Owning your own business

This year marks the start of Aunt Sadie’s 27th year in business. Over the years, we’ve often been asked by friends, family and strangers “What’s it like?” “Would you do it again?” “What’s the biggest challenge?”. Well, it’s like a rollercoaster ride, frightentening yet pleasurable, we’d do it again in a heartbeat, and everyday presents a new challenge, for us most of them feel big.

I was recently asked “what’s the one piece of advice you’d give to someone wanting to start their own business?” Are you willing to commit every waking hour of the first few (or 27) years of your life to this new business? If you are, you’re likely to discover a lot about yourself: an inner strength and resilience; coping skills you never realized you possessed; an ability to endure mammoth frustrations and survive the most dreaded failures. We’re betting the sense of achievement will surpass anything you might imagine.

Like many small businesses, Aunt Sadie’s started on a whim and desire to learn something new, not with the intention of “getting rich”. We didn’t have a solid business plan in place because our initial intention wasn’t to sell candles, it was to give them as holiday gifts. Our humble history began in a small Boston apartment kitchen, making candles over a hot stovetop. Although we had no idea what the “bones” of a wholesale business looked like, we had 2 critical things that are important when beginning any business: passion and an intrinsically small market of customers interested in our product. Those first years for us were clouded by financial woes and that loud ominous statistic that “most new businesses fail in the first 5 years”. Happily, against amazing odds, many new businesses survive the first 5 years and become vibrant businesses. Of course it’s not all puppies and ice cream after that, the challenges these past 15 years have knocked us off our not-so-high horses more than a few times. When Aunt Sadie’s survived the 2008 recession we liked to say “any small business that survived this recession can survive anything”. Obviously we weren’t expecting bazillions of new candle companies to suddenly emerge followed by a worldwide pandemic. Small businesses have to learn to adapt, reinvent, retool, revamp, and change their business models and strategies on a dime. That’s really the beauty of owning your own business, you hold the reins. You control the game plan. When push comes to shove, you put it all on the line.

Aunt Sadie’s has received thousands of emails over our 27-year history. Some have been critical. Thankfully, most have been complimentary. We get goosebumps when we receive an email from a valued customer like this, “Aunt Sadie’s Snowy Tree Candle has become a Holiday tradition in our home and without your candle, the Holidays would not be the same”. In our corporate values we mention making unique candles, using the best ingredients, honoring Aunt Sadie’s life and creating a happy positive workplace, but the one thing always driving our business has been to have fun. So here's our advice if you’re contemplating starting and owning your own business. . .  go research, talk to friends/family/colleagues for feedback and support, and ask yourself if you have the passion, commitment and the resources to get it going and sustain it for the first year or two. Yes? Then for goodness sake, why are you still reading this, you’ve got a business to start.