Can You Have Balance?

I felt my face flush as the heat rose up from my chest and neck.  The light felt bright in my eyes and the mic shook a little in my hands.  The thought went through my head, "do I tell the truth or do I give an answer that makes me sound more pulled together than I am?"  

I was on a panel of female business owners in New York City at the World Trade Center and the women in this panel were NAILING IT.  One had worked alongside Lady Gaga, another balanced being an attorney, a restaurant owner and a mother while the third's company worked on NYC's subway system.  And then there was me who started a beauty company in my kitchen in Queens.  All good, I'm all good, I hadn't said anything crazy or buckled with any of my answers.  Until our wonderful moderator, Lena, asked us a final question and I was up first - "how do you keep your life balanced?"

I took a deep breath as I could feel my face turning bright red.  I exhaled and said, "I don't do that very well."  I went on to share that that was something I was working on, that I wished I was better at it, but I prioritized work over just about everything else in my life and it made me very good at my job and not great at many other things.  I told the truth.  The rest of the ladies had amazing answers about 4 day work weeks and other things that are hazy in my memory because I felt myself slipping into a bit of a hole in the floor of shame, but I decided it was better to tell the truth that things are hard instead of gloss over it if I hadn't figured something out yet.

And then a month or so later our Black Friday sale came.  This has historically been a time of panic, weekends worked, and stress with a side of chaos.  As a small business we've been prepping for this sale since June, making products up until the 11th hour and then crossing our fingers that people buy everything we just made.  And this year we started it early - 9 days early to be exact - which we'd never done before.  

Midnight came, which is when our VIP sale started - this is usually a time where folks have preloaded their carts and orders come flooding in en masse - it's exciting and sets the tone for the next few days which will be full of filling orders, and coming in on weekends to make sure we get everything out as quickly as we can.  I looked at our system to see how many people were on the site.  Four.  That can't be right.  I refreshed the page.  I turned to my husband, Daniel, and said "there's four people on the site right now."  "Is that good?" he asked.  "No," I answered, "it's bad.  It's really, really bad."  I had a high goal we needed to hit for the sale and at this rate we weren't going to be remotely close to it.  

I started to quietly panic.  I had told our staff, some of whom were new to our team, to prepare for a banner day full of orders at a fast pace.  I felt embarrassed to be so wrong, but more than that, concerned about what this would mean for our bottom line.  Inventory-based companies are expensive to operate and we needed to do well.  And then I was reminded of my first Green Beauty Workshop back in 2012, where I sold $150, which wouldn't be enough if things continued that way.  I had clarified that my motive was to love people instead of selling and went on to have an amazing trip where I sold more than I had hoped.  

With that in mind, the next morning I got in and while I always love writing our thank you notes on people's packing slips I fully leaned into my gratitude for every single person who had placed an order with us and decided that that's where I would operate from.  Every day I focused on the immense gratitude I had for every order that we sent out and decided not to focus on a constant check of our numbers.

We had planned to come in that weekend to do orders but our team got through everything (and even got sent home early a couple of days) so I didn't want them to have to spend a Saturday in the office if it wasn't necessary.  Not knowing what to do with myself I raked a ton of leaves and put my garden to bed.  Lots of orders came in over that weekend which kept us busy but then the next weekend came and on Small Business Saturday I felt free to go and see "Wicked" instead of having our team come into the office as I felt like we could handle things on Monday.  Folks, I haven't had Black Friday weekend off in 24 years (I worked a lot of retail!).  

We got to have this slow and steady stream of sales instead of an avalanche, we got to be with our families on the weekends, and y'all, WE BEAT OUR GOAL.  We beat it.  I didn't quite know what to do with myself.

I am so used to wearing myself out and being willing to do so, though it has gotten less fun to do that after 13+ years, and the realization that I didn't have to do that was massive.  We had set everything up in a fashion that it worked.  It worked!  And let me have a life at the same time.  It is a major thing for me and I'm honestly still unfolding pieces of it which is why this is so long (thanks for getting this far!).  

But I think back to that moment with the mic in my hand and I don't know that I'd have a different answer yet, but I believe that my answer can be different, that it's possible, and that's a whole new world that I'm excited to learn more about.