's something I'd been "meaning" to do for probably the last three years. I'm so so happy I finally took the time to do it, as I know in the long run it's really going to pay off. (I'm still keeping my Etsy shop open, so those of you who prefer to shop on that platform still have the opportunity to.)
One of the tricky things about running a small handmade business is that once you're up and running and taking in orders and things are busy, sometimes just maintaining everything feels like all you possibly have time for. Making time to do things that actually grow your business can feel extremely daunting. Because of this, I knew that I needed to do two things if I wanted the opening of the webshop to happen, sooner than a decade from now -
1. I had to set a deadline and stick to it. Now, this wasn't meant to be justification for working through the night, or having no life outside of work until it launched, rather it was a way of allowing myself to cut myself some slack. As long as the "bones" of the shop were good, and everything was set up and functioning in-as-much as was needed to allow folks to make purchases, then it was "good enough." If I didn't set a launch date and stick with it I could have fallen down the rabbit hole of perfecting, perfecting, perfecting. (Another good rule in small business, as it relates to pretty much anything: start with "good enough" and then shoot to make it even better.)
2. The Little Things Make the Big Thing Happen. Or, the title of this blog post =). Seriously tho, I knew that if I only had one hour on a particular day to work on the webshop, well, then, I better use that one hour! Before I even started on the shop I laid out a plan week by week, broken down into day by day, of manageable tasks. As the weeks went by I adjusted expectations accordingly. Breaking BIG goals down into the day-to-day of making it happen often times makes a BIG goal look a lot less scary. (And one of those little things that made the big thing happen was making sure I had breakfast everyday!)
That's it for now folks! I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend. I'm looking forward to spending time with a dear friend on Saturday, and then on Sunday, some time with my older nephew and my sister here in Vallejo. They'll be visiting for the first time since I moved here and I'm pretty darn excited to have them over.