No Nonsense— What it means to be a small business owner

No Nonsense— What it means to be a small business owner

When people ask me what I do for a living my answers are always the same, “my husband I farm and I have a hair salon in my house….oh….and I am co-owner of an online store.” Why do I answer like this? I’m not ashamed of our store, but I always feel that I’m being measured by how “successful” the store is.

Our store, My Essential Life, has been up and running for just over a year now. Is it successful, you ask? Define success — “the fact of getting or achieving wealth respect or fame” (Websters dictionary)

If I have to define success by Websters definition, which many people do, then I guess I would have to say no our business is not successful. But maybe, I should check out different definitions of success. The late Zig Ziglar, argued that “True success has more components than one sentence or idea can contain.” So let’s redefine success!

Success —
 believing you can; 
always doing your best; 
overcoming your fears;
learning something new everyday;
“If you can dream it you can achieve it;”
 “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”

With definitions like that then yes our business is very successful! It’s hard though to keep these new definitions of success in mind when people question you on “how the store is doing” because my first thought always flies back to the Webster definition. Oh yeah, they want to know how much profit we are making and I instantly get defensive. I’m only defensive in my mind though!

What needs to be done? “Success must never be measured by how much money you have.” Stop believing that success is measured in wealth and start believing that success stems from believing in yourself and in what you stand for.

What do you do for a living? — “I’m co-owner of My Essential Life, an online store specializing in essential oil accessories and supplies.”

Oh yeah? How’s that going for you? — “It’s going great, we are now in the top 14% of all other Shopify stores that opened the same time as us! I’m so excited for how the store is growing and can’t wait to see what this year brings for us!”

Changing that one response and thinking positively are going to make such a difference and I encourage you to think the same way! Don’t measure your success in dollars, “it’s not what you’ve got but what you use that makes a difference.”