Author: kissa

Happy Friday my friends! Life has been great lately, not all good things coming our way but definitely still counting our blessings. It’s wonderful to see the brighter side of things isn’t it?!

If you’ve been reading our blog or catching up with us for a lunch date you’ll know that Charlie and I have been working toward a lot of change this year. We dubbed this year the year of simplicity. And while that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, to us it really meant figuring out what makes us happy and pursuing those things. So we thought long and hard about this and asked what made us truly happy? What are we passionate about? What makes us get out of bed in the morning?

For us, entrepreneurship is our true passion. Career-wise, Charlie’s dream has always been to be a chef, and his dream is to be in charge of a restaurant some day. My dream career is to run a successful stationery company. Personally, our dream is to live a wonderful God-fearing life filled with happiness, friends, and family.

Now a little bit of back story on how we got to this point and decided to pursue this. A lot of things have happened in our personal life the past few years that have really opened our eyes to what feel is really important. We realized that the

material things that we wanted, the picture of a “perfect family”, and the idea happiness = success isn’t true. If you’ve been following our blog, you’ve seen me write about a few very dark times within the past 2 years. But through those dark times we realized that material things aren’t important. There is no such thing as a “perfect family.” And happiness definitely does not equal success. When we realized that, we wanted to make changes to work toward the right things; and we wanted to make those changes immediately. So we did. We discussed what we needed to do to reach our goals and slowly but surely we’re getting there.

Charlie and I decided that our success lives within each other. He and I have been working together since 2005 and I must say, we make a great team! We each possess skills that the other lacks, and we understand that we need each others’ talents to succeed. That being said, we know that both our dreams won’t become a reality without both of us working toward them. He’s going to be in charge of graphic design for business for CO full-time, and I’m going to be the store manager for Ninong’s (which he will be head cook) full-time.

It’s with an open heart that we embrace this new challenge before us. It’s not going to be easy, we know that for sure. But we also know that the journey toward our goals personally and professionally will be the road what we truly want: to be happy.

Lately, I’ve been doing quite a lot of thinking about where I want to be and how that reflects in my business model. The goal of self-employment and financial independence is just a reach away. And with this goal’s end in sight, I can’t help but think what more can I do to get there?

It’s funny because as human beings, we tend to never be content with our current situation. For example, if you are looking for a job –> you find one. Great! A few months later, you want a raise –> you get one. Awesome! After that raise, you want a promotion –> you work hard and get promoted. Good work! While this isn’t a bad thing, let’s ask ourselves this question, “How long were we happy with our situation before we wanted more?” Probably not very long. In fact, the moment I achieved my goals I celebrated with maybe a dinner and then planned my next steps of world domination on the car ride home. Uh oh.

I realized this concept when I was watching a TED Talk and reflected on my own personal life. I realized I kept trying to push too hard and move forward too quickly. It helped conceptualize the idea that I don’t let my current status marinate long enough for any success to be had and that’s hurting my brand. This self-realization led me to my first sentence of this post: where am I and how does that reflect my business model?

Since our brand is a reflection of ourselves, our products and services associated with our brand should continue to evolve just as our lives do. And for me, that step is to scale back. When I made this conscious decision to do so, I realized what I was missing out on: happiness. Yes, happiness my friends. So for the

next few months, I’m going to continue to fine-tune my business and work toward my main goal: to be happy.