I used to love crafting and making things but for many years I simply didn’t have the headspace. Its interesting to me how I am really only coming to that conclusion now that I am taking my first baby steps away from running a full fledged business. Wow, what a beautiful feeling to be welcoming in all this space to create again. To get excited by the idea of knitting a shawl and creating sacred time to do so daily, or to start writing again (hello, first blog post!), or even to start baking sour dough bread every week. This unfolding feels so good and like a coming home to what I used to love doing.
For many years, fifteen to be exact, I ran my soap making business Nourish Natural Soaps. A heartfelt passion project that grew beyond my wildest expectations and ended up being a fully fledged business that I ran from home. I really loved all the aspects of running the business from crafting soap to being at markets and doing the behind the scenes admin. However the weight of the Nourish 'entity' grew and grew and took up more and more real estate in my head. I am only seeing now how many of my creative interests slowly fell by the wayside as I focused all my energy on my budding soap business. Let me take you back...
Way back in 2012 I was a young mother with a 7 year old. As I do now, I lived on a large family property surrounded by my immediate family; mom, dad, sister and brother - each with their respective spouses and children. My handmade soap business was taking off and it was an exciting time for me. I had always been very attracted by doing handmade things, sewing, knitting, baking - I really loved spending time in creative mode whenever I could. Soap making was a natural extension of that and I loved the immediate response of people to my soapy creations and how happy it made them. This energy encouraged me to research and create many other products and with each new product, my confidence and business grew. In the span of two to three years I went from being a home crafter selling at a weekly market to having a large workshop and selling wholesale to shops. Onwards and upwards was the motto!!
Looking back now I can clearly see how bit by bit my business grew and how slowly any other creativity got put on hold. I didn't have the headspace to knit or sew because I had to work on my accounts, baking slowly fizzled out because I needed to check that I had enough barcodes for each product in stock. Although I enjoyed these years, the weight of carrying the business of Nourish Soaps in my head slowly grew and grew. It was a slow incremental increase that went up month by month. Not something I was particularly conscious of in those early years. Besides the business side of things, there was also the expectation that I get staff. Explaining to people that I was doing it all alone always drew confused faces 'whaaat?, you don't have anyone doing the soap making for you?' So eventually I took on some people to help me make the daily soap batches. This felt like I was really growing and spreading my wings and it was great to have the help as the demand on my soaps grew.
In 2022 there was a definite shift in my awareness of Nourish Natural Soaps and how I perceived it. I would wake up in the morning with my head feeling light and open. Then, as I started thinking about everything I had to remember for the day, it felt like I was putting on a heavy helmet. Once I stepped into the workshop, that feeling would fade and so the days flowed past and all the while my helmet was getting heavier and heavier. I think that is when I first became aware of not feeling as passionate and happy about the soaps anymore. I began to notice a niggling feeling that something was not 'quite' right in my world. I am a very intuitive person and I pay attention to those niggles!! This gave me some inspiration to turn things on their head! At the start of 2023 I changed my entire business model, get rid of staff simplified my products range to only selling soaps (still my top sellers). I also decided that it may be fun to start teaching workshops and I proceeded to revamp my entire work space to allow for that.
