Moving to Shopify

Life throws curve balls. Plans change. Roads have unknown potholes and detours. 

     For those who know me know I spent more than five years working at a large chain farm store. I truly loved it. Oh it had its ups and downs like any retail job does, but I took that job after I became a single mom and needed desperately to have income. Life changed so I had to pivot.

     It was hard leaving my children at home and going to an outside job after being a stay at home and homeschooling my children. At that time all six of my children were living at home. There came a time about twenty months into my employment in which I needed to leave that job. There were management changes that would not accept my scheduling needs. There were changes at home as the oldest three each reached a place in their own lives to be ready to step out on their own. Withint a two month period my oldest three were no longer at home: one off to college, one to a job and an apartment (wanted to do this while still close to home), and another off to our state's high school art (boarding) school with a dance scholarship.
The younger brothers were too young to assist with certain needs for their sister. It was time for me to be at home again. Life changes so we pivot.

     Over the course of the next thirteen months I worked for a few friends as they each started businesses and it gave me some income without too much of a schedule commitment. Then in January of 2020 I was diagnosed with cancer, two different and unrelated cancers. That was a big PIVOT!

     I had my first surgery and before stitches were even out I received a call asking if I would go back to that farm store. My daughter was able to stay in the school system in the Life Skills class and this allowed me to go back to that job. That was a truly big pivot point. Of course 2020 was a big pivot year for everyone worldwide. I was cleared to go to work in March and shortly after I started radiation as well, followed by 2nd surgery, then chemo -- and still working among all the covid protocols. Twenty-twenty threw lots of pivots.

     Fast forward through spring of 2023 to April and the need for another pivot. Lottie's needs were changing and I needed to be home again. I took a FMLOA for three months to help her settle and look for someone to help me with her while I worked. I found nothing and no one and this lead to the biggest pivot of all - leaving to stay home again, but with a plan to build and grow my business at home.

     PIVOT!! I had lots of gifted opportunities placed before me in this endeavor. I was given access to a building to use for a workshop as doing this from home was complicated by a few factors. This is not complicated by being away from the house as I am my own boss and Lottie goes with me each day. The building and location are pretty ideal. Over the course of the last few months the plans have advanced a bit and we are turning the place into a Market & Gift shop with me being the "anchor shop".

     Over the years, from the early days of the mommy blogging times, I have used WordPress as my online CMS of choice. With its development always improving and growing and with the addition of software like Woo Commerce I have continued to use that system - why learn something new, right? Until now. I have had to spend so much time and energy working on coding and fixing issues on the back end of my e-commerce webshop at lippencroft.com I have been losing time that should be spent making and marketing.

     I bit the bullet and am giving up WooCommerce for Shopify. The set up and merging products to Shopify was a bit time consuming but I am truly looking forward to not having to do any fixes or coding. I am looking forward to someone else taking care of the maintenance of payment and shipping systems. I connected the info and BOOM! There are still little bits and bobs of backend needs to do but they can all be done along the way now. Design work is very different, easy, and fast work. 

     This decision was actually hard for me, but now that I have done it I am quite pleased. I am a creature of habit and find comfort in it, but sometimes we need to Pivot.