Today is National Mom and Pop Business Owner Day and I shouldn’t be writing this because I have so much to do! But that’s why I AM writing this… because some of my favorite people are MY people, other Mom and Pop business owners.

All of us have taken different, unique journeys to becoming business owners, and I want to take a few minutes to share mine.

It was a long road.

I am pretty sure the thought of actually depending completely on my small business never even crossed my mind until recently, and I still wake up sometimes and am surprised by it.

As many of you know, when I was a child, I always wanted to be a teacher or an artist. I was taught, though, that art was not something one could do for a living. So, I pursued teaching, and although photography and art classes made up as many electives as they could during college, my major is in English. I do like to write, too, and enjoy discovering other writers’ art of using our language.

I was relatively happy teaching for the first almost 20 years. There would be a rough year here and there, but it would usually be followed by an amazing year. My son and I fell into a rhythm of saving and planning for summer break, and then taking epic vacations, so I always had that to look forward to during the tough times.

So there I was, teaching young people about the English language and also teaching the journalism classes at my local high school, which allowed me to be creative and teach writing, design and photography. It was a lot of work, but also so rewarding. I have students who kept in touch and invited me to photograph their weddings and their families. It is so very special to be asked to do that.

Then one day, a lot of things changed, all at once. The textbook and focus of English instruction changed. The expectation of teachers to embrace technology changed too quickly and I was having trouble keeping up. I had some tough students, including the leadership in my journalism program. I felt like I was not doing anything right.

I took lots of training for a couple of summers in a row, hoping I could reset myself to feel comfortable with the curriculum. And I thought back to some of the sage advice I had gotten when I was a new teacher. My friend, also named Julie, used to tell me “one kid at a time.” So I started to look around my classroom to see if there was EVEN ONE kid. There usually was, but not many more than one! Finally in 2017, there was, I think, only one, and that wasn’t enough anymore.

My exit strategy for teaching was to save all the money I could, enough so that I could take a year or two off to get healthy and figure out what was next. It was only a “maybe” at this point that I was going to have a go at being a photographer.

Then in February of 2017, the executive director position at the Dunnellon Chamber became available. I really had no clue what it meant to BE an executive director, but

I was pretty sure it was the job for me. I reached out to the board, and told them that should the job be available, I would be interested in it as soon as my contract time with the school was done. I would be able to start June 1.

Sure enough, the job was still available, and I finished up my last day at school on May 31 and reported to the Chamber the next day to find out that here was ANOTHER job that I loved, just as I had once loved teaching. It helped that I was already a member and had met a lot of the business owners in the community, or reconnected with them, since some had been my students and many other were their parents.

My greatest strength, however, is also my greatest weakness. And that’s that I like to put 110 percent into everything I do. Guess what? There’s no such thing as 110 percent. You really only can give all you have. When you consistently try to give more, you exhaust yourself and eventually get burnt out to a degree from which you can’t recover.

I loved being the Chamber director so much, but as the Chamber grew and I adde

d more responsibilities to what I thought I needed to do to serve the businesses, I really wore myself out. The pandemic did not help matters, and the big events really took their toll as well. In my mind, two little quotes that I tend to live by kept coming to mind: “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little ‘extra,’” and “Less is less.” I wanted to be able to continue maintaining relationships with every business in the community and differentiating my service to them based on what they needed. In doing so, my photography business also grew, and I was spread very thin.

I reminded the board regularly that I only wished to continue as long as they needed me. When the next right person came along, I would be happy to step down. The executive board approached me in the summer of 2021 to tell me they believed they had found the next right person.

My official start date for my new adventure as “only” a photographer began in July 2021.

I am still a work in progress! At first, I felt compelled to keep my “9-5” hours. So I would get up and start editing and marketing every day at 9 and quit at 5 while also doing shoots on weekends and evenings. At some point, I attempted to take Mondays and Tuesdays off, but lately I have been too busy to do that! I am still trying to figure out a rhythm to this while thing!

I took a class for entrepreneurs. I did a ton of online training indifferent types of photography, and discovered I really love food photography. Which led me to my new side hustle, cookies! I am still discovering which types of photography are my niche areas, but I sure love a new challenge here and there.

Give a shoutout today to your friends who are Mom and Pop Business Owners. They work hard every day, and most likely are successful community stewards as well as rockstar business owners. Let them know you appreciate them.

And to all my clients, many of whom have become lifelong friends, THANK YOU for helping my business be successful!