30 day small business cleanse!

The day our new equipment arrived at the new studio!

This time last year, things were going really well with our business. We were settling into our new studio space, we were working on our Kickstarter rewards and wholesale and retail sales were on an upward trajectory. We'd also just found out that we were pregnant. Ok, we weren't pregnant, Rosemary was. We were so excited, everything seemed to be going so well. And it did, for the first six weeks of the pregnancy things were fantastic. And then the nausea set in and made itself comfortable for the next six months. It was pretty rough. Suddenly we went from taking care of the business to trying to take care of ourselves. And in the end, the business suffered from the lack of attention. Not horribly, but just enough to quiet things down a little.

Our booth at Artisanal L.A., October 2014.

Fast forward to this year, we have a beautiful new daughter, Rosemary is back on solid foods, and although we're pretty tired a good part of the time, we're also really excited to be back at work. We have been making the most of our quiet time to work on our business. We've taken the opportunity to really look at what we're doing in order to make sure that we're working smarter not harder.

L-R: Robin printing Kickstarter rewards, Rosemary at Eastside Handmade with Ana from Love&Arrow, Rosemary proofing neon sign cards.

In that spirit, we've decided to embark on a 30 day cleanse. How L.A. can you get right? Inspired by the Apartment Therapy January Cure (which we've always wanted to do but have always been too exhausted since it comes right at the end of our busy season!) as well as several other  creative cleanses we've found on the internet or Pinterest (take a look at our Professional Practices board!), we wrote our own list of projects to follow for the next 30 days. It's going to be pretty intense, especially sandwiched between running the business, baby cuddles and marathon nursing session, but we're going to do our best! If nothing else, this will formalize a lot of the discussions we've had over late night feeds and early morning pumping sessions.

L-R: Robin taking a quick nap in the car while Rosemary feeds the baby, a stack of note cards hot off the press, studio hangouts with the baby.

We'll be charting our daily process here on the blog as well as sharing some bits and pieces on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Each day we'll cover our goal for the day and a small recap on the previous day's progress. It's a lot to bite off, and frankly we're a little nervous. You can follow along with us if you'd like, here's a pdf of our schedule for the rest of the month. It's tailored to our type of business but feel free to customize it in any way that makes it work better for you.

Wish us luck!
Rosemary+Robin