Hello, again. It is now 2022. I am terrible with consistency, if you haven't noticed, haha. The most important thing is that I keep coming back. This time, I took a look through my blog and realized just how long I have had it. Since 2009. That blows my mind. If only I would have been more consistent.
My last entry entailed much of what happened in 2015. It was a year of struggle, indeed. I chose to reflect back upon that year due to the struggles. Moving forward with Part Two, I am going to highlight the parts of my life over the course of the following years that helped me to get back on track to healing. At the end of Part One, we were approaching January 2016...
At this time, my health was finally starting to improve. I was starting to get a handle on my anxiety and panic attacks and I was slowly gaining my appetite back. On Facebook, I kept hearing about these super soft leggings and it piqued my interest. I was never really a leggings person, except maybe during my young childhood years, but I thought I'd give them a try since so many of my friends were raving about them. At the time, trying to get a pair, any pair, was a battle. People would swiftly type "SOLD" whenever a consultant would post a pair. They were selling like hotcakes! I finally claimed a pair of my own, received them, and fell in love. I walked to my daughter's room and held out my leg and said, "Feel them," with a big grin on my face. At that moment, my daughter was instantly sucked into the craze with me.
Unless you lived under a bridge during 2015 to now, you probably know what leggings company I am talking about. Yes, Lularoe. In March 2016, I onboarded as a Lularoe Consultant.. or retailer, as they are referred to in recent years. There is a whirlwind of controversy surrounding this company, but I will say that looking back, I have no regrets. It entered my life at a time where I needed a distraction. I had also always wanted to have my own boutique and this was the perfect opportunity for me. In the beginning, lots of money was to be made. I was super busy, doing online parties almost daily. I also ran a multi consultant sales group. Honestly, it was a great time in my life. In June 2016, we were doing well, so my husband and I took a trip to Tampa to go to a Lularoe training event. While there, we booked a horse trail ride where we road horses in the bay. It was amazing.
Fast forward to September 2017, we began to get concerned with the future of Lularoe. There were some shady things occuring, which led to our decision of cuttiing ties and going off on our own path. In October, we opened Jacoda Southern Boutique. We started off online/doing vendor events locally, then we rented out space in a local vendor mall, then we ended up opening our own storefront.
As you can see, doing Lularoe helped me to fund my dream of owning a boutique. Unfortunately, in October 2019, we closed our doors. I could have kept going, but the location of our boutique was not great and financially, it was costly. I could have went back to my roots and did vendor events again, but I decided to walk away. I began to get into reselling and found that the profit margin was much bigger than selling boutique clothing. I still do some reselling to this day. If I hadn't gotten into reselling, I may have kept my boutique open. There are a couple of things that I think about when I think of if I had kept my boutique open. One, I would have gone back to the vendor mall. And two, 5 months after I closed my boutique, Covid-19 hit. It would have been difficult maintaining a boutique during that time period. Most importantly, if I were in the vendor mall, I wouldn't have been able to sell because they closed down during Covid. I wouldn't have been able to access my inventory. Also, later that year, 2020, a hurricane hit and destroyed the building. The owners ended up selling the land and walking away. I would have been back at square one again. Which would have been fine and I would have figured it out, but I was already headed toward a different path.
The dream has not left me, though. My husband asked me last year, "If money wasn't an issue and you could do anything you wanted to do, what would you do?" I instantly said that I would have my own boutique again. Maybe one day.
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