My poor blog has been sorely neglected.
Sharing My Jennarocity was the name I gave my blog 6 years ago. When I started my businesses, the name Jennaocity took on a whole new meaning. It was the identification of who I was, or rather, who I thought I was. This busy entrepreneur, this driven "business woman," who could "do it all." This last year, my life has been through a lot of changes, failures and learning experiences. God has been very painfully, but mercifully, shaping me into who He wants me to be, instead of who I thought I wanted to be. In the process, I have found my renewed purpose in Him. I have reconnected with my strengths and been shown my weaknesses, and in that, have learned some life-changing lessons.
February is my birthday month. I want to invite you to join me this month in my journey, so that maybe my experiences and what I've learned can be of help to you in your life. One of my strengths is my resilience and God has told me that it's time for me to share my stories of learning and resilience with those out there who might be in the same boat I was in...I hope that something I say can help effect change in your life, and get you in touch with God and His purpose for your life.
It's been just over a year that My Jennarocity Consignments opened officially. I was a Realtor, an estate sale operator, and now, a store owner. The thought at the time was growing the Jennarocity brand into something big - estate sale franchises and stores in different cities. I even tried to start a foundation which matched the leftover items I had to people and charities who needed it. Never, in a million years, would I have thought I would have been in this place. It was very exciting, but very overwhelming. I began working 100+ hours a week. We were constantly moving stuff around, packing and unpacking and repacking the van with stuff people wanted me to sell. Moving stuff out of the estate sales that people wanted to get rid of. There was stuff - everywhere. Stuff at the store, stuff in my garage, stuff in my sunroom, and stuff in my office at home.
The store was beautiful. People from all over Grand Prairie were coming in and showing their support for me and my new venture, and would tell me how beautiful the store was. The problem was - not very many people were buying anything. I was still doing real estate, and doing really well at it, but the money I was making as a Realtor was going right back into the businesses. Not just in the store, although that was a big chunk. But advertising, websites, gas, fees....money would come in, then money would go out. I was literally killing myself everyday, with very little to show for it.
I knew it would be hard to turn a profit with the store, but felt assured that one day, it would all be worth it. The more I tried thinking of ways to turn this model of Jennarocity into a profitable venture, the less I found it to be possible. I would spend hours on my computer, researching businesses and franchise models, training systems, state and federal requirements and listening to Podcasts about other owners and what they did to grow their businesses. I was 100% all in, and expected my family to be as well.
Jason had become the labor and I was always calling him to come help move this or that. The kids would come up to the store to help with things. There was a huge amount of pride in all of us, that we had a family business. However, that pride quickly became expectation and resentment. I wasn't spending time at home, I was missing stuff the kids were doing. I wasn't taking care of my actual home - I was taking care of this thing I'd started. Constantly.
There was always something that had to be done. Always the next thing on my mind. I was spending car rides with my family on my phone, dealing with this issue or that issue. Real estate is a demanding profession and it's a stress-filled process for clients, The trick as a Realtor is to be there and advise, but not let client's stress become your stress. That stress however, became my stress through all of this because I wasn't ever able to stop and relax and had very little time to do what needed to be done. Then my stress became my family's stress, because I was taking it out on them, especially my husband.
After four months of this, enough was enough. But I had to go through the process, mentally, of admitting to myself that I couldn't do it all. "I'm capable, smart and driven, I should be able to do this!" I would always think to myself. Being a doer, I experienced a great deal of failure in my inability to make this work. I had to come to terms with the idea of telling employees they would no longer have a job, telling the public that the store I'd literally just opened (and had a ribbon-cutting for) was closing and facing the idea of admitting to myself the damage I'd done to my loved ones by putting more into the store than to them. It was a very hard time.
As much as it hurt my pride, I closed the store down.
The estate sale business started more as a hobby and something fun to do when real estate was just starting out. It, too, was incredibly time consuming, but I really did have fun with it for a while. I learned so much about treasures and about people going through this painful time. I felt that I had a knack for making the process easier on people and it gave me an outlet for my customer service skills. I loved meeting people who would come to the sales. The estate sale business turned out to be incredibly beneficial to my real estate career, as well. I met clients that I am still doing work for, so even though it wasn't lucrative as a business itself, it turned out to be lucrative for my real estate.
In the beginning, people were just appreciative I would even do the sale in the first place. But that, too, starting changing as the business became more formal and contracts were in place. I started having more and more clients expressing disappointment that their sales didn't go as well financially as they'd hoped. And the drudgery of moving stuff out after the sale became a task that I never looked forward to doing. Estate sales take hours upon hours. In order to have help that would actually get paid somewhat appropriately for all their hard work, I began giving all the profits from the sale to them. I was taking on the financial and legal responsibility without any of the profits.
The last sale I did ended badly and that was when I decided that it simply wasn't worth the sacrifice of time away from my family and decided to shut that part down, as well.
I had been very involved in clubs and organizations prior to the store opening. I became overwhelmingly involved - my innate desire to say yes started taking a toll on me and the things I started out loving became something I dreaded. Couple that with the sense of failure I was dealing with, and I basically just stopped with everything, for a period of several months. A period I'm actually still in. I needed a break, to get back in touch with myself and what I really wanted out of life. I went back to focusing solely on real estate, being a mom and being a wife.
This is only a portion of the story, but what I've learned from this experience is that by nature, I am a person who can become addicted to "doing." I get a great deal of pride from things I "do," and started actually defining myself as a person from the things I'd accomplished. I know other women out there, reading this, can identify a great deal with this. I became a woman who "does," and not a woman who "is." I found it difficult to just stop and be in the moment.....do you find yourself there too? I was proud of all I did, while simultaneously being resentful and overwhelmed by it. I found myself unable to set up proper boundaries, even unable to identify what my priorities in life really were.
During this process, I began journaling, which allowed me to slow down and reflect, not just on my past experiences, but also give deliberate thought to how I felt both mentally and physically, what my opinions were, my strengths and weaknesses and what I needed to work on. I was also able to focus on why I "did" in the first place, and how much of a sense of self-worth I derived from it, however unhealthy. I think women, by nature, are multi-taskers. This is why most women I know can know when everyone's birthday is, their shoe size, what time to pick up the kids from practices that day, plan dinner for 3 days from now, buy groceries without a list, know what bills are due without having to write them down and do this, all on 4 hours sleep. But it's also why we don't know how to slow down and just sit and relax, without needing a distraction. Our minds are going a mile a minute, so in those times we do get a moment to relax, very few of us ever do anything that causes us to do that. If you have a moment to yourself, what do you do with it? Binge watch a TV show? Get on your phone? Maybe start those things, then get back up and write a to-do list of all the things you think need accomplishing?
I'm not saying it's good to do nothing by sacrificing time from things that need to be done for your family. But sometimes, the things that need to be done for your family are to be with your family or to learn to relax your mind and just stop. If you're like me, you found that an uncomfortable task. What do I think about when I'm "doing nothing?" And that's precisely the point.
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