I OPENED A THRIFT SHOP WHILE TREATING CHRONIC LYME DISEASE
Here are three facts:
I have Lyme Disease & it came out of remisson over the summer, so I got a central line placed to treat the Lyme Disease with IV antibiotics, for the 5th time, in the beginning of August 2022.
My mom & I have always wanted a Thrift Shop.
I tend to have crazy ideas, & once I have an idea, I don’t give up on it.
Here’s the story:
One warm day in August 2022, with oil prices rising, I said to my husband, “I have an idea” …which he of course got nervous about. I tend to have big, extravagant ideas…like opening a Thrift Shop before winter with our small savings! He looked at me like I was joking…but he knew I wasn’t…because he knows me better than that by now. 😆
I went on to explain that if we invest our savings in opening a store now, we can make money to pay our oil bills this winter instead of spending our entire savings on the bills & not having anything left once the winter is over. This made more sense to him. I was winning him over. 1 point for Julie!
We talked about it for a few days, then we told my mom & she loved the idea (of course because it was always our dream)! I wrote up a business plan, did some budgeting & found a couple of storefronts I wanted to see that were within our price range.
I fell in love with the first location we saw. By the end of August I knew I wanted that spot. By September we signed the lease & by the last week of September we were in the shop & setting it up for our Grand Opening to be held on October 16th 2022!
In a future blog post I’ll go through how on earth I managed to pull all of this together in a month & open up our Thrift Shop in under two months, but most of it just has to do with “once I get an idea in my head, I will not give up” …so we have a Thrift Shop now! 😄
I continued to treat Lyme Disease with IV antibiotics every night from August 2022 through January 2023. I'm not in remission from Lyme Disease, but my numbers are super low and manageable at this time.
Living with chronic Lyme Disease & being a new business owner has been a whole adventure. I’ll write more about it sometime soon, but I’m so grateful to be where I’m at with this business & with my Lyme treatment.
Thank you to my husband for trusting me & my crazy ideas enough to jump on board, my mom for doing this with me, my father for passing his work ethic on to me & my amazing customers (who have become my friends) for supporting my small business. 😊💚
💚 Love, Julie xox
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