January Business Behind-The-Scenes: Busy, Rough, Productive, Whirlwind Year Start

The motto for January has been, "It'll get better!" With life and business we're at that painful growth stage. This month we did 7 outdoor markets, two of which took five hour drives to and fro to get there. We drove through a deadly tornado through one of them to get home. (Yay, I'm alive typing this, let's count that blessing! I've never seen that much lightning in my life it was like being in that red spot on Jupiter.)

I've got lots of behind-the-scenes of those markets/expos/events on Instagram they were so awesomely varied and uniformly not without their stresses and fun moments. I got free Reiki healing at one, still another was in a dark club downtown and I was asked to set up in front of the DJ's speakers! Did well considering the circumstances!

By the way, these soaps smell AMAZING! I just finished shrink-wrapping them.

This month I learned the hard way to heed the advice of many a book I've read on running a retail store; you simply cannot do it alone! I was trying to create and formulate our herbal products, work on the e-commerce and social media, make high quality e-books and blog posts, run the shop daily, do expos and outdoor markets and local workshops and classes....nope! Burned. Out.

This week I hired my first part-timer helper (my friend Lia) and hell yes, I feel like I'm going to be so much more productive and actually earn more along the way, being able to actually do my marketing duties for the business. I get asked about not having our proper website up so much, so glad to get work on that and much more!

Above is a little behind-the-scenes peek at our first workshop at the studio. I did a "plan the new year with good intentions" freebie and encouraged the bringing of snacks. I made our herbal chai blend and stove-popped popcorn with our immunity-boosting spice blend and it was well-loved :)

The workshop turned into a bit of a venting session and it gave us the idea to actually have a "stitch and bitch" type women's venting session. My friend Patricia (who rents our class space to take clients) is a mental health counselor and she's planning to host group therapy sessions as well.

At the start of our workshop I had everyone draw a card and did a reading on it for their year. Mine was the 3 of cups upside down which can mean isolation from others. I spent a lot of January working late nights alone at my shop. I'm feeling a touch of relief already being able to make a list of things to delegate to my first helper!

Now Body&Soul is a group project with AJ, me, Lia, Patricia and my mom. It's a staff of varied talents: two certified herbalists and aromatherapists, classically trained chef, master's level therapist, and a certified fitness trainer. I'm one of the herbalists/aromatherapists but you can throw in multi-business starter marketer/website maker-person too. It's a dream team! We're already planning loads of fun workshops and classes to go into 2017!

We managed to fit in a MUCH-NEEDED one-day-and-night stay at My Favorite Place in the World, The Hostel in the Forrest. I can't 'til we fit in a longer stay! This was our treehouse this time (Elmos) & our view from its balcony.

So there's a peek behind-the-scenes of this business and a little bit about how I learned to let go and delegate or lose my damn mind! Each product I make is therapeutic grade and takes multiple steps from research, to formulation, to label design, to packaging and shrink wrapping, it's a lot! But it's also so satisfying. Now I need get home and rest so I can feel energized enough to tackle my blog editorial calendar too!

I hope your new year's been off to a good start. As always if you have tips of productivity I'm alway all-ears for them, we still need all the help we can get and I am taking applications for interns if anyone locally would love to learn lots of skills in a fun, amazing-smelling workspace! (E-mail me here.)

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