Roller Coasters

January 9, 2025

It was five days to Christmas and I still had 1 million things to do like every year. It almost seems like it gets busier and busier. When all I try to do is calm it down a little. I really do like to have a more minimalistic lifestyle. I don’t have a lot of stuff on my walls. I don’t decorate heavy for Christmas. I try to keep it simple, but still the demands of holidays are hard to keep up with and it always seems as though it’s almost more frustrating than it is joyful.

When Silva & Ore truly launched as a career for me, I knew that my seasons would shift from what I dealt with or had been used to for the past almost 25 years. Having a career in landscaping, my time was from March to December. My busy time - the crazy time was March to about July and then again in October or so There was the spring rush, there was the fall rush, but there was never the winter rush. So, for 25 years my whole life was a easing into Christmas. It was a wind down. It was a season closure. I always just kind of idled into it. It wasn’t to speed up. It wasn’t to go faster. It wasn’t to keep up. It was just as though everything started to turn down and I never realized how important that was to me up until my time became winter. December. My season became December... at least I thought it did in December 2023. I did well. I was excited about it. It wasn’t crazy busy, it wasn’t nuts. It was good. I did good. I felt confident again in 2024. The first few months was really rough and even though it seemed like a roller coaster when I actually looked at the numbers and looked back on everything, it was fairly consistent. Even the J months - January, June, July - that all of our small businesses makers and artisans talk about…. those are the months that kill us. Those are the months where we’re struggling, but then those are the months where I look at as a time when we stop to breathe and we catch up. So, I try to look at the good in the J months, not the financial burden of the J months. This year even though the J months seemed like they really hit hard … the reality looking back from January to August was that there was a consistency… not too much of a roller coaster. There wasn’t a super high and low it was pretty even. And the consistency surprised me. This year, 2024, when September and October hit it was my busiest months ever. In September. I tripled my sales. In October. I quadrupled my sales and for the first time this whole time I thought wow “I’m finally getting somewhere.” I finally wasn’t financially burdened. I finally wasn’t questioning everything about Silva & Ore. I finally thought I made it…. at least a little bit. I finally stopped being scared and I think I finally found the joy in it that I wanted to find. A comfort of solidity. It excited me because I thought “oh my gosh November and December are gonna be mad!” I just knew it was going to be crazy and I spent the end of my October really gearing up… like really really gearing up making sure all the things that I sold a lot of last year that were already designed and ready to create were stocked and ready. I had my custom ornaments updated with the right year so I would have sample pictures and samples at my stores for all my custom ornament orders. I made sure I had tons of my Christmas tree sets because I could not keep them on the shelves last year. I was ready. I was thinking this is gonna be nuts being that September and October had tripled and quadrupled. I thought I was gonna be working midnights, basically all the way up to Christmas. November hit and it was like crickets and I kept thinking it’ll go, it’ll go. It’s gonna pop. It’s just all the sudden… like overnight…. Its just gonna hit hard… and then November rolls through and I thought OK we are past Thanksgiving now. This is when it’s all gonna explode… there’s still time. I don’t have a lot of orders. I could still do this. I can get lots of work. Crickets.... and I kept thinking something’s gotta give, but there was just crickets. Now here is my December that is not much more than my first few months of the year. Now what?

I’m excited for those around me who are small businesses who have done really well… those who are excited to see a turnaround … to see a beautiful success!!! That’s super exciting for me to see and I’m glad that it’s been soooo good for so many!!! It truly does give me hope. But being that this was supposed to be the busiest time of my year… this was supposed to be where… I make all my money right now and this will roll me into the first three months of the year. That’s what I thought was going to happen and late December, I just felt defeated.

This is the story of a small business owner.

This is reality and I had always planned to take a break, I wanted to spend the holidays working on some things for me, for my family and just take some time. Take some time off. Take some time to heal. Take some time to recuperate. Take some time to rediscover things and take some time to regroup. And really look at the direction at this point I need Silva & Ore to go. I need to make changes for success, but I first have to find out what those changes need to be and that is gonna be my January. Focusing on looking up, focusing on moving forward and focusing on what I think is going to help this business survive. I’m very lucky to have the people around me, my friends, the other people who are vendors who I’ve gotten to know. I can confide in their stories and hear their comparisons and hear that I’m not alone.

I run this business 99% on my own. I really don’t have any help. It’s just me and it gets lonely in the shop and sometimes I get lost in my head. All who I confide in are the ones who keep me going and keep me moving because honestly without them I don’t think I would continue going forward. January is going to be a time of everything and nothing all at once. I am anxious and excited to see what happens this coming year. Now looking back, I am hoping that maybe December just simply isn’t my month. I’d much rather the whole year be my month. And maybe that where I really need to focus… every day. Not just one of them.

Here’s to 2025. It’s gonna be great.