The life of an Entrepreneur (the real deal)

After a restless night of not a lot of sleep and lots of worry I thought I'd share my feelings of working for myself. Now please keep in mind that yes, I have been a small business owner since 2004 but I have only recently left my "cush" full time job a bit over a year ago.

After working solely for myself, I now understand why people have always said how much they respect entrepreneurs. I get it!

Being a small business owner is the hardest thing I ever ever done in my short 32 years.

I'd also like to say that I do love what I do, I have always loved helping people and parties so I do have a fierce passion to keep my business going strong.

My Mother is also a small business owner (with a store front, that crazy lady!) and for years I just couldn't understand why we didn't get to see each other as much as I would have liked or that she just couldn't get away from the business. Mom, I know you love me more than the amazing store but I understand why you had to be there too! It just took me jumping into this whole crazy world of working for myself to truly get it.

Working for yourself is hard, it's scary and you learn how to live without really knowing when the next paycheck is coming. You can budget all you want for it, but life happens, things change and people flake.

On the positive side; I love being able to work where I want, in whatever clothes I want and with who I want. I am super lucky that my Clients are amazing and have respect and appreciation for what I do.

I have been teased my whole life about how optimistic, happy and cheerful I am and now I thank my lucky stars that I can find humor and the positive in everything. My mantra for the past year has been: "will it really matter in another year?" Typically the answer is no and quickly that follows a lot of laughter.

I am blessed to have a wonderful Husband, family and amazing friends who are there to cheer me on, listen to me, pick me up, dust me off, pour me a glass of wine and keep me on track. I couldn't have done all of this without them.

In short, being an Entrepreneur is all about not taking things too personally and rolling with the punches, loving what you do and showing it everyday (even when the punches can hurt a bit) ;-)

A Productive Day For Sure!!

I love days like today, getting to really get down and dirty helping people find more time in their day!

I'd like to quickly touch on something that came up this morning while returning some gifts to a large baby box store for a Client who just recently had an adorable baby boy.

My Client handed me a bag and said that she had received some gifts that she needed to return but didn't have the receipts. What's a new Mother to do right, ask the wonderful people who gave her the gifts for a receipt?

So I head out to the store to return the items and immediately get shut down by the Lady working at the counter, it went something like this:

Me: "Hi there I need to return these items"

Lady: "Do you have a receipt?"

Me: "No they were gifts"

Lady: "We don't accept returns without a receipt"

Me: "Well they were gifts, what am I supposed to do ask the people who gave the gifts for a receipt?"

Lady: "Um well I guess, we don't take returns without a receipt, we give gift receipts with every purchase"

Me: "Yes, I understand that but this doesn't make any sense, I can't just ask for the receipt"

Lady: "Well do you have a registry, if they were bought off the registry, we can take them back"

Me: "Yes but they were not off the registry that is why I am bringing them back, I didn't need them"

Lady: " Let me look up the registry"

Me: "Ok, but..?"

Lady: "I can't find you under a registry, so I can't do anything for you"

Me: "Ok, well I need to speak to the Manager then"

Lady: "Sure" (snotty voice)

wait, wait, wait......

Finally I walk over to the baby area and ask for the Manager. A guy comes out and we chat for a second, I explain the situation, he looks over the items and immediately says, "this is no problem, we will take it all back and give you store credit if that is ok with you"

Me: " Of course it is, I very much appreciate your help today"

I then get ushered over to the same lady where the Manager tells her to take everything back and assures me that she will take good care of me.

She does.

My Client is happy, I am happy and the Lady at the counter, well I am sure she is happy too.

Two lessons learned today:

1. Always give gift receipts when giving a gift, it is just the easy and right thing to do. It will save the gift receiver (or their Concierge) time and hassle.

2. Don't settle because you don't want to make a scene, just ask someone else. What is it going to hurt if two people tell you no? The odds are that you will get a yes from someone eventually ;-)

Enjoy your evening!

My first Blog, well hot damn!

I have been talking about this for a while now, this blogging thing, you know "everyone is doing it".
Here I am should have been in bed an hour ago but I am a small business owner (of two amazing businesses) so I am up working on billing, my marketing and well thought I better get my blog going.

This is exciting stuff, I mean I have high expectations for this blog, who knows, I could get a book deal, people following me, or even a movie out of this right? ;-)

First order of business is to explain my intentions for this blog. So here goes:

1. First and foremost to help busy people find more time in their day to deal with whatever it is that is holding them up by utilizing services like mine Coastsideconcierge.com or Coastsideweddingsandevents.com so that they can enjoy this amazing thing called life and spend time doing whatever it is that they love most.

2. Connecting people and businesses by connecting them to whatever it is they may be looking for or needing.

3. Get more exposure for my businesses by making sure I am on the cutting edge of both the event planning business and for the Concierge services on the Central Coast of California.

4. Hello book deal? That was a joke, well kind of.

So I promise to do my best to keep up my blog, make it interesting and try not to misspell words too often (thank God for spell check).
I appreciate anyone who wants to read this and keep up with the fun that is me, Karissa!