Coronavirus changed my business – an update

First off, it’s been over 3 months since my last post. Which is too long and I apologize for ghosting. And yet, it’s gone by quickly. I want to update how things have been in my business since the pandemic. Coronavirus changed my business. My business doesn’t look the same, I am a different person, and yet I’m looking to the future with intense faith and excitement.

The beginning

I want to begin with a little backstory.

2020 came with major hope and excitement. I was fully committed to big goals and I was doing really good at making those come to fruition. One of those goals was this website and growing another stream of income. Another goal was to grow my vinyl decal business; Airet Graphics & Design.

We had a cruise planned for the end of February. Prior to the cruise, news about the coronavirus in other countries were beginning to circulate. It wasn’t anything to deter us from our cruise that we had gifted to our kids for Christmas, so we continued with our plans. The vacation was wonderful but we came back to a different world.

After being away for just one week, we came back to things shutting down. Conferences cancelled. Talk of schools closing. Resteraunts closing. Churches closing. It was shocking to say the least.

My kids had spring break in the middle of March. The teachers were preparing for the kids not to come back after spring break. A couple weeks after spring break, I was home schooling my kids.

Then my business exploded.

Drowning

My world flipped upside down within a matter of days. I have three boys, all in elementary school. My two youngest are learning how to read, and my oldest son was doing math which I had to google and youtube to figure out how to help him with. Each teacher had different ways of teaching remotely. It was… challenging to say the least.

I went from doing 300 orders a month (which was already an increase from the year before), to 750 orders a month. More than double. Triple from last years order volume.

My mom is a big contributor to my business. She does a lot of backend work, as well as doing a large portion of order fulfillment. She has a part time position at our local hospital. Because of the uncertainty of the virus, we decided it was best to work out a remote operation. After some trial and error, we developed a pretty good system of getting the orders fulfilled without physically working together in the same room.

Our quarantine schedule

• Mom created a cut list on a sharable excel sheet. Any changes done by either of us were seen in real time. This way, we could see what was needing to be cut, what was finished, any notes, etc.
• We would both cut orders. I cut the majority of the orders, she cut smaller sized decals on her cutter. Between us both, we had 3 cutters running hours and hours each day.
• My dad would pick up orders daily from my house, with limited contact to take to my mom. It was REALLY hard not to hug my dad for a few weeks.
• My mom would do most of the weeding and transfer taping in the evenings.
• Dad would bring them to me in the morning for shipping.
• I would pack and ship.
• Repeat.

For me, I would ship the orders in the morning. I had my children on a schedule where they would rotate between schooling, chores, and free/screen time. They would school in my office so I would be there to help them and guide them.

It looked like a mess but it worked. I would ship as I could, take a moment or more to help with schooling, get back to shipping, then back to help with schooling. This continued back and forth until the shipping and schooling was done for the day. By early afternoon, we were generally done with schooling and shipping. Then, I would spend another few more hours doing the next batch of cuts.

Explosion

It was exciting and very stressful to see my business break record after record. Sometimes each day would be another record break. I remember when I hit 18 orders a day – a new record. Then 20, 25, 30, 40 orders a day. We had points in time where I had over 150 orders to ship. It was insane.

This was both a huge blessing and a huge trial.

It was a blessing because my husband’s job was being effected negatively. So my income was helping the dip in his.

While others were bored at home, doing puzzles every day, and enjoying their expanded time with their families, I was experiencing the opposite. For me personally, I had less quality time with my kids, was extremely stressed, and feeling handcuffed by my business.

Rethinking and Replanning

During this time, I was feeling major burnout.

I didn’t want to do this anymore.

I started to resent my business.

All of my goals I made in 2020 took a shift. I no longer wanted to have a 6 figure business in my vinyl business. The work was too overwhelming. The more orders I received, the more time it took away from my family and the less happy I was feeling.

Things needed to change. Coronavirus changed my business and outlook on the future of Airet Graphics.

About this time, I was continuing to learn and grow in personal development and business. Meaning, I was still listening and reading audiobooks, youtube videos, and podcasts to improve who I was and my business.

I stumbled across a new business venture for my husband. I sent it his way and he was immediately all in. We started to see that my business was not the way to reach our goals that we wanted for our family. While my business helps a LOT, it wasn’t going to give us the life we were dreaming of or the time we wanted to be with our family.

The next chapter

Where are we now?

I’m still doing my vinyl business. But I know it’s not going to be forever. I hired another set of hands to help with shipping and cutting. Orders have dipped slightly, but we are still doing way more than we have ever done.

My plan is to hand off my business to my mom or to completely sell it in the near future. I want to focus on this website. I’ve really enjoyed helping others create online businesses and sharing information that I know.

Our new business is still in the works. I’ll do an update when things get rolling and I’ll announce what it is. For now, let’s just say it’s something that will provide the income and increased family time we are looking for.

2020 may be a suck fest, but it’s not over. We have taken the bad and turning it in our favor. Coronavirus changed my business