Long before I started Goat Milk Stuff, I began praying for a family business. At the time, we had recently moved out to Indiana and Jim had left teaching to work for a friend’s garbage company. I had six young children (ages 8 and under) and an entire new lifestyle.
Five of those children were boys, and while Brett needed more of Jim too, it was very important to me that the boys have more of Jim’s influence than they were getting with him gone 40+ hours a week. I did (and still do) not want to raise a bunch of Mama’s boys.
So I started praying for a family business. Something we could all do together.
It took several years (and 2 more children) before our small family business, Goat Milk Stuff, became a reality. And even longer before Jim was able to work at GMS full time.
Running Goat Milk Stuff has been wonderful, but not without a lot of challenges. I’ll talk about those challenges next week, but I first wanted to share with you some of my reasons to start a small family business.
Do you have a family business? Or dreams of starting one? Please let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear about it.
Hey PJ!
I am a UVA grad and also a fellow small business owner. I started browncookie.com because I enjoy baking as a craft and, more importantly, I wanted to create a work environment where people enjoy coming to work everyday. Our hope is to grow so that we can provide employment opportunities for more people in the Seattle, WA area. In the corporate world, time was spent in long meetings and pushing papers getting “approvals”. I did not feel that this was real work or particularly a good use of time. I wanted to create a small business to work on and to call my own instead of working on other people’s business. Switching over to entrepreneurship takes courage but it is also very exciting and much more hands on, which is what I prefer. Thank you for being an inspiration to us small business owners! 🙂 I wish you guys all the best in 2012 and may you achieve even more growth! You have a great product!
Sincerely,
Julie