Consequences of Selling My Small Business

I have never worked as hard in my life as I did starting The Bronzed Beauty. When I say I started from scratch, I mean I started with ZERO clients. That’s right - not one. I had my training, I went straight to renting a space in a fabulous location with all my decorations. I did all my Google Ads, I put fliers on thousands of cars, I begged my friends to let me spray them and take pictures. I even went down to every bar and solicited business to every girl I saw! I would stand in the hallways and just pray that my phone would ring.

Fast forward to 5 years later, I had a great and lucrative business that had me burning the candles at both ends. I was still teaching full time and I would spray tan my clients afterwards. I would fall asleep on the front couch in between clients. After a number of life events, one major one being moving a bit further away, I decided that it was not conducive to my health or family to continue and I went about to find the perfect person to take over my business. Which, took me 7 months by the way.

I thought it would be a relief. I thought it would feel like a weight was lifted off my shoulder.

I thought wrong.

I felt empty.

One of the consequences of selling my business was feeling like I no longer had a purpose. I was the woman that made you feel good about yourself - even though you should have any way. I was there for some of the biggest moments in people’s lives. Their weddings, baby showers, reunions where your ex will be with his new girl and vacations. Those are some super huge events that are remembered - and were trusted to be to be their spray tan girl. All of that - just disappeared. The world didn’t stop for my heart ache - not one second.

The second biggest struggle has been my identity. Now, I know you are thinking..what? I built The Bronzed Beauty with myself as the face of my business. You know, cause I am brown and not too heinous looking. So I am The Bronzed Beauty, it’s my blog name, it’s every social media outlet name and you can’t Google my name in the Dallas area without me popping up. Yet now - I am not that person - cause I no longer spray tan. So who am I? I didn’t sell my name - so I guess for now - I am still The Bronzed Beauty cause it still applies. However it has left me with a hole in me that I don’t quite know how to fill.

Lastly, I felt like a failure. Like a big fat loser. I have never been a quitter, I never gave up when things got hard - but I knew that it was time to pass the torch to someone else. I learned so much starting up my own business. I made a lot of good choices and a lot of bad ones. At the end of the day - I like to remember back to all of the women that I helped, that became my friends still till this day - and know that everyone and every thing happens in life for a reason and the memories that I have will always fill my heart with joy. So, feeling like a failure doesn’t apply too much now as it used to.

Would I do it all again? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Why?

Cause I AM The Bronzed Beauty - I’m the best that’s ever been!