Chapter 4: My Life In Business – Sweet Days Ahead (2006)

My life as Co-Founder of Thirty-One

20 chapters from my 20 years

Including never before shared stories

I refer to year four in business for Thirty-One as a sweet year, when in all honesty it was also a difficult one for me. As the year began I was about six weeks out from the birth of our second child and the business was struggling through the month of January with lower sales than we had hoped for. We had five employees by this time and were informing them we needed to reduce their hours to meet our budget.  We had needed the employees big time over the holidays but in a giftable business like what we had there is typically a big drop in sales after Christmas. We bounced back in February with an increase in our sales, thankfully. So things were looking up.

A big life moment for me was the birth of our son Jacob on February 15, 2006. He’s now 18 years old as I write this, which is hard to believe. He was born on Wednesday and on our way home from the hospital two days later our first stop was by the Thirty-One office to check on things and show off our new arrival, of course. I worked part-time over the next month and took sweet baby Jacob to work with me until he was six months old. I was neck deep in putting our next catalog together while going through all the typical emotions that come after childbirth. It was all a blur and I wish I could have slowed down and savored my time with my new baby and let the work wait. But when you’re growing a business and have so much to do there’s sacrifices that have to be made and you can’t look back at it with regret.

We continued to we growth and had the opportunity to expand our small 1600 sf office space to 2400 sf by taking over the available spot next door. It had been a hair salon previously so there was work that had to be done to make it usable for our needs. The landlord didn’t want to open up the two spaces to each other so we had to go out the front door of one space and walk over to the other space. We set up all the office space in the new 800 sf space and used the 1600 sf area for storing inventory and packing orders to ship out. Space was still tight but we were making it work. We had enough room to host a few gatherings with our consultants in this space as well.

On the last day of April we had our Spring kickoff and about 30 Consultants were there. We released a catalog on May 1st and that month signed up our 200th Consultant. On top of the challenges of working full time on the business, having a 3 month old and 3 year old, I also turned 30 in May of ’06. The feeling over overwhelm came over me regularly as the business was not yet providing a consistent income.

On June 13, 2006 I wrote this prayer and you can see how much I worried and tried giving it all to God.

“Dear Lord, I know the plan you have for Thirty-One is much greater than anything I can fathom. My little worries are nothing to you but maybe a test of faith to see my strength. I have always been so independent and unwilling to ask for help but as I learn that I can't handle everything I am asking you to take it all. Do what you will with me and let me show your works with my hands. Give us the strength and knowledge we needs to manage the finances. Give me the ability to relax when the time is right so I can enjoy my children. Thank you so much for Jason, Jordan and Jacob. They are the most important thing to me. I know that Thirty-One is important and reaches many women. Bless our families for putting up with everything we have to do to commit to Thirty-One. Help the Thirty-One staff to be able to handle all the work that is coming their way this summer. Thank you Lord for everything. Amen”

In August we had our second conference gathering with about 60 Consultants in attendance. It seemed like a huge undertaking at the time because there were still so few of us running things and we had so much to get done. We really pressed our luck at times, such as getting our catalog off to the printer just days before our Conference and asking for them to have some printed copies ready for our event. Thankfully they pulled through, we picked up the catalogs right before the event and we handed our catalog bundles to our Consultants in attendance from the bed of our truck. Labor Day weekend came at just the right time to give us a little break just before jumping into the busiest season of our year.

In October I was able to attend a direct sales seminar in Salt Lake City, UT. It was very cool to get time away from the day to day of running the business and learn more about our industry from others who have been in it much longer than us. We were seeing consistently higher sales during the last four months of the year and did $100K months and even more by year end.

November and December were busy with our highest sales months of the year. We worked on expanding our reach to find new Consultants by setting up our booth at the holiday market in town. We stayed busy packing and shipping orders non-stop and many days worked well into the night to meet delivery deadlines.

It took hard work to get to our first $1M sales milestone, but by 2006 we reached $1.5M in that year alone. Profit was still our biggest concern as we were reinvesting into the business at such a high rate. By year end we already needed a bigger building to operate out of and found an ideal location with about 7500 sf. The time to move the business to a larger space had come.