So a few weeks ago I was talking with my mom. She was asking me about my friends and what they wanted to do with their lives. This is always a really strange topic to talk about because as it is, I hardly have a tight grasp on what I want to do with my own life, let alone my friends.
I always figured I'd major in hospitality management and start working in my own Inn or Bed and Breakfast somewhere off the east coast, where I'd have a forbidden love affair with a Red Socks fan (Angel's girl ;-) ), and live my life in a small, vintage cottage, working in the place I love most. Then maybe I'd run my own Inn with a tea cup pig and a dog I rescued from an alleyway or something like that.
Anyways, I was talking with my mom and she asked, "What does Amanda want to do?"
Amanda, being one of the closest friends I have in life, doesn't really know what she wants to do. She's currently working part time in a fast food restaurant and part time in a small record store down town. We had got to talking one day about what she wanted to do with her life and she honestly said she couldn't think of anything but working in her own business. However, she couldn't imagine it'd thrive because of the economical rut the country is in.
With this being totally understandable, I told my mom that Amanda wanted to start her own business but she was afraid that it wouldn't do so well.
My mom, surprisingly, was incredibly supportive.
There are a few things there are interesting about my mom. For one, she's either completely and totally supportive in whatever my brother and I want to do in life or just whenever. Or she's absolutely against it. There's no in-between with her. And she always makes a really persuasive point about her opinion on anything. (We think it's because she secretly kissed the Blarney Stone.)
When I first graduated high school, I told her I wanted to major in English and become a Creative Writing teacher in a high school. Then I wanted to write part time and work my way up to becoming an author. This was my huge, amazing dream!!
My mom, being on one side of the road or not, flat out said, "No, you're not." when she heard this idea.
And I fought with her on this for forever.
For FOREVERRRR!!
She told me every reason why it was a terrible idea. I will admit that I never accepted that it was a bad idea, I still love my dream idea, but I've grown to like other things as well and I'm not as glued to the author idea as I was. She hasn't won the round but chances are, I wont end up being a teacher after all. (laughs)
Anyhow, she was absolutely supportive of Amanda's idea to the point that she started to include me in it. Somehow, being what Amanda wanted to do, turned into what Kristen and Amanda should do.
And what was even more surprising, was that I was all for it as well.
Yes, I'd love to own my own bed and breakfast one of these days, but it has also always been a dream of mine to own my own business in historic down town. Since the discussion with my mom, I've done nothing but research how to make this small business begin. I ran the idea by Amanda and she absolutely loved it. We decided that we'd save up some money here and there and further our studies before anything is every made official. But we'd like to consider it our dream as of right now and something we'd like to seriously make a goal sometime in the future. :-)
I guess my big question is how do small business owners begin and what tips can they give to aspiring business owners?
-Kristen :-)
