What happens when it's time to say Uncle?

There is a picture of a horse in green drawn by my eight year old above my computer. It's a simple outline and below it reads, "Never Give Up". The horse came to me about a year ago when Anna without a lot of commotion or hype simply tacked up the picture of the horse in front of my face. Wow what insight for a little one. It's funny, well ironic, because it's the one thing that my father would say to us over and over again until we were blue in the face. "Don't be a quitter...never give up." I think his actual saying was, "You're not allowed to say can't."

I struggled with this way of life for at least the last year of selling toys and hats. I found myself smack dab in the middle of this company that had basically turned my way of life upside down, inside out, and stretched beyond my wildest imagination. For the first two years of building the business and being open to anything and everything that came down the pike I had the most fun and met the greatest people. There is a huge misconception that I became instantly rich. It's quite the opposite. I'm sure anyone who has started a company "non-capitalized" will understand. Red flag number one - starting a new business with credit cards.

Gathering my thoughts, memories, experiences, and most importantly lessons learned is just as much for me as for others out there starting their very own business adventure. I'm hoping to reach people that may be able to alter their own learning curve slightly as they build their business so that The Little Hat Company was not for not and just maybe will become a case study for the do's and don'ts of building a company around a strong product, service, and or principle. The Little Hat Company was built from pure drive, passion, love, and a lot of serendipity. Now with a few lessons learned, I am learning how I could have protected it from the beginning. Since LHC is not moving forward I am happy to be sharing some of its perspective with you. I'm looking forward and I'm definitely taking everything I've learned with me into the future.

I knew without a doubt when it became time to say "Uncle". What I didn't realize at the time was that I wasn't saying "Uncle" to my way of life, being an entrepreneur/chief story teller, I was saying "Uncle" to a certain chapter in my career. The Little Hat Company had run its purpose and it became time to move on.