Making Tough Choices

Lately I’ve had to make some difficult choices. They boil down to choosing between the lesser of two evils which is never fun. It’s too soon to see the results of my decisions, but it brought back a reminder of a tough choice I made that turned out to be one of the best things I ever did.

Back in the day – 2005 to be exact – I was just starting Girls Can’t WHAT? and needed a vendor to make my designs into t-shirts. I contacted a local woman whom I had worked with on other projects and we discussed the options. She spent many hours helping me tweak my image files into a workable format for printing. After a couple of months, we had about 10 designs ordered and ready to be heat-pressed. I got to work on the marketing and soon I was taking orders like crazy.

It was then I noticed I was spending an insane amount of time just filling orders and dealing with shipping operations. At that rate, I had no time to do the creative work I enjoyed and my new business was becoming a huge time suck. Fail!

On one hand, I knew I had to do something quick before my business lost momentum.  I knew my other option was to move to an online vendor who offered print on demand services and handled all of the shipping for me. But I absolutely hated the thought of pulling my business away from supporting my local community!  I knew if I didn’t change something, I had no chance of survival as an artist. Tough choice.

In making the decision, I looked at the long term objective – the goals and thoughts I had setup when I first came up with a business plan. The creative side of me was demanding that I get back to work and focus on the heart of why I created Girls Can’t WHAT?  The only way for me to feasibly reach that state was by outsourcing the manufacturing.  This meant breaking ties with my local vendor.  And break-ups always suck!

Admittedly, I dragged my feet on this next part because sometimes procrastination pays off. In giving myself time to mull things over, I came to the realization that I wasn’t abandoning her altogether.  There were still things we could work together on, like school sports designs and custom orders. And in fact, I started realizing that because my designs needed so much prep work, I was probably a time suck for her business as well.

Reluctantly, I made the phone call to my vendor and broke the news. I profusely thanked her for all of her work and dedication in helping me get my business started and followed up by explaining my desire to send business her way and work with her on future projects.  She was very even-keeled about the change, wished me luck and agreed that I had to move on to a bigger resource for my own sanity.  It’s all good.

You know it’s funny how we blow things up in our head to be such horrible things and when we do them it turns out to be no big deal.

Fast forward to today…over 4 years later.  My business is thriving and I have been able to create over 250 more characters for Girls Can’t WHAT?  I never have to deal with shipping, manufacturing or ordering.  My administrative duties consist of depositing checks and finding other women to support with my 20% each month.  The rest of my time is spent in the artist’s seat writing posts like this or drawing a new design.  Pretty smart move on my part, eh?

So what’s my point?  Sometimes the toughest decisions turn out to be the best ones.  And often they aren’t that big of a deal.  Think about your dream and what might be draining your energy or sucking up your time.  Do you need to make a tough decision to move forward?  What’s your long term plan?  What would your future look like if the decision was already made? 

Talk to me…