I saw the above quote on Instagram recently, posted by another growing business*. It was a great reminder to myself that with LOMIE, our business selling eco muslin Scarf Bibs and Woggles, I really need to be ok with walking before having expectations to run.

I envision LOMIE to be a highly desirable and reputable, award-winning brand. The reality is that, currently, we are a little way from that.

Our organic growth is ticking away nicely. Every 100-follower milestone on Instagram we pass, every order we receive (and the wonderful sound of the ‘cha-ching’ of the Shopify app), every post which we’re featured in, every positive piece of feedback given, brings so much excitement, is celebrated, and helps us progress to the next stage.

But it’s so easy to feel like we should be further along than we are.

LOMIE is our side hustle and, with me being the primary earner in our household, I only get a limited amount of time to commit to the business – around 10-15h / week. I work 16 of 20 workdays a month in my director of innovation role, and Stefan the other 4 with his freelance photography. This arrangement works really well with quality time with our son, as whoever is not working at the time is at home with him.  

We (soft) launched LOMIE in October 2019 and now, in 2020, we’re committed to building the brand, getting our name out there and becoming the highly desirable and reputable, award-winning brand I dream LOMIE to be. With only 15h / week however, this could be thought to be a bit of a tall ask. It’s for this reason I’ve signed up to be a part of The Robora.

What is The Robora you ask?

It’s an online business platform for women, founded by Annie Ridout – a highly successful journalist, author, entrepreneur and mother, whose online business became so prosperous her husband quit his day job to support her with it.  Annie won’t magically allow me the power to work more than 15h / week but has created a bespoke and focused plan for moving LOMIE forward, based upon the business goals and my availability. During the 4-month programme period she’ll provide on-tap (online) support to help achieve said goals and there is also a group for peer-to-peer support with the other members.

It’s all very exciting, and a tad daunting, all at the same time. I don’t think we’ll be sprinting tomorrow, but I feel confident in Annie’s expertise to guide us in our successes.

And after all, as the saying goes, ‘slow and steady wins the race’.

Watch this space.  

*Quote by @momentaryhappiness, via @rommer.co