A golden conversation.

Recently Hannah from The Unfold came into our Honest studio for a cup of tea and some golden conversation. We sat and chatted for a solid hour, maybe more. Then Hannah took some snaps of me doing my dorky thing and pretending to ‘work’.

Here’s my favourite part of our conversation…

H: Let’s talk about how The Honest Jones came to be in 2014, what was the point you took a leap of faith and turned an idea into reality by making it into a business?

A:  Quitting my job was a leap of faith. I had no idea how to turn my freelancing (often unpaid work) into a full time paid gig. I quit paid work as a nanny to make this…and by the way I had no idea what “this” was at that point. It was that leap of faith that really forced me to learn how to charge people for my work. That’s the hardest part initially - quoting creative jobs! Most of my work comes from my imagination, so I didn’t know how to put a value on that!

H: Yes, that’s so interesting because we may not realise that what often comes so naturally to us [like the way you think], can actually be our greatest asset…it really is so valuable.

H: So within that transition of starting your own business how did you not panic about getting clients to make money early on?

A: I was very calm. The temptation was there to panic, and looking back it’s weird that I didn’t panic. Instead I thought: “I’m going to really enjoy this quiet space, where I have a lot of time, because soon I’m going to be so busy that I’m going to miss this.” And that takes a lot of faith to believe that. I was very peaceful about it. The whole thing was out of trust.

H: And even now with running your own gig, how do you manage those in between times when you might not be getting many new inquiries, and you know you need a certain amount of clients to keep continuing. Like many small business owners, how do you navigate that tension and trust you will keep getting the work?

A: I think because I started in that space with nothing, and I had faith it would work out, I can always go back to that. I find it hard to talk about this kind of stuff because everyone is on their own journey, so in terms of giving someone else advice, the best thing for them might actually be to not quit your job and do your own thing full time, but maybe it is the best thing?

What works for me is just following the peace and I follow that at all costs - no matter what that looks like. Perseverance is a part of it, but for me it’s also about following the holy spirit- which is a big influence in my life. Whatever you call it in your life, I think peace is something that applies to us all - follow that peace.

You can read the whole conversation…here.