Teaching Is Life

Profit for Product has been a labor of love, and one that I never envisioned myself doing when I was younger. I was going to be a teacher, thank you very much. I was going to go through and be a teacher for 40+ years and retire very happily on my teacher’s pension. 

I have always been a very focused person, and when I decided that I was going to become a teacher at age 13, that was it. I was going to become a high school English teacher (specifically one who largely worked with 9th grade with a bit of World or Brit Lit thrown in), and it was going to be fantastic.

Except after I graduated, I did not want to consider middle school (plot twist, I actually love middle schoolers and it’s what I teach now), so getting a job without any real-world experience was a challenging task. 

PLOT TWIST

In 2017, my husband Mr. Grizzly stopped working in due to his disability (complicated story). I was making early career teacher money, and that was not going to support us in the house we’d JUST BOUGHT seven months earlier. 

So I had to think of something different. I had never even considered creating a business (hello, going to be a teacher ’til I’m 67, duh), but that was something that I had control over and could work on in my *ample time* of free time as a teacher with no concept of boundaries. 

Thus, Stella & Sol Sustainables was born. I became obsessed with it and I was researching and learning and thinking about it… and not actually doing the damn thing. It stayed like this until I got a kick in the pants in 2019 when I lost my job. As the sole income provider of the house, that lit a fire under my ass like no tomorrow. 

No Boundaries, Part II

I launched Stella & Sol in 2019 on a shoestring budget and a prayer. I had been a good budgeter for my personal life, but for whatever reason, that went out the window when it came to Stella & Sol. 

Even though I launched the brand out of the need for extra income, I did not actually start regularly taking owner’s draws until four years into the business because I wanted to “reinvest” all the money into the business so it would grow faster! 

That was a crock of shit. What it came down to was business money didn’t feel like “real” money because I wasn’t paying myself, so it was totally fine to spend $300 on a course, but buying a $10 book to read for fun was an agonizing decision. (Yay cognitive dissonance!) This spending money freely got me into some trouble. 

Breaking Point

My bread and butter was doing in person shows, because I was able to show (or teach!) people about my eco home products and they’d be able to understand more effectively than trying to figure out online marketing. 

However, as ANYone who has done an in-person show before knows, they are deeply time consuming. From the product prep, schlepping everything there, setting up, actually selling, breakdown and review–it was a LOT. Especially since I was doing all of this on a teacher’s time scale, which often meant weeks where I didn’t have a day off because of school weeks and shows on the weekends. 

In 2022, I finally reached my breaking point. I was so obsessed with hitting that higher number, the ego trip that I could say “I earned $57,000 last year” or “I 2.5x’d my revenue last year” that I signed up for enough shows that I ended up spending over a month’s worth of time JUST selling at shows. (And mind you, most of these are on weekends.)

Between that, working full time, and caring for a home and disabled husband, I was exhausted physically, mentally, emotionally, and just all around burnt out. Reflecting on 2022, I knew something had to change. 

In this rat race to prove something to whoever I was doing this for, I had also accumulated over $12k in debt because I was focused on revenue, not profit.

2023: the Goo Year

I signed up for coaching with Kate at The Collective That Built Me. I knew I needed to have someone help me stay on track and stay focused on what really mattered. (Side note: I legitimately thought that what really mattered at the end of 2022 was having consistent content. HA.) 

One of the first things that I told her was that I knew 2023 was going to be my goo year. WHAT? What is that?

Did you know that when a caterpillar goes into their chrysalis to become a butterfly, they don’t just kind of shift around in there? No. They become a pod of goo that reforms into a beautiful butterfly. And that’s what I knew I needed to do in order to have a business that allows me both profit and peace. 

So this is what I did 👇

• I cut down on in-person shows, so I could have more space in my head to rest and find peace.
• I deep-dived into financial books and shows in order to make a plan to pay off this debt.
• I fell in love with budgeting for my business and my life and have paid off over $7k of my debt (as of October 2023).
• I felt peace when it came to my finances, even with the dips and peaks, because I had a plan.

I finally felt that complete and utter peace that came with having a plan for my finances. It was like the little chatter in my brain finally stopped. I knew I needed to share it with other product businesses so they can feel the same way I did.

And that is how Profit for Product was born.

Want to learn more about how I dropped my debt like a bad habit and found financial peace? Hit subscribe👇 and get my list of 50+ budget items to budget for!

Interested in working with me?