Is Entrepreneurship Really for Me?
It’s 9:45 p.m.
I’m finally able to twist off the cap of that Straw-ber-ita Splash that I’ve been trying to get to all afternoon.
9:46 p.m.
I remember what it’s like to have a quiet house — where I don’t hear children crying, yelling, or bickering with one another.
9:47 p.m.
I realize that I’ve been home all day taking care of three children. I always said I wanted a big family, but I’m starting to have second thoughts. I had no idea the amount of work it takes to maintain a home and take care of a family.
9:48 p.m.
I realize that I’m standing up drinking my cold ‘rita when I should be sitting down on the couch getting ready to dive into the television shows that I’ve been saving up on my DVR. But I can’t sit down. I can’t rest yet. The other part of my day is just about to begin.
Two years ago, I had an idea to learn calligraphy. I’ve always loved beautiful, cursive handwriting, and I wanted to see if I could do this type of art myself. It turned out that I was actually pretty good at it, plus I really enjoyed it. Calligraphy quickly became my new favorite creative outlet.
After doing some research, I discovered that there are people who do calligraphy as a full-time job, so naturally, I decided that I wanted in on that. At the time, I was tired of my day job and had been searching for an opportunity to create a business of my own so that I could work at home. All of the entrepreneurial talk that I had been listening to had finally seeped into my brain and made me believe that I could do it — that I could start my own calligraphy business and turn it into my full-time job.
I launched my calligraphy shop on Etsy in June 2015, and it started out well. I was averaging one new client every month, which was fantastic in my eyes considering I had only recently learned how to do calligraphy. I was amazed that people around the country were willing to pay me to write names and addresses on their envelopes for their special event. I loved it and instantly felt like I could do it forever.
9:50 p.m.
I have 100 envelopes to address and I’m beginning to wonder if I made a mistake putting so much pressure on myself to turn my calligraphy hobby into a business so quickly.
Putting pressure on yourself can be a good thing. I often thrive under pressure — even though I feel like I may crack when I’m under that pressure, I tend to work better when I know that someone else is depending on me.
But this whole business venture feels like it’s too much about me. I need to make it my full-time job. I need to get more clients. I need to do more marketing. I need to update my shop page to attract more new customers.
This desire to grow my business is what led me to take on this most recent client. The 100 envelopes client. The amount of envelopes is not the problem, it’s the amount of time that I agreed to finish those envelopes. My normal turn-around time is two weeks, and while my client did pay for a rush order, I still should have been more honest with myself and my client. At the moment, I have some major life stuff going on — like having a newborn baby and waking up every few hours to feed that little newborn baby — so now is not the best time for me to be overpromising and overcommitting.
Everything in me told me to say “No” to this new client, to hit the pause button, to put the breaks on this project, but my greed and my fear disagreed, so I said “Sure, I’ll do it.”
Saying “yes” to this client was good for my bank account, but it wasn’t good for my confidence in how I run my business. I had completely disregarded my gut instinct to say “no” to this particular rush request, and now I’m feeling the pain of that decision.
I’m also starting to question why I’m even in this calligraphy business in the first place. Is it because I truly love and enjoy it? Is it so that I can quit my job, work from home and spend more time with my children? Or is it so that I can be that super successful entrepreneur who makes a million plus in their first year? (Yes, I really thought that would happen to me.)
Calligraphy doesn’t feel good to me when it’s all about me. It just makes me tired. And that’s how I feel right now. Extremely tired and exhausted. I still love the art of calligraphy, but I need to rethink whether or not I really want to make calligraphy my full-time job. And even then, there’s a much bigger question that I need to address: Is entrepreneurship really for me?
When I jumped into doing calligraphy, I naively thought that I could start a business by only putting in a small amount of work every day. And while you might be able to start a business that way, you won’t be able to keep it that way. It won’t grow. It won’t last. And it won’t bring in the kind of profits that you need to actually go and quit your day job. Thank God I didn’t quit my day job.
Some days I feel like I can do it, like I can start my own full-time business working only for myself. Other days I feel pretty content with keeping my corporate job and having a few, small money-making hobbies on the side. Building, growing and maintaining your own business requires a major sacrifice of time and energy and effort, and in my little experience of trying to start my own business, I discovered that I’m just not willing to make that kind of a sacrifice right now.
The truth is that I really don’t know if I’m cut out to be an entrepreneur, but I do know that I would like to give it another shot someday. Maybe not with calligraphy, but maybe with another passion of mine.
So maybe the answer to my big question — ”is entrepreneurship really for me?” — is Yes…but not right now. Not at this moment, and not in this season of my life.
I feel good about that answer. And it feels like a success, not a failure, to listen to my gut and say goodbye to my idea of making calligraphy my full-time gig.
For now though, I have to finish what I started, which means that I need to enjoy this last sip of my drink and get started on those 100 envelopes. I’ve got a lot of work to do.
