Although I’m not trying to brag about the fancy career I used to have, I do think it is worth mentioning. For just about 20 years, I was in Human Resource Management. I hired and fired people, wrote policies, negotiated benefits packages, oversaw staff planning, performance evaluations and pay increases, and trained thousands of people. See, I told you it was fancy. But when it stopped being fun, I stopped doing it. And now I’m here. I’d rather be here.

I know how to run a business. I know how to tell if someone belongs in a job or at a company. I know about marketing, accounting, compliance, sales, and all of that. I spent many years telling other people what they should be doing, how they should be doing it, and what the consequences will be if they fail to do it. It’s pretty simple, really. Do the job and get rewarded. Don’t do the job, well, you take your chances.

So now, here I am with my own business. No one is telling me how to do it or what I should be doing. I’m the boss so I have to tell myself. I’m having mixed success with that. It’s not like I’m going to fire myself. In this case, the consequences of failing to do something are just that, well, it doesn’t get done.

For the most part, there’s not a lot of urgency at this stage in the game. We’ve had some business and we have some more lined up. I haven’t had any problem getting myself motivated when there is an actual client deliverable on the line. Food was ordered, food was made, people ate the food. Easy enough.

It’s all the other things, the things that have no firm deadline or urgency, those are the things that have eluded me. I know if I want to spread the word and get Elevated Gatherings in front of people who will hire us, I should be making social media posts, I should be thinking about places to advertise, I should be doing all of the things that I used to tell people to do. I’ve just had trouble getting out of my own way and doing them.

Because, here’s the thing. I have a life. An elevated life. I still want to eat food, live in my house, feed my dogs, and have a little spending cash here and there. That means that until Elevated Gatherings takes off and pays my bills, which of course is the goal, I have to work on things that are not Elevated Gatherings.

Therein lies the struggle. Go where the money is and put Elevated Gatherings to the side, or put Elevated Gatherings in the forefront and forego money that is dangling right in front of me. I know what it’s like to be broke, to drive a car with no heat, to eat ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because I can’t afford anything else. I’m not going back there. So I hustle, I work multiple jobs, and I fit entrepreneurship around everything else. I’m having mixed success with this model.

I’m not a big “New Year’s Resolution” person because I think you can make a resolution to improve your life any time of year and waiting around for the calendar to change is a missed opportunity to get moving. So I recently made a mid-year resolution. It was earlier this month, July 2024, and I figured it was as good a time as any.

I resolved to get my act together with Elevated Gatherings, to figure out a clear branding message, a plan for regular social media and website content, and to get this thing moving!

How am I doing? So far, so good, actually. I have been scheduling myself to work on Elevated Gatherings business at least once a week and sticking to it. I re-did all of our social profile bios to clearly state that we are a cannabis-infused dining company after I got some feedback that someone thought we were just another private chef service. I came up with the idea for this “Kira’s Elevated Life” blog and here you are reading a post on said blog. I also have a plan for a weekly feature on our social channels and a few other things in the works that I’ll keep under wraps for now.

Overall, while I was hoping to have a bit more revenue at this point in the year, I’m satisfied with our progress. We’re getting our name out there, we have meetings in the works and events on the calendar. I’m getting nothing but positive feedback from potential clients when I talk about what we are doing. And, because I didn’t put my “go where the money is” mindset behind me to do all of this, I’m still paying the bills, eating food, and living in my house.

Am I still facing the occasional struggle to keep myself moving forward? For sure. Am I confident I can do the things and succeed? You bet.