Can you be both a supermom and a badass entrepreneur?

"When you've been in business for that long, I'm sure there were moments that were dicey and lean and hard, but you can look back and think that even though it felt like a low at that time - all things are working together to get you to where you're at."

It is such an honor to talk to someone who has built, maintained, and thrived in their business for so many decades. Judy had such a calm and unflappable presence about her that I think is part personality but also largely due to being around awhile and realizing the seasonality of situations and moments and not allowing those to derail her or her business. It’s so reassuring as business owners, in the middle of our second decade in business, to see a fellow owner that has weathered so many trends, economies, and world changes and reflect on all that time and come to the conclusion that there never was one pinnacle oh shit moment.  Sure, there were hard times and hard decisions, but she can look back over the years in her business and realize that all of those things were just bumps along the way.

I can’t say that we are to the level of Judy’s zen, or if we will ever get there, but we can look back over the years and see when we thought the sky was falling, it was just a summer storm, and when we thought the world was going to end, it was just a little brake pump and we were about to go forward full steam ahead! 

One of those times was when we received our first bad review, we thought, for sure, this was going to ruin us! We responded and tried to appeal, as we thought it was unwarranted, and when nothing could be done - we fretted! I know we took that insecurity into the next few client consults and while I don’t know the outcome of doing that (Ie. did they book or not? It was too long ago…) I do know that it fazed us and in the future we made decisions about our business and with clients to avoid getting another bad review.

Spoiler alert, we got another one…maybe more than one and we realized that we couldn’t change our business decisions based on the opinion of one past client. We realized that even when we tried to be accommodating and move forward in the direction our mismatched client wanted, it still garnered the same response! A bad review was not the worst thing that could happen - and while we value reviews both as a business and as a consumer - over the years, as reviews have become more prevalent, we realized that the opinion of one client in a sea of hundreds was not going to make or break us. We realized that we needed to act in a way that is true to our business and our values and that sometimes it's not a great fit and that is ok! 

This is just one example - and I could write about many over the years - of a bump in our road. It felt big at the time, but in actuality it was no more than a speed bump on our business journey and as someone who has been in business as long as Judy knows- there will be many!

XOXO,

Courtney