Today we celebrate our 8th birthday!!! If only we did gifts made of bronze, linen or lace to do a discount code on! Here are we are on 5th June 2015, having just asked Zac to press the button to launch The Lovely Keepsake Company online!
What you’ll see is a happy couple celebrating the start of an exciting adventure with glasses of fizzy champagne!
What I see, is a lot slimmer face, a smoother forehead, a nervous, tired smile and a photo of us with fizz that my stomach ulcers don’t allow me to drink, but I obviously thought it was a good prop to make a super celebratory keepsake photo!
8 years on, what I know now, that I definitely didn’t know then, is that for every exciting moment like this, there have been nervous moments - tenfold! The girl in that photo was exhausted from weeks of working into the early hours to get the site live and had no idea what was to come! Had she known, it might have been a different story!
Today we have an umbrella company, 5 brands, a team of 9, an investor, 2 own label design brands, a production and dispatch unit, 5 websites, amazing products, consistent 5 star Trustpilot and a drive and vision to keep doing what we love.
“Rollercoaster” is an overused word but a pretty good description. However to be honest, when you are hard at work you tend to be more sensitive to and aware of all the lows rather than the highs and lows. I used to say to my team in a previous business “we must always rejoice in results” and yet all too often, when you are pushing forward constantly, you are already looking at and worrying about the next challenge rather than stopping for a moment to recognise your success and what you’ve achieved.
I love this business. I can’t imagine myself doing anything else right now. I love that I love it, but I also love how much our customers love us! Bringing comfort and joy with our thoughtful gifts really has been a huge reward that I didn't expect and completely underestimated!
It’s not easy running your own business. It’s certainly not easy continually pushing and driving to improve and scale up. And it’s made all the more difficult when you have a team that you love and respect that rely on you to keep growing the business, with and for them.
So what are the takeaways from today’s anniversary?
Do what you love. If you don’t it’s harder to get up, pick yourself up and keep upping your game as your business grows.
Surround yourself with likeminded people who get “it”. Whatever your “it” is. Trusting your team is imperative.
Don’t worry about the what ifs or maybes. Do your research, have a clear plan, and worry about each day as you need to.
Know who you are, what you are about and most importantly, what you are not. Have a single clear vision, no matter how far away it is, as to what your business will look like and work each day with that in mind.
Focus each day on doing at least one thing to make a difference.
Think like a customer and strive to create fans.
Have fun, each day, every day.
Accept that you will make mistakes and wrong decisions, and feel positive about the lesson that teaches you.
And every now and again, look over your shoulder and see how far you’ve come.
Would the person in this photo be impressed and excited by the business she would see today? You bet your glass of champagne she would! Does the person looking at this photo today feel like she’s still so much to achieve? Hell yeh she does!
But if this keepsake photo from the launch of this business does one thing for me, (apart from encourage me to take better care of myself these days!), it’s to realise what can be achieved and to keep pushing forward for at least another 8 years and see how far we can take this dream!
Thank you to all those who have been there with us and supported us in so many ways.