I’ve spent the last couple of days writing business proposals and quotes. I’ve been on both sides of the equation many times, but this time was by far the most special. Why? Because this time my business partner is my daughter!
Now I know you should never do business with family but to be honest they are the only people I’ve ever done business with, but I digress…
My daughter is 25 and when I was her age, I was doing the same thing with my mum! We set up a retail store together. It was a maternity wear store called Great Expectations. We had the business for just shy of 5 years. We sold it for two main reasons.
Firstly, we needed to make a significant investment. We had grown to our capacity with what we had. We had a manufacturing arm and we’d built up a catalogue service which involved me (as I was pregnant at the time) modelling our clothes, my dad taking photos and then my mum and I making individual albums for our clients. Now I’m talking back in the day where you had a roll of film, and you couldn’t see the how good or bad the pictures where until after the photo shoot and the film had been developed. It was a long and laborious process to put each catalogue together. So basically, we needed to invest in the worldwide web (now known as the internet!) – and there were none of the plug and play features we have today. It was expensive and hard coding all the way!
The second reason was my marriage had started to fall apart and there was no way my mum was going to have me in a position where I had no options because I had no financial certainty. Like most women of her era, there was no choice when it came to matters of the heart. You made the best of the hand you were dealt. That’s not to say my parents were unhappy but more a recognition that my mum had no options, and she didn’t want that for me.
As it turns out my marriage did break down and so a few years later that I arrived in Canberra single with three young children in tow. Despite my previous entrepreneurial pursuits, I felt the pressure to be a grown up and get a real job. So, I put these aspirations on the shelf promising myself I would come back to them when my youngest finished school. I kept that promise when I left my public service career 14 years later, and the circle was completed.
Now a new circle starts.
So, as we work through our module Dream the Possibilities in Life Done by Design this week, I can’t help but smile as I sit on the other side of my first entrepreneurial pursuit with my own daughter. I love her youthful zest. Her enthusiasm, her inability to sleep because she’s so excited at what lies ahead. Her constant phone calls and text messages with questions and new ideas.
I remember those feelings. The anticipation of what could be. The fearlessness and excitement of creating something new. The overwhelming desire to make a mark on the world.
So, what do you dream of?
What promises did you make to yourself that you are yet to fulfill?
Is now the time to reignite those dreams and see whats next on the horizon for you?
Hit reply and let me know. I'd love to hear what you're dreaming of.
PS. Want some tips on daydreaming and some reasons why its so good to do? Then check out an earlier blog I wrote dedicated to this glorious topic here.