Surprising Gifts That Came From Owning a Business

I used to say I didn't have a single entrepreneurial bone in my body. I was brought into business ownership when I married Rich...a guy with extreme independence, unique talent and big dreams. I fought incapacitating anxiety as we bade our small-but-consistent paychecks goodbye to launch our first business.

I was 25 years old, starting a business with my (fairly) new husband, in a male-dominated industry, in a small California town where we essentially knew nobody. It was lonely, and scary, and I spent way too much time alone with my husband and three cats, creating websites for photographers using the early HTML builders that were available in the late 1990s.

We worked constantly, building websites and pursuing fine art photographic printmaking, steadily adding more and more well-known landscape photographers to our roster of clients. Within a year, we were moving the business out of our house, into a commercial space, hiring employees and taking out leases to buy expensive pieces of production equipment.

The risk, lack of certainty, and financial insecurity of early business ownership led me to Jesus pretty darned quickly. My reliance on God as my provider and counselor is the only thing that has kept my always-beckoning anxiety in check, every single day of my life ever since. It’s also the ONLY thing that gave me hope as our first business crumbled out of our hands in 2017.

As we closed down that business, I vowed I would never own another business. It was too uncertain...there was too much risk. We had taken the first half of our professional lives and devoted it to something that evaporated seemingly overnight.

I dreamt of having a job with a solid paycheck and benefits. A job where someone else could do the worrying about making payroll every two weeks, or buying the never-ending list of supplies a business requires. I wanted a job where I could just be an employee...and leave the tough decision making to someone else. So God led me to that job, and that’s what I’ve been pursing ever since. There is something amazing about not having to pay my own healthcare for the first time in 20 years...but working for someone else has shown me a few truths about myself, as well.

It turns out I have solid business instincts. After co-steering my business for 20 years, I instinctively know truths about business, stewarding employees and navigating challenging situations. When you live for two decades with professional challenges presenting themselves on a daily basis, you grow used to upheaval, reorganization and change. It turns out, not being fazed by this is actually a skill.

I've also recognized that dreaming up new ideas is a fundamental part of who I am now. A program or product isn’t working? People aren’t happy? We need to change something fundamental to the business? Let’s throw away, “How we’ve always done it,” and invent a new wheel. I’m discovering that NOT having a fear of change, and having a heart to tackle problems head-on, is a rare thing, indeed.

The last thing I told my husband I would NEVER do again, when we closed our business, was bookkeeping and payroll. It’s a never-ending job. If you leave it alone for a day or two, you are greeted by piles of work when you return. Imagine my surprise when the job God led me to in Nashville was the Accounting and HR manager of a Christian nonprofit, where I do bookkeeping and payroll. The amazing thing is that He’s given me a heart to ENJOY reworking and updating the ministry's books to meet its growing needs. If you knew how truly burned out I was after closing our business, you would see that's nothing short of a miracle.

I've discovered that being an employee for the first time in 20 years is both liberating and frustrating. In our business, my husband and I would often make large decisions together, then we would quickly implement those changes. In a nonprofit, you can’t make decisions independently... it just doesn’t work (plus, you would upset a lot of people). Learning to collaborate in a new way has been both challenging and rewarding, as I see my ideas refined by others...and vice versa.

The essential truth I’m learning from all of this is that each life experience truly does prepare you for the next. Life’s persistent details add up into new character traits like steadfastness, patience, self-control and trust in God...if you approach them with a heart ready to learn, grow, get broken and heal. It’s a cycle that builds something tough and strong...and though my business no longer exists after 20 years, I’m enjoying the fruit of it in new ways, as I pursue an entirely new path with the skills it gave me.