Birth of White Lotus Designs!

Starting a business takes an enormous amount of commitment, courage, and strength. The last eight weeks have been one the most intense times I’ve ever experienced in my life. I had no idea that launching a business would require so much of me. I suppose I was hoping for it to be a slower, more gradual process...but no, the state of Vermont gave me a deadline! 
 
I am part of the Restart Vermont Initiative as a response to COVID-19, for which I received a marketing consultant, Kim Dixon, and we were given two months to complete an enormous amount of work (And ok, I may have kept adding more and more to it to make sure I was thorough). During this time we met once or twice a week for about an hour to an hour and a half for trainings and strategic planning. 
 
It may have been a blessing that we had to complete this work in only eight weeks because the level of challenge kept getting harder and harder. Overcoming each obstacle gave me momentum for the next. It was like being in labor: there were waves of intensity that just kept getting more and more painful. I also had to assemble a team of support at a very quick rate. I hired both a graphic designer and an editor during this time: my “birth team,” much like a doula or midwife.

​One of the hardest parts was having to rapidly learn entirely new skills, like setting up an Instagram, “CRM” (customer relations management), creating a shipping from home center with Shippo.com, updating my website, writing blog posts like this one, using new technology, and online marketing. I worked laboriously on this, days, nights, and weekends. Similar to my experience in labor I would sleep for maybe forty five minutes at a time before experiencing another wave of intensity, and then sleeping again for a little while.

It wasn’t just learning these programs and new skills that made it painful. More than anything it was the vulnerability of putting myself on the internet. It takes a lot of courage to be afraid of something and do it anyway. I'm very scared to share these things on the internet for anybody to read but I'm doing it anyway. I'm doing it because right now, more than anything, I want to be a contributor in the world’s healing in every and any way that I can. With White Lotus Designs, I wish to reconnect people with nature’s nourishment and protection, and hopefully inspire them further to protect our mother earth in turn.

I've been so inspired! I wake up and I'm excited about my day, excited about the creative process, and this is why I want to run my business, White Lotus Designs. It is a labor of love. 

I hope this blog post inspires and encourages you when you're starting a business to stick with it, to know that it's really intense but it's worth it: just remember that if I can do it, you can too.