Business Tips: How to go From Zero to Campfire Coffee in a Few Decades

I’ve been in a big renegotiation about my relationship to work.  I’m coming out of my second maternity leave with a bang, and it’s a little jarring.  I worked all days and all hours throughout my entire pregnancy.  For those of you that don’t know, I’m a single mom who made the choice to become a parent on my own, after years of waiting for a partner.  I knew I needed to figure out a work situation that allowed me to stay home as a single nursing mother, and 6 years ago I started planning.

In 2104, after 4 years of beekeeping, Honey Bee Wild was formed.  It would become the vehicle through which this pregnancy felt possible.  I got very good at being proud of my work ethic. Hustling. Juggling. Getting things done.  Octopus-arms-for-brain.   I was usually up till midnight working.  Didn’t really know how to schedule my life, or really take a break. 

I have never really been secure around finances.  My sense of confidence in my income was emotionally and physically wobbly to say the least.  For most of my adult life I worked multiple service industry jobs (restaurants, coffee shops, tasting rooms), and offered services like piano lessons, admin assistance, tarot card readings.  I’ve always lived paycheck to paycheck.   That’s not to say I haven’t had my foray into wild ventures.  Did you know I spent a year as a chef and owner of my own Crepe stand? I spent another year running deluxe river cruises in Europe.  And I worked in the office of a predatory “spiritual” author.  I searched for my career for a LONG time.  Meanwhile I was searching for my partner so I could 1) love him 2) start a family.  This was also taking a reaaaaaaaaal long time and involved everything from ceremonies, to dating apps, to flights across the globe.

Lots of ergonomically poor decisions while baby slept.

When I mentally separated the need for a life partner from the ability to have a child in 2016 (it happened all at once during a Joanna Newsom concert), I pivoted my life toward building a business that could support me as a single parent.

I moved from Portland to Sonoma County.  I took part time restaurant jobs so I could build my business from home all day, and work in the restaurant industry at night to pay my bills.  I learned how to design my own website.  I became a virtual assistant so I could refine the skills needed to run a business.  I spent my money on beekeeping equipment and trips to England to study a small shamanic tradition connected to bees.  I treated my studies overseas like a masters degree: they were for personal growth, true, but they were also the investment I was making in my future career.

In 2017 I made a commitment to be out of the restaurant industry by 2019.  In October 2019 I jumped into running my business full time.  In 2020 I found a donor, got pregnant, agonized over the pandemic like the rest of you, and worked worked worked.  My business had its best year ever.  In 2021 I had a baby.  I ran my business from my phone while nursing.  I got hired to teach a program for the Shift Network, which was incredible but absolutely dominated my early postpartum experience (hence second maternity leave).  I hired an assistant, a nanny, a web designer, and a business coach.  I took naps with my baby, I grieved friendships, I worked till midnight a lot of nights.  When all was said and done, I stunningly doubled my income in a year.  I didn’t go from 0-6 figures in 12 months like so many of the Instagram biz coaches talk about. I grew my business slowly, year by year, with a fuck-ton of intention and methodical planning.  In 2021 I surpassed my financial goals.  

I got out of debt.  Let me say that again: I. GOT. OUT. OF. DEBT.  Nineteen years of debt.  I’m not sure if I can maintain the same income, but the year I gave birth, and ran my business for months from an iPhone while I nursed at 2am, while my insides turned outside, and my body, mind, and soul got permanently rearranged…THAT year was the year the benevolent spirit of my business spread her wings.

I remember when I was briefly connected to the 30-something crowd of coaches who all sold different variations of how to get from nothing to x figures in x amount of weeks/months.  Really makes you question your turtle shell.  But something about that always smelled off to me.  The get rich quick model does work for some people, but it was never going to be my model.  I like campfire coffee.  You know, the kind where you wake up in the back country in the morning and even though your hands are frozen and you have the quick light stove right there.  Even though you know you could have your cup in under ten minutes, you chose to gather the twigs, coax the small campfire into being, find the perfect rocks to balance the kettle, listen to the birds while it boils.  Alright, I’ll admit, I’m super into someone else building the fire, and then crawling out of my sleeping bag, but then you miss the precious magic of first one awake with the wild.

Campfire and image by Rob Totoonchie - a damn fine back country fellow, photographer, and friend.

Campfire coffee is how I built my business.  And the thing is, I don’t think my business would have allowed anything less.  Honey Bee Wild is its own creature, and just like humans, it has it’s own divine timing.   We forget that in the hustle market.  And god do you have to hustle when Big Bro Capitalism, supported by patriarchy, Chistocentrism, and white supremacy is in charge of your rent, access to health care, student loans, etc.  I digress.

I made campfire coffee, and it took a long time. 

 Last week I bought $600 worth of furniture to help baby proof the house: a nightstand, a cabinet, an ottoman, a shoe bench. I questioned every inch of those purchases, until I realized I am 40 and this was the first time I have ever bought a piece of furniture.  I have often referred to my interior design as “college dorm” style, meaning any left over piece of furniture nobody wants I’d take.  It was really damn nice to be able to buy a nightstand and say adios to this yard sale stool.

I don’t even know if I’ve “made it” or just had a really good year, but what I do know is that for the first time in my adult life, I’m not worried about how to pay my bills.  Well, mostly not, bc my bills tripled with health insurance and child care now that I make more dollars (yes, I see you hamster wheel).

The point is, I didn’t know what to do with my life, or what career to have, or how I’d ever feel even a little bit financially secure.  I’m not a one hit wonder.  I don’t have a secret recipe to my success.  I’m a single mom who kept one eye on the ground and one eye on the cosmos. 

Now what?  Do it all again.  Rinse, repeat, and hope to  stay afloat on the melting iceberg of our current reality? What I want is another month just to brainstorm.  Candlelit dinners with friends.  I want all these creative ideas inside to have room to bubble up.   A year to write my book.  I want to take an entire day off, and go to the beach with my daughter. 

I am learning to exhale.