When Your Children Are Not...

...Your Children Anymore

 

I seem to have always referred to them collectively as "The Children". When they were small they hung on my every word. I told them what to do and showed them how and when to do it, simple!?

With only fourteen months between them it was almost like having twins. Their personalities were quite different, a gregarious girl and a shy quiet boy, which I think is quite a common occurrence. I was determined their early lives would be about learning and laughing so from birth to pre-school we tried to make everyday a fun day.

I did have help, we lived abroad at this time so no family support was available. But Sesame Street and Barney The Purple Dinosaur were always on hand to entertain and teach, along with Bear In The Big Blue House and Blue's Clues. I could not have managed without them, and I thank them for their contribution in the early years!

Back home in the U.K. the school years rubbed along with the usual highs and lows. Academic ability, peer groups and apparently most important, "fitting in", not being left out. These are my main memories of these times, I guess they are challenging for everyone to some degree.
If your opinion is sought and advice given you hope it helps but ultimately, sometimes sadly, they have to learn to deal with things themselves, all I could do was ensure a stable, loving and supportive environment was waiting at home.

Now aged twenty and nineteen we have entered the university years, both are having the time of their lives and I am delighted for them. But it is only recently that I realised my children have been replaced by my daughter and my son. 

Once I was the centre of their universe, now I'm just one of the planets, and I'm cool with that, maybe.

They don't hang on my every word like they used to, and they don't always take my advice, they don't often ask now!

They're pretty good about keeping in touch, mostly.

They both talk to me as if I'm a best friend (I am) not just Mum! I am included in their lives as much as I can reasonably expect as a parent, long may it continue.
They are branching out and gaining the confidence and independence to lead the life they want for themselves.

What more can you ask 😁

So how do you live long and prosper in a little retail world?

If you want a bricks and mortar presence on the High Street you need the premises, the products and the people.

Your shop fittings will help you stand out from the crowd and together with the ambiance you create, your business will be totally compelling to the public at large. The U.S.P. (unique selling point) of the store will make people want to spend money with you rather than a superstore or hypermarket.
Even better, stock stuff they cannot match, be it vintage, quirky or totally unique to you. Do all these things and you are off to a great start.
But it's not enough these days, you need to self-promote.

You need Social Media of Course!

 

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. I'm a novice with much to learn but I see the value of a presence on these platforms.

I joined Facebook years ago but only recently have I started using it to help promote my business. Does it work? I will let you know in due course. 

It used to be the case in business that when times got hard the first things to suffer were Staff Training and Advertising budgets, but aren't they the very things you need to utilise when things get tough?
As Social Media is essentially free the only thing you need to spend is time and this can be a significant investment to the self employed. 

People seem to respond better to images rather than lots of text so I can understand the success of Instagram and I MUST try to make time to develop a presence on my recently acquired page. You would think that Twitter would work best with a picture and caption. Not for me though, I find Twitter to be rather disconnected, with people only looking for followers rather than content. As for others like WhatsApp or Snapchat etc. I am totally clueless. A newbie like me cannot deal with those yet, so my focus is understanding Facebook for now.

Image of this Blog on my phone.

Be More Mobile!

People seem more happy to get mobile on the sofa - with a phone or tablet in hand.
On checking how people connect with my on line "presence", I find there is an overwhelming amount of mobile device browsing compared to desktop computers. If you have a web presence you need to be "mobile" optimised. I was horrified to see some of my stuff while browsing on my phone, something I almost never do, it just did not look right. As I use a desktop computer almost all of the time I had not considered that there would be a significant difference, my bad!
For example, I purposely don't have side panels on this blog because they seem to distort the view on a small device. And I noticed my images don't work when shown three abreast whereas they look fine on a desktop screen.
None of this had occurred to me before, but as this is the future of on line browsing I had better start addressing mobile compatibility right now.

So Much To Learn So little Time.