I have started 3 businesses. I sold the first 2 because the reasons I started them were no longer relevant.
It’s a freeing realisation that you don’t have to have a business for any longer than you want to.
So don’t think you need to go into starting a business feeling that this is your one and only, and it’s this one forever.
Your situation will change and so your business needs will change alongside them.
Why I started my first business
I started my first business Blooming Beautiful when Ruby was around 8 months old because watching her grow turned out not to be as riveting as I had thought.
In Blooming Beautiful I sold secondhand maternity clothes on behalf of other women. I was pregnant with my second child. My life was trying to find maternity clothes that looked good and were affordable.
So this business was super relevant to me. I related to every woman coming through my door whether they were buying or selling their clothes.
Blooming Beautiful was started because I was a bit bored. I loved staying at home with Ruby but that alone wasn’t enough. So I started a business for mental stimulation.
(I wrote more about the WHY behind starting a business here)
After a while, I had set it up and it was running smoothly. We were doing well. Only I found myself wanting more of a creative challenge. Then I saw a friend wearing a breastfeeding top. I had a certificate in Pattern Making and Garment Assembly so I decided to design some breastfeeding tops myself and make them for the NZ market. It was perfect to meet that creative need of mine. So Lioness was born. We sold these tops in both retail shops and through our own website.
So now, we had Ruby and Jack (3 and 1). We had just bought our first home and were about to move 2 hours south from Auckland to Cambridge.
When your first business idea has run its course
By that stage, the reasons I started both businesses weren’t there any more. I was no longer bored and instead of giving me mental stimulation and a creative challenge, these businesses were now stressing me out.
A while before we moved, I received a shipment of breastfeeding tops from the seamstress. These were meant to go to a retail shop and I was looking at them, thinking something was off. I realised that the colourways were wrong. They had been cut with the arm colour as the body and vice versa.
I can still remember where I was sitting and the feeling. I broke out in a full body sweat, closed my eyes and thought “I don’t need this”.
These were businesses I chose to create and they were now wrecking my day! I felt like I was on a moving train that I no longer wanted to be on.
It wasn’t till I spoke with a life coach that I realised selling the businesses was an option.
The reasons I started the businesses were no longer relevant so perhaps I didn’t need to keep them anymore.
This was a wonderfully freeing realisation. If the businesses no longer worked for me, I could let them go. And instead of just stopping, why not try and sell them?
So I did.
It was obvious in the end, how past their use-by-date those businesses had become for me. The joy and mental relief I felt once they no longer belonged to me indicated the timing was right.
Why selling was the right call
We moved to Cambridge with our 2 young children. Having sold both Blooming Beautiful and Lioness, mentally, I was free to just think of our new place (first home owning and all the things that come with that) and our young family and it was just wonderful.
It’s such a freeing realisation to know you don’t have to have a business for any longer than you want to.
My advice would be, I wouldn’t worry about where your business is going long term, or even where the one you’re still thinking of might end up. We don’t know how our situations will change, but just know that as things do change, you are able to adjust, or even sell your business alongside those situations.
Businesses have seasons too. I am in an interesting season with my 3rd business, Once Upon A Garden Landscape Design. I am working through what I now want it to look like and which areas we might reduce and where we want to build etc.
So if the fear of picking wrong is what’s holding you back, let it go. Your first business doesn’t have to be your forever business, it just has to be the right one for the season you’re in. And the way you find that? You start with your why. That’s exactly where my free class begins. I walk you through getting clear on the reason you want to start, because that’s the part that holds everything else up. Come and join me.
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