Keeping on track

Sometimes it is hard in life to keep on track.  That is keep doing all the right things at the proper time.  Sometimes life throws at you more than you can handle.  It is easy to become overwhelmed.  Believe me I have learned all about this by the school of hard knocks.  The best thing to do is to slow down and take several deep breaths and then keep on going hopefully with some sort of order. 

I jumped into running businesses several times in my life.  Actually I believe that this is part of God's plan for me, why else would I find myself thrust into being in a business?  I love dealing with people particularly chatting and visiting with the public.  I never much liked or felt comfortable going to big parties where I knew very few people.  But being in my shop is like being in my home and it is easy to be gracious to people who come into your home, shop. 

Our first shop was a gift shop that I ran with my husband.  I was responsible for ordering the merchandise for the shop.  We had bought a preexisting shop and I was able to use the example of what was previously purchased in order to figure out what would sell.  I soon was connected with the various salesmen who represented these companies.  Then I relied on my up bringing and personal inherent taste.  Being a Virginian I was aware of the type of items that Virginians would buy. Unfortunately I never had any training in business.  Perhaps, I should have taken a course or two in Business.  My Art History background helped me with buying.  It taught me to look for quality and good design. Where I had problems was keeping up with the book keeping.  I ordered items for resale and projected sales.  As long as I was the only one doing the ordering I was able to keep up.  When my husband started to order framing materials we began to run into some problems.  I kept records in my head, that was not a good plan.  I still tend to have this bad habit.

All the while that I was running the gift shop, I had small children at home.  Lewis was a baby when we bought the business, Chris was eight years old and Scott was five years old.  Some how we maneuvered running a business and a family at the same time.  Actually,  I ran the gift shop with help from the ladies that worked for me and my husband ran an extension of my father's art gallery.  I took Lewis to work originally in a baby seat  and play pen, years later people would come in and asked about the cute little baby.  Thinking about this now I have to stop and wonder that I could do all this.  Some how I did manage.  I would leave work and head home in time to be there for the boys to get home from school and pick up Lewis from baby day care.  Then I would start dinner and help the boys with their home work.  There were bullies to deal with hurts to heal, swim team and soccer practice. Games to go to.  As I write this I am marveling at how I could have done all this. 

I have to admit that at this time I was only restricted to wearing a brace on my left leg and I walked with crutches.  I guess I could have done this from a wheel chair too.  You never know what you can do until you have too.  My motto has always been to do whatever is needed to be done come what may.

I think that when I consider how much I had done at that point in my life, that it helps me deal with the now.  I still have another type business to deal with.  With this business, I learned not to go on credit and not to gamble on projected sales as much.  We prepay everything that we purchase so that our inventory is paid for.  But we still have to gamble on the amount of business we might do.  We started out as an Antique Mall renting spaces and selling other people's merchandise with two or three part time employees.  I had four or five ladies working for me at the gift shop.  The great thing about this business was that we purchased a program for our computers that made keeping track of everything easy.  As long as we wrote up the items sold, correctly, all we had to do at the end of the month was to push the right buttons and the computer did the rest. Oh, I do love computers.  I would never be writing this if I did not have the ease of writing on the computer and God bless spell check!  Now I have less and more to deal with.  Life would not be interesting if everything went along easily. 

So now we changed our business from an Antique Mall to a partnership.  Lewis and I decided that we would do much better going it alone.   The economy sort of dictated it.  With the drop in the economy we realized that the dealers were leaving and we could not easily find new dealers to replace them that carried the type of merchandise that we required in our shop.  We did not want to go the way of many Antique Malls who allowed their dealers to sell anything including flea market type items.  We wanted to be a real antique shop.  We began slowly to take over the spaces in our shop.  As the dealers left we would fill their spaces.  We finally mid 2009 got a load against my house and stared buying for real with the idea that we would have a single shop.  We also bought a van and designed a logo and picked a new name our name.  The die was cast.