My journey to learning about running a business

I was always a good student in primary school, achieved consistently good grades, was engaged and curious... but after Year 7, the first year in high school, something shifted and I became quite rebellious and didn't care about grades anymore. I couldn't wait to finish school but oddly enough I followed my friends into Year 11, where my disregard for learning continued... and I finally dropped out at the end of the year with the belief it was a waste of my time. I just wanted to be free and travel but my mother had other plans. She enrolled me in a Secretarial Studies course at the local TAFE. We fought for 3 days but I did go... and I stuck it out... and I got good grades.

It's funny... for years I played this scenario over in my head about me as a child in the 1970s sitting in the shed at the bottom of our garden at a desk typing away on our portable orange typewriter. As an adult recalling that period I felt it shone a harsh light on a reality I did not like... that it indicated I was destined to be a secretary and nothing more than a secretary!!! It wasn't until I really delved deeper into personal growth that the beautiful, magical truth revealed itself to me... it was indeed not a secretary at all... what it said about me was that I was a writer! I used to write / type poetry and short stories all.the.time and I read all the time too.

So I don't know what happened at school. Perhaps it was just not delivered in a way that was conducive for me to learn, but wanting to - or being able to - be a student disappeared for some time. Then out of the blue in my 30s it came back and stronger than before, and has never left me since. 

I've outlined in previous posts much of the learning I have undertaken as an adult as it relates to study but I have to say hands down the learning I have been doing in the past few years has been the richest, deepest, most rewarding learning so far. Most of it has come from listening... mostly podcasts... which is oftentimes followed up with online searches to delve deeper, find out more, etc. This has mostly been personal awareness, personal growth, etc, where I've been able to let go of a lot of rubbish that got handed to me over the years, that somehow seeped into my consciousness and formed part of my own story but was never truly mine. It feels so good, so liberating to free yourself of that stuff because it doesn't serve you and only weighs you down. This subject will most likely be content for future posts but the point of this post is about learning in regards to running a business.

In my blog post: A shift towards living creatively - part 1 I relayed how I had undertaken a Certificate IV in Small Business Management though the local BEC (Business Enterprise Centre). Now, while this had some merit in teaching one about translating your idea into actions, profit and loss, understanding who your target market is and so on and so on, it never truly resonated with me. I mean I walked away with a Business Plan but do you think I've ever used it... that would be a no.

One of the hardest things I've had to do is learn the business side of what I do... why? Because all I want to do is create... but because I want to put my wares out in to the world I need to know how to run a business. In all honesty, looking back now I can see it was one of the major contributors to Pinch River taking a back seat for as long as it did, and why I got so confused that it all just came to a stand-still. I now know that all the business 'mentoring' opportunities I dipped my toe into only made me more confused and lost. They all told me how I should be doing things but none of it felt aligned, none of it came from my heart, none of it felt natural and organic.. and none of it was geared towards female-led, small, handmade business, particlarly an online business. So I naturally started thinking the problem lay with me and that maybe I just wasn't cut out for this.

What happened though, in the years I was absent, was this magical thing where trail blazing female entrepreneurs forged the way. These amazing women who just had a knack for unpacking what had always been a masculine format and softening it, giving it heart and allowing spirituality to have a place at the table. Now that, my friends, is the way I had always wanted to do business but didn't give myself permission, instead I thought I was wrong for wanting it to feel organic and come from the heart. This led me to find just the right business mentoring for me, which I started around April 2024, and have been drinking it all up and implementing as I go. It's still a slow process for me but I finally came to realise I'm the only one putting pressure on myself and it's not a race, in fact, going slow means it's sustainable for me to, i.e. I can manage it on top of 'life' and I am enjoying the journey because the path I walk is comfortable and it meanders, so it's a constant journey of discovery.

In fact I have also been doing some other online workshops, which is why I haven't gotten back into the swing of making products. The time felt right for some learning opportunities, although these days I remain focused and tend not to go down rabbit holes anymore... gosh, how much time did I waste looking for what I wanted, which only led to a deeper sense of being lost and confused. The image I sourced for this blog post best represents the subject of learning and for me, lately, I feel my head is full of new wonderful knowledge.