When did you know you made it?

[Bronze_Palms]

My goal was to make $100,000 in my business and was so sure that was going to make me feel accomplished. I did it and I should have been over the moon! I realized when I got there that I wasn’t actually happy because I was doing everything by myself, never sleeping, and never seeing people I loved. I wasn’t enjoying my life.

Things really changed for me when I hired!

[encsportscards]

I think for us it was when we were able to go on vacation and our employees and management team were able to run the stores without any input from us. We kept trying to do work remotely and they kept telling us "we got it", and they did. They handled all inventory receiving, shipping, deposits, social media....everything. First time we've been able to enjoy vacation without constantly logging in to manage things. 

[MudFire_Dex]

Ours has been up and down - a huge accomplishment and feeling like we made it was being able to pay salaries and put away profit to buy the building - this spring was the building purchase, but we've backslid a lot since the pandemic on the business running itself. I had trained several employees for 2-4 years on kiln loading and unloading and thought we were on an "expert track" but after my wife's long illness I realized that folks don't treat this with as much care/concern as I do even with years of trust and training so I am back spending 4+ hours a day just on the kilns. Not ideal. Haven't come up with a solution that seems to be better than the doing the task alongside them training I did before and unfortunately I have tunneled into solo - I can do it better/faster territory that I know is not helpful for being able to take an enjoyable trip. 

I am stress TF out about turning 50 and having friends who want to take a trip, and what to do with this day-to-day operations pickle I've created. Most of our other systems can be handled remotely with a little input from us but not the kiln room 😞

[SiBellebeauty]

I think as a business owner the goal constantly changes, it's so important to write your goals down and tick them off when complete so then when you do have a bad day, you can look back and see how far you have come which is incredible. Unfortunatly with scaling comes with more stress, more outgoings and you do have to take the jump to employ to give more freedom, money is incredible but I value my time and freedom so much more now!