Balancing PhD, Business, and Life

In business, this was the year in neutral! Try as I might to move forward with initiative, the universe wouldn’t allow it. But I had great success in other areas! 

“Lovie, Are You?”

You may be wondering how the PhD is going. Let me tell ya. I was warned that the second year is tough and it really was because the time I was giving to the PhD had to come from somewhere, right? I shared how I was dividing my time in previous episodes. But also, I traveled. Because I traveled, I didn’t do my normal home reset during my break from school and it was so bothersome, I did a whole episode about it. Baby Grayson got smarter this year, too. He now knows if my car is home, I, Lovie is home. He’s no longer fooled by “outta sight, outta mind.” So I moved all my stuff to the office for school, too. You may have thought in the past, “How does Lisa do it all?” I humbly explained how this year, I didn’t.

Purple Work That Didn’t Work

All of Organize 365® worked on two purple projects for a whole 10 months, that took lots of time and money, only to have neither get fully completed. So for years I’ve been told I need to go to an ERP system. This was the year. We worked with an accounting firm to get things and policies in place only to have the ERP team tell us that our bank and the system don’t play well together. So, I started thinking and came up with an idea. Once proposed, they said yes, I think we can use that solution to make Quickbooks work for you since we know Quickbooks plays nice with your bank. And we got to keep our super secure website. All was not lost because the company is better having gone through all of that. 

And then there was our lease that was expiring. It got me looking at other spaces. I practiced driving to them like it was our new location. Kind of tried it on for size. I started dreaming of additional live events I’d like to host. They were ok, but then the cost of moving was setting in. Would our landlord extend the lease, just increase the price? They said yes, but to different terms of course. So here we are in the same building for the next four years, not moving. Again, all was not lost because we upgraded our current space and made it more functional for us for the season we are in. And stay tuned to attend some of the live events I dreamed up, like the Small Business Planning Mastermind on March 5th & 6th.

Milestones Hit in This Neutral Year

I am so excited with the milestones the company hit this year in quarter four, despite the purple projects failing. Such HUGE things!!! The podcast turned 10! The podcast is often about the Sunday Basket® in one way or another. And we say the Sunday Basket® saves people 260 hours annually. We also know that we have sold 12,000 Complete Sunday Basket®s, equating to saving “officially documented purchasers” 10 MILLION HOURS!!  That is so amazing!! That’s what I want, to give women back their time by delaying decision making so they don’t derail themselves.  And since we were going to have a party to celebrate the podcast, we decided to celebrate my award, too! 

I saw Miami University was awarding Cincinnati Female Entrepreneur of the Year. With a short deadline to submit an application and three references, I didn’t know if I’d have everything in time. But my instagram followers are amazing and I actually received SIX overnight! I was so surprised to be in the top 3 being considered for the award, and even more shocked to be awarded the first ever Cincinnati Female Entrepreneur of the Year! I had all female entrepreneurs stand and I accepted the award on behalf of all of us. It wasn’t about who won, it was about all the women in that room being acknowledged for what they are doing and how they are growing Cincinnati.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Sunday Basket®

• Small Business Planning Mastermind

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

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