The drive: What challenges have you overcome?
I wear many hats for our business from HR, Payroll and Accounts to Social Media and overseeing the day-to-day runnings in the shop. Often I will need to complete work outside of office hours at home, so my biggest challenge has been juggling that, while also ensuring I am present as a mother to our gorgeous wee boy when we are at home.
Giving birth is still one of the most challenging and rewarding things I have done in my life to date. The strength we have as mothers to bring babies out into the world truly is something else. My strength, motivation and drive behind working hard every day is to hopefully have more time for my family in the future, working towards financial freedom and to create a beautiful life for our son.
For better or worse: What are the pros and cons of running your own business?
A pro of running your own business is that it can offer some flexibility. With our son in full-time daycare, whenever he is sick, I am able to drop everything to be with him and pick him up pretty promptly. The majority of my work for the shop enables me to work from home and also, I am not bound by the operating hours like Matt is, so I can get work done outside of shop hours and on weekends.
Another pro is artistic license and creativity. Matt has essentially given me free reign to make executive decisions about some things in the retail side of the business. I am really enjoying the process of what we can add to the shop and what things we can remove that aren’t working for our businesses. I have selected some awesome stock/products for the business pre-Christmas so I am really looking forward to our customers browsing and buying in store and online later in the year.
In terms of cons, finances in the main one. Once all of our loans are paid back, it would be nice to see some good profit for all our hard work put into the business, but right now we are in a bit of debt so it’s more of a con, haha.
In all seriousness, running your business is both challenging and rewarding. I love that I get to work so closely with my fiancé. Annual leave and sick days for us as business owners are not quite the same as they used to be prior to ownership but we do have some leave booked in later this year for a trip and a special event (our WEDDING), which we are both looking forward to.
Hopes and dreams: What next?
My hope is to just keep continually evolving the business. We recently created a beauty/consultation room in store. Some of our lovely staff are trained in doing facials, etc., so it’s going to be exciting to operate something new in-store to our community. I look forward to seeing how that develops.
In a more personal capacity, Matt and I have our wedding coming up very soon. I am very much looking forward to taking the next steps in my relationship with Matt and the celebration of our special day with close friends and family. Our son is going to be the ring bearer – so I cannot wait to see him dressed up.
Visit the Unichem Havelock North website to find out more and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.
