Traumatic situations completely turn your life upside down. But when you’re your family’s sole provider, you have to keep running your business when life happens. Your family depends on the income. So how do you keep money coming in when your time and energy are focused on more important things?
In this episode, we talk with our business bestie, Tonya Bush, who has navigated the worst imaginable life circumstances with grace. She opens up about her heartbreaking story and shares how she kept her business going while she stepped back to prioritize her family.
Have you encountered a life-altering situation while running your business? How did you cope? Comment below and let us know.
Gracefully Running Your Business When Life Happens
What We Talked About
- Introducing Tonya Bush: Navigating traumatic life circumstances with grace [00:00]
- To share or not to share personal situations with your community [06:30]
- No regrets: Stepping back from business to focus on family [07:49]
- Identifying income streams with the most return for the least brain power [12:48]
- How hard times shift your perspective on work-life balance [20:12]
- The power of empathy: Connecting with others through shared experiences [24:06]
- Remembering what’s truly important (it’s not the dollar signs) [30:08]
MEET OUR BIZ BESTIE
Tonya Bush
Tonya Bush is a crochet designer and blogger – a wife, mother, and Nana to nine grandchildren and two fur babies. She lives in Kansas and spends any free time with her large family. She learned to crochet from her Aunt Dorothy when she was eight years old, and they would work on 4H crochet projects together every year. Now, Tonya is passing on her love for the craft by teaching her granddaughters and her growing audience at Nana’s Crafty Home, where she shares her crochet patterns and designs. She has shared over 120 designs for wearables, accessories, home decor, blankets, and more and has been a featured designer for Happily Hooked Magazine and Knitcrate Subscription box.
Key Insights
- When you make decisions about what you’re going to do with your business, you quickly realize what truly is important in your life. What you thought was important yesterday is no longer going to be important today or tomorrow, maybe even six months from now. You’re going to realize that shift that happens is going to change your complete perspective on life and how you live it for the rest of it. – Tonya
- What kind of projects could I work on that needed little brain power? You’re in a fog most of the time. Your focus, your mind is not there with the busyness. – Tonya
- Because we know that life’s going to happen, I think it’s really wise to set all of those things up so that when something does happen, your business can run without you for a little while. – Pam
- We don’t know what’s happening inside. We don’t know. And If we show love to people, we never know how that’s going to affect them and how it affected me when these people gave me empathy, and gave our family empathy, and gave us support. Give that support to others. Pay it forward. Be there for others when they need you and ask for help when you need it. – Tonya
- Life happens and your business can go on without you for a little while and you’re going to be okay. And recognize and keep in perspective what is truly important because the dollar signs are not as important as they seem to be in the moment – Pam
Additional Resources
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