Ever since I had a conscious memory I’ve wanted my own business. Perhaps it was because I loved and adored my father so much that I wanted to be just like him. Not only was he kind and always in good humor, he had his own business. A grocery store he inherited from his father, which he jointly owned with his older brother. Yes, I’ve also been in search of a partner. Someone to share the burden and the joy of running a business. The partner has never appeared, but I’m finally beginning to understand my why, and what seems to drive my desire for my own business.
Where is there?
In search of the way to reproduce my calligraphy so that I could design greeting cards as a stay-at-home mom, I inadvertently launched a full time graphic design…job. That as 21 years ago.
With the exception of my holiday cards, I have yet to design one greeting card, but have designed just about everything else: advertisements, brochures, business cards, banners, interpretive panels for trade show displays and museums, invitations, newsletters, PowerPoint slides, programs, sales catalogues, sales sheets, stationery, training manuals, web buttons, web headers, and websites using Dreamweaver and now websites using WordPress.
When my freelance graphic design job took a dramatic downturn after loosing my biggest client in 2006, I began to question my abilities. After the stock market crashed in 2007 I began to doubt my horse sense. Did anyone really need graphic design services if everyone had a computer and could do it themselves with the aid of design templates?
Damn, I knew template design was the future in when I first began designing in the early 90s. Unfortunately, I never made time to focus on that: I was too busy cranking out print materials for clients, raising a family and trying to get dinner on the table.
Not willing to give up, a friend pointed me to a social media marketing expert in June 2012, who taught entrepreneurs how to get a WordPress site up and running, but more importantly, why. Not only is WordPress open source (a.k.a. free software) it’s compatible with email list service providers like AWeber, MailChimp, ConstantContact, InfusionSoft, KickStartCart, and more, so entrepreneurs can build and grow their list of followers by keeping in touch with their peeps on a regular basis.
But what about the business?
Now that I have learned WordPress, yet another computer software program in addition to Adobe’s InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and, yes, Quickbooks, too, I’m finally developing systems, so that I can build a real business — one that can be sold.
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