Happy 1st Brick-&-Mortar Shop Anniversary to Us!! Today, 13th February 2024 marks a full year operating at 109 Main Road, Naturena, Johannesburg. What a privilege and an honour to have real operating premises as a business – we do not take it for granted. There are millions of people with ideas, products and services but do not have will nor bravery to execute them. It is a real blessing to have the capacity (mentally, physically and financially) to provide a service to people. To attain the experience of the journey and live to share it (like now) with other people is priceless.
We started with just one rental space as the shop, selling our personal care products and we ended the year with 2 rental spaces – the other for massages! This is a delightful achievement, it just made sense that our CBD Body Oil should be offered to customers to assist them to relax through massages. Everyday, we get to use our plant-based cosmetics to enhance people’s lives. A dream come true!!!
A dream come true for us.
Jillie’s Natural
There have been many lessons learnt, we are not even sure where to begin. I guess we shall start at the top! As the creator of Jillie’s Natural, at this stage in the journey, how I feel impact the business. I learnt the hard way, I realized later in the year that when I was less optimistic and paid too much attention on limitations, the performance of the business mirrored that too! There was a point in winter, when the sales were mighty low and motivation was down there too. Most of the days, I felt like crying because of the reduced traffic, resulting in low sales. My mental state affected the business. I had to work very hard to shake off the limitations and become hopeful. I call it mental gymnastics! I trained hard in conditioning my mind and strengthening my faith. It is important to be optimistic and hopeful in business. You have to train yourself that tomorrow will indeed be better than today and that you shall succeed no matter what!
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence
Hellen Keller
The second lesson (after learning to manage my own emotions) was to improve my employee management skills. Even in corporate, I previously struggled to disconnect socially with my colleagues. I want to be friends with everyone that I work with. I love harmony and go to great lengths to ensure people (and myself) are comfortable in a work space. The challenge is that not everyone prioritizes harmony in a work space.
What helped me was being intentional in my decision making. My intention is to run an ethical, caring, professional and profitable company. I wrestled with letting go of an employee, we started together and I saw her growth as well as potential. It was not easy to make the right decision. I prayed a lot but knew that the right decision was to let her go. An opportune incident occurred and made it easier for me to action my decision. I can’t even say that I fired her, she chose to no longer work for Jillie’s Natural. Nonetheless, I made the decision that working with her was no longer beneficial for me and the business. Semantics😊
Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.
Lao Tzu
Thirdly, as a small business owner, I enhanced my discernment skills in many areas. When hiring staff, I learnt to listen with my spirit as well. Listen to what is not said and how to use this information in the right way. I similarly use this skill when wearing my “salesperson hat”, I get a sense of people, sensing people’s auras is becoming better and helps me to make better decisions.
Customers have shared MANY ideas that, with discernment improved the quality of our offerings. Yet, there are also plentiful ideas that were distasteful, even though beautified when presented. They were not good for the business but could have possibly made the business bucketloads of money. This past year cemented my outlook that not all opportunities are good opportunities for the business. I learnt to say no to a couple of seemingly good opportunities and very proud of myself for that!
Now that we have the hard stuff out of the way, allow me to share the other pleasant experiences. Yum…
Feedback is King! 2023 as well as 2024 are building years for us, we are building and retaining a customer database. We are enticing them with our local and beneficial products as well as relaxing and affordable massages. We are learning more about customer preferences. We also benefit tremendously from our engagements, customers are a treasure of ideas, they let you know what they like and what they don’t like. Once your product/service is out there, your opinion matters little because the end users want value from it. As long as it doesn’t derail you from your vision, customer feedback is an illuminating pathway to customer satisfaction and profitability!
Adding on to that, engaging with customers also reinforced my faith in the humankind. We are such good people! Sure enough, there are rotten apples here and there but overall, this world is filled with kind, loving, tenacious, courageous, visionary, fun, brilliant and humorous people. Diversity is indeed more enjoyable. I am grateful that people opened up their minds and shared different experiences that are not publicized by the mainstream media. This has added another layer of gratitude and perspective in my life. We are a good people.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
Mahatma Gandhi
I could go on but I will have to charge for that but I leave you with one more nugget.
Like many people, I viewed ‘no’ with dread. I hate it, I hated it when people (or even systems) said no to me. Navigating retail has taught me that no is like a dog that barks but doesn’t bite. When people tell you no, that is just their own opinion. You keep your head high and continue on manifesting your dreams. Due to speaking to many customers, I have heard so many differing opinions about our offerings. Depending on whom I speak to, some people love what are doing, some think we are ridiculous, some don’t care for us, some don’t even like us! With this in mind, I no longer care about anyone saying no to me, I will get my yes one way or another. If not now, maybe later.
In 2021, PnP rejected our Body Soufflé, according to them, they could not sell it to the masses. How? I don’t know, since they are in the business of selling to the masses! Anyway, that was actually one of the reasons why I decided to open our own shop. We may not be at PnP now but we are in our own shop!
H-A-P-P-Y 1 Y-E-A-R T-O U-S!!!
