Keepin' It Real

Do you ever look around and wonder where the time went? This afternoon when I was out walking Kiko, I had a real-life moment or should I say a tad bit of an anxiety attack.  Life is hard people. Running a busy small business, marriage, working with your spouse, house on the market, bouncing from campground to campground, it’s not what it’s all cracked up to be. If you add to that losing my old pup a few weeks ago, I was bound to crack at some point.

I think that it’s important to be honest and real about our journey as small business owners and real people. We don’t have the backing of some huge nationwide company or investors, it’s just the two of us.  We have been really lucky at this point, mostly because our business didn’t have a lot of start-up costs. We really just started putting ourselves out there via social media and working contacts in the real estate market. As a new company we wanted to grow at a slow pace and ensure our clients that we would be concentrating on their investment  home and not just the growth of our company. In 18 months, we have grown from 1 listing to 10 listings, the perfect amount for us to do exactly what we have promised our clients.  

As you may recall when we started in March of 2018, I wasn’t quite working full-time with the number of properties that we had until about July. Gary was still working at Nosler full-time and helping with landscaping, maintenance and sometimes cleaning. As we grew over the winter of 2018 and Spring of 2019 we realized quickly that we could not go another Summer with Gary working at Nosler, so we made the decision in March for him to leave and join the company full-time. This is where the real-life struggles come in, working with your spouse in a service-based industry is challenging. I thought I would keep it PG here,  because sometimes it’s not. 😉 Do any of you work with your spouses in a service-based industry or have you before? What are/were your takeaways?  We are still learning, even after being married for almost 11 years, running a business together is a whole new ball game. If there is one thing that we could both do better, it’s communication, listening and patience.  That’s three, but really there are like 20, we are like little tadpoles learning to swim for the first time. Just keepin’ it real y’all!

If you’ve been following along you know that we live the RVlife approximately 8 months out of the year, we’ve been rockin’ our 26ft Hideout for the last 3 years and for the last 2 years we have been rolling around from campground to campground based on when our homes are booked. To make it easier on ourselves we could block out time at each house, but we do the wait and see game most of the time and with our occupancy percentage that means that if we don't block out the house we don't get to use it.  We did block a few days this week at Wildflower Homestead, it was glorious! Last year was so hard with Gary having to be at work at 1pm and making sure that the trailer was moved and in the right spot and all set up- there is a lot that goes into getting it just perfect. This year has been so much better, we have booked much longer stays at campgrounds, and taken a few breaks here and there at River Run Homestead or Green Meadow Homestead. It’s still a lot to plan and think about though, making sure you are giving yourself ample time to set-up, dump, fill, where you are going to dump/fill. Keeping your battery charged and full, not buying too much food due to the mini fridge situation, but having the items you need to keep yourselves nourished at all times.  If you add running a small business to our crazy lifestyle, it just makes it all the harder and crazier.

I hope you enjoyed a short look into our crazy, Ill be sure to update you as we continue to grow. Not just the business, but also The Kelly’s, we know it will take time for us to learn and adapt to this new venture but when we do, we will be stronger than ever.