Chapter 8: My Life In Business - Making Lasting Choices (2010)

My life as Co-Founder of Thirty-One

20 chapters from my 20 years

Including never before shared stories

The year 2010 was a welcome new year of new opportunities and the beginning of my families first full year living in Columbus. The business was seeing increases in sales and sign ups of new consultants. We were getting the attention of our industry. It was beyond my wildest dreams to see the amount of growth in just the last seven years and yet I couldn’t begin to fathom what was to come.

In all honesty I wasn’t in this for any kind of glory or recognition. I was in it because I believed in the mission we had set out on from day one. Giving anyone the opportunity to run a business for themselves and have an earning potential way beyond their current situation. Or helping them cover their car payment if that’s all they strived for. It wasn’t lost on me how fortunate I was to be able to say I co-founded a company that was experiencing record breaking revenue numbers year over year. And that we had started a company that would end up reaching and impacting millions. But I was fully aware I came into the business seven years prior without any business expertise whatsoever.

My kids were young at the time - four and seven. They were my reason for doing all of this hard work and yet I didn’t want them to have an absentee mother or some type of substitute parenting situation. I was grateful that we had the ability to allow my husband to stay at home with our kids, but in my heart I wanted to be home as much as possible.

It took a lot of serious consideration, but one year after moving my family nearly 500 miles away from home, I made the decision to step away from business ownership and take on a different role. That was the role of an employee of a company that I was so proud to have started and one that I knew better than anyone else. And now it was a business that would support my dream of prioritizing my family over my career and still be able to provide well for my family.

In March of 2010 I wrote this simple thought in my journal:

“All I have wanted since seeing the business grow is to take a step back and enjoy my kids now and not be l left looking back with regret and sadness. I plan to let my kids see me putting them first no matter what.”

Our National Conference participation continued to increase every year but this particular year the numbers more than tripled in size over the previous year. In our first five years of hosting this event for our sales field we had not even seen 500 turn out but now we were going to have 1,500 in attendance. Additionally, all of our previous conference events had been held in the South - Tennessee, Georgia, Florida. This time we would host our first big event in downtown Columbus. Our theme was “Reaching New Heights Together” and that pretty much summed up what was coming our way as a business.

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Soon after the biggest event of our year we began the steps to expand the business to a second location because we were already bursting at the seams less than eight months after moving into the new building in Johnstown.  The second location was a 700,000 square foot building previously occupied by Victoria Secret catalog fulfillment. There was even a catwalk of sorts in the lobby. In comparison you could place eight of our brand spanking new Johnstown buildings into this new space. And boy were we going to need every bit of the space.

While big moves were happening at work we were also arranging a big move to relocate my parents from Chattanooga to Columbus. The fact that both my sister and I had moved our families to Columbus to grow the business also meant we had taken all five of our parents grandchildren far away. They decided their best course of action was for my dad to retire and for them to join us in Ohio. It was so very important for them to be part of their grandchildren’s lives and we couldn’t be happier to have them nearby.

In September we started the process of really trying to put our roots down as a family by finding a piece of property to build a new home on. We had only been in Columbus for 15 months but it felt like we wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon, so why not build a new house?  It not like there was already plenty going on. The land was a couple of miles from my parents which would work out just perfectly.

In the Fall several of the families that had moved from Chattanooga and attended church together began meeting at rotating houses each Sunday afternoon. We lovingly called our group gathering "Praise the Lord and Pass the Biscuits". Between the families there were ten kids. It was always so much fun to sit around a table and have a meal together then play games with our kids. I loved those special families and the others we were able to share common bonds with as transplants from the South.

The holiday selling season kept us extremely busy and we were grateful to have two operations locations. By this time we were a seven year old company and had signed up around 25,000 consultants. We had been located in eight different buildings and hoped beyond hope that we would not have to move the business again. We were exhausted and didn’t want to see another moving truck. At least for a very long time.