START & RUN AN ADULT BOUTIQUE
Karen Bedinger, MA
Self-Counsel Press
(a division of)
International Self-Counsel Press Ltd.
USA Canada
Copyright © 2012
International Self-Counsel Press
All rights reserved.
Foreword
For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to own my own business; it sounded fun and rewarding. Besides, working for someone else never made me happy. However, as great as it sounded to be a business owner, I knew it would not be easy. Thus, before I completely dedicated myself to owning a business, I weighed the pros and cons.
The pros seemed great; after all, that was why I was interested in owning my own business. First of all, I liked the idea of having the freedom to decide for myself how, when, and where I needed to accomplish my work. Working for someone and having him or her tell me how to do things all the time was irritating and distracted me from my goals. If I owned my own business, I would know how the company was performing and be able to have an effect on its future.
The ability to control a company’s performance, outside of economic or other unpredictable factors, means being able to manipulate every aspect of a company from its finances to its level of customer satisfaction. Most of the time, an employee is not even privy to the company’s inner administrative workings, much less able to control any or all of the factors that affect performance! As the CEO of my own private company, I would be able to control almost everything about the business. This also meant that I would decide who got laid off and who got raises. No more working my butt off so a CEO could make his or her million-dollar bonus, while I scraped by making the standard raise just above the inflation rate. This time, I would reap the monetary benefits of working smart and hard.
I also wanted to own a business that would benefit my community. Sometimes, it seems nearly impossible to get good products and services at the same time. Providing products and services that could make peoples’ lives a little bit easier or happier made me happy in return. Knowing that I could be the one to deliver these things to my future customers gave me the motivational drive to create the best boutique in town!
Out of all the wonderful and idealistic reasons for wanting to own my own business, most of all, I did not want to wake up every day and drag myself into work feeling like I was the main character in the movie Office Space. Instead of feeling like I was doing the same thing over and over again, I wanted to wake up energized and excited to get to work, because once there I could get things done the way I wanted to. And if anything got redundant, I could do it a different way.
Despite the many pros, the cons of owning a business were still going to exist whether I wanted to acknowledge them or not. Therefore, I decided the best way to prepare for the cons was to be informed and try to avoid them. The biggest con was the risk of losing a lot of money, time, and possibly my sanity!
The potential to lose money instead of make money can be very stressful. So can the possibility of failing due to unforeseen consequences or as a result of your own missteps. If you use any of your own money to start the business, you could lose it if the venture does not prosper financially. The best way to make sure you do not suffer losses is to do the proper research, work diligently, and be smart about how you set up the business.
My husband and my father-in-law helped start my business; although it was difficult and stressful, it was something that we accomplished together. By viewing the venture as a project we could do together and have fun with, we ended up spending more time with each other instead of less time. They also gave me feedback on my business ideas, provided new ideas, and helped immensely with physical and administrative labor.
Starting and maintaining a profitable business is hard work, so I sought ways to make it easier and more enjoyable. The very first step in ensuring I wouldn’t get easily burnt out by managing the store, was choosing a type of business that I was interested in for reasons other than just making money. This connected my work with a personal hobby, so that when I worked on maintaining my store it was fun. I was interested in the latest lingerie fashions, curious about the newest adult products, excited to find the hottest trends for Halloween costumes, and happy to be working with people.
One of the last hurdles I needed to overcome to maintain my business’s success was to keep my family, friends, and myself happy. In the beginning I spent almost all of my time either running, talking about, or thinking about my store, instead of separating it from my everyday life. I was so obsessed with how well my business was performing that I began to forget to make time for anything else. Eventually I realized that my business’s success could not simply be measured in profitability; rather, it also had to be measured by the way in which it affected my family, my friends, and the quality of my life.
It is easy to allow your business to overwhelm your life. Even if you are not relying on it to bring in income, you may feel like it is a part of you because you sacrificed a lot for it and put a lot of hard work into it. Therefore, most people want their business to be as perfect as can be all the time. They spend all of their time working hard to improve the business or worrying about it.
Remembering that your business is not a complete reflection of who you are and that you have to allot time for the other parts of your life, can greatly help you to keep the business in perspective. This is especially true when you are using both your store and your home as places to work. Physically separating where you work is as important as mentally separating your work from your life. When you dedicate time to yourself or your loved ones, you need to be mentally as well as physically unattached from your work. This can be done by leaving your thoughts, paperwork, and other business-related work at the store.
Making time for your regular hobbies is also important. At first you may not have time for this. However, if after you have opened your business for a couple of months you are still not devoting any time to your hobbies, it can be a warning sign that you are spending too much time working on your business.
I thought I knew all of the hardships and delights of owning a business before I owned one. After I opened my own, I grew to appreciate that if a person has never owned a business, it can be very difficult for them to fully understand how demanding and rewarding it can be. By writing this book, I hope to provide you with ways to mitigate the hardships of owning an adult boutique business, so that you can focus instead on the rich rewards.
The following is the story of how and why I decided to open an adult boutique.
1. The Journey to an Adult Boutique: Materialization of an Idea
“How about opening a type of classy, couple-friendly adult boutique?” My husband, Dan, asked me as we were brainstorming ideas for opening a business.
“What?” I exclaimed.
“Yeah, why not?” Dan asked.
“Uhh … ” was all I could muster.
“Remember when we thought about how great it would be if there was a nice adult shop in our town?” Dan responded.
“Of course I remember that, but I never actually thought about doing it myself!” I proclaimed. “I have such a straight-laced appearance … and I’m a bit conservative … I’m not sure I could interest people in my store,” I sputtered as I tried to come up with excuses as to why I couldn’t do it.
“Well, it was just a suggestion. Why not give it some thought?” my husband replied.
“Sure,”