I am a small business owner. My company is quite small in the grand scheme of companies, but large in my heart. Throughout the day I think most about following Jesus, loving my wife, loving my daughter and how to sell more shirts. That's about it. I really love selling shirts and for the last ten years I have been able to do it as a part time job. In 2016 it will officially be the full time job for my wife and I for the first time ever. That was something that we thought impossible six years ago but with work, dedication, planning, hustle, help, efficiency, some dumb luck and a ton of God showing up, we've been able to do it.
Taken on Small Business Saturday with a stack of orders from Black Friday!
I don't know what the future holds from walk in love. Will we grow to the level of being a million dollar company or tens of millions or hundreds of millions? Will we stay right around where we are? Will we shrink? Will we survive? I don't know. I would love to know but that is impossible.
But here is what I do know.
I do know that there is a God who loves me enough to allow me to design, market, photograph and sell t-shirts every single day. I know that there are tons of amazing customers out there who give me the ability to keep going, whose love for our product propels us forward. I know that I have an amazing, albeit small, team of people who work hard day in and day out so that we can have orders shipped, e-mails answered, products to sell and beautiful content to market it with.
I know that no matter where we go I will never forget the first person who ordered a shirt online - Melissa Patterson (now Melissa Kochan) via MySpace. I will never forget the LEFC youth group ordering a hundred shirts for the students six months after I started. I will never forget my little brother's friend, Taylor, selling shirts at school. I will never forget when my family lugged 300 shirts across the world so every camper in Russia could have one. I will never forget messaging a cute girl on Facebook to have her photograph the shirts (mostly because I get to wake up next to her every day). I will never forget when my father-in-law told me that "a kiosk might be a good idea to sell shirts around Christmas". I will never forget how ghetto our first kiosk was. I will never forget saving up all my vacation days so I could work at the second season of our kiosk. I will never forget launching an IndieGoGo campaign to raise money to open a full-time retail store. I will never forget the staff that worked at that store and had to deal with me figuring out what it meant to be a boss. I will never forget the phone call that said we had to move our store to another location because a big box store purchased our space. I will never forget moving that store and everything in it, all in one night with the help of friends and family. I will never forget the 22 days spent getting our second store ready for opening day. I will never forget the 4 times I shocked myself trying to get that store ready. I will never forget the failure that the second store was. I will never forget the moment Brooke and I decided to close down both stores and move exclusively online. I will never forget moving into the our new studio with only 4 shelves of product to sell. I will never forget watching those 4 shelves turn into 16. I will never forget the first day June came into the studio. I will never forget the discussions with Brooke on making walk in love. our full time job. I will never forget launching collections. I will never forget the models we met, shot and became friends with in California. I will never forget all the people who helped fold, pack, pick and do all sorts of work for the company I love. I will never forget the people who posted about our shirts. I will never forget...
I could go on and on about all the great memories that are so large in my heart.
I know that I am just one small business owner out of thousands, maybe millions.
And I want you to know that when you shop small you are adding to the full heart of memories for every entreprenuer out there. Thank you for that and so much more than I could ever express in a blog post.
If you want to shop from my small business you can save 30% today with the code "shopsmall" at shopwalkinlove.com!
Thanks!
