running your own business
It is said ‘if you think you can or you think you can’t – you are right’. Doing your own thing and starting a business is a real risk, but we believe the rewards are worth it.
For many years Mike and I worked in various jobs, and invariably had the Monday morning sinking feeling at the start of each new week. We didn’t hate our jobs but we were bored. So in the background we started building our side hustle that later turned into a full time business for both of us to run together – our Boutique Cattery. You see we had a vision to build something better and different than what was on offer, from the ground up. We had no former skills except personally loving cats of our own and now as I look back we didn’t over think it – we just knew it would work. We learnt as we went, researched, spoke to experts in the industry, but most importantly we followed our hearts.
On a bare piece of land we built our new cattery. Initially we were lucky if we had three or four cats to look after. Both Mike and I were still commuting to our full time jobs and I was trying to juggle the cattery while it grew (I had a very easy going boss). Needless to say that wore a little thin and I ending up quitting and throwing myself into running the cattery boots and all. Word spread over the months and people loved what we had done. They started to bring their precious fur babes and in 6 months Mike took redundancy from his work. We were officially doing this!
Most of our friends and family thought we had gone completely mad while they still nervously cheered us on from the side lines. It just made us more determined than ever to show everyone that this would not only work but be a success.
My best piece of advice to anyone considering running their own business is ‘do what excites you’, follow your passion and that voice in your head (intuition). If you can wake up every day and feel inspired and happy in your work then that’s priceless. I’m not going to lie, running your own business is hard work, it’s not running with the flock, things are going to test you, sometimes you’ll need to pivot, often ideas won’t work and it takes time to grow and no regular income can be scary. However there are many truly inspirational people in the world who have already laid down the path before us, and followed their dreams and gone on to do amazing things. I meet extraordinary kiwis like this every day.
Mike and I built, grew and ran one of the nicest catteries in AK and 16 years later we sold it as a thriving business that we were super proud of. Now we are doing it all again with GoodLife and throwing ourselves whole heartedly into something else we are passionate about and starting all over again. The challenges are still there, although they look a little different this time, but no matter what not a day goes by that we ever regret running our own business.
GoodLife – Lying on the bed one day wondering what was next for us, a fantail flitted outside the window. Straight away I knew that the Piwakawaka would be our next logo and that we would use our existing company name of GoodLife for our new venture. The seed was planted – and so it began all over again.
If this has sparked a fire in you and we can help someone in any way then please drop us a line. We would be only too happy to share our knowledge.