If you have been following me for a while, you probably know that I started my small business in our old house from the living room floor and kitchen counter! It was not an easy stage, but I made it work. You gotta start with what you have, right?! When my business took over our entire house, it was very challenging for our marriage and my mental health. When I say that we had boxes with inventory in every room, I am not kidding! I was literally sitting on the living room floor as I was filling orders, and moving my products out of kitchen counter when my husband was cooking dinner!

You may wonder why we did not open to commercial space – because we didn’t want to. The truth is that I never expected this business to grow as much as it did. I started it when I needed a job during my immigration process and wanted to work from home and be close to my future family. I did not want to commit to rent a place and hire employees. I already had two assistants helping me and I knew I didn’t want to grow it any bigger. We were left with trying to fit this business into our life and house. After months of pushing through, we’ve decided to move. We were thinking about moving anyways and now with this business taking over our house, it was the perfect timing. 

We knew we wanted to move to a house which would allow us to separate work from our personal life since we both work from home. We also needed a lot of storage space for my inventory. We wanted to stay close to North Vancouver because we love it there, but it wasn’t easy to find a house that would fit these conditions since most homes are not built for a business! So, we opened our minds to complete a new lifestyle change & bought a farmhouse out of the city! Yes, I know, crazy! But when we saw a listing, it gave us both that magical, charming feeling; it filled all the requirements and had an entire unit upstairs that could be converted to my small business studio. The rest is the history – we are officially farmhouse people living in the Valley & let me tell you – we love it here!

I wanted to write a blog about how we moved and created the home of our dreams a long time ago. But my small business kept me very busy. It’s almost a year and a half since we moved, and I finally made a radical change in my business so I can have more time for fun things in life – like writing this blog! I am so excited to share my entire story, from starting a business to moving, creating the home of our dreams to building a Small business community & helping small business owners worldwide.

If you are up for an adventure to join me on my journey, follow along on my Instagram accounts at @smallbizbabescommunity & @michaelafong

Until next time,

Michaela