It's been a while since I've posted but there's a good reason…

I'm now a dad!

I've taken the past weeks off to do some final prep for the baby and now I'm adjusting my schedule to my new life.

During this time off, it turns out that I messed up.

A month of radio silence

ArtsyPetz made a sale and I completely missed it for a month.

I thought I had my Stripe notifications set up but that clearly wasn't the case. I was checking my website analytics and noticed that someone visited a page for their order.

Embarrassingly, I thought "Weird. How can someone view that page without placing an order?" I never considered the possibility that someone actually placed an order (more on that later).

Looking at Stripe, I confirmed that someone did place an order.

A month ago. Right before Christmas.

My excitement for the sale was immediately met with disappointment.

The next thing I did was write an email to the customer to apologize and try to make it right. I told them that I missed this because I was in the hospital for my newborn. Then, I offered them a free custom mug or tote bag, their choice.

Their response was…great! They said it wasn't a problem and they wanted the mug. I put the order together right away and got it sent out that day.

The real problem wasn't Stripe

For the past day or so, I've been reflecting on what went wrong. Clearly, my Stripe notifications are not set up correctly. I thought I would get a notification on my phone for each sale. That obviously didn't happen.

But it felt like there was something deeper.

A part of me is regularly expecting ArtsyPetz to fail.

When I started it, I assumed that nobody would ever buy it. Then some people in my network did.

Then, I set the new goal to get a sale from a stranger on the internet. Then someone did.

I've been moving the goal post of "success" each time.

I never considered the possibility of accidentally ignoring a customer's order for a month because I didn't expect anyone to place an order.

This is a weird mental space to be in.

My goal is to make enough money through entrepreneurship to replace my corporate income. This is an intimidating goal. But it's also not unrealistic. ArtsyPetz is the first business I've created and there are customers. They are paying. This is good.

A part of me doesn't want to acknowledge this success and maybe that's why I move the goal post on myself. I also want to stop doing that.

I don't think it's helpful. It's a bit like racing a car with the emergency brake on. Sure, I can technically move forward but I'm still slowing myself down.

Letting it work

So that's where I'm at right now. Life changes quick. I still have my goals and I'm going to work harder on not being my own enemy.

And I should probably start by fixing my damn Stripe notifications.