The Descent

part one in a three part series

It’s been just over a year since my first and only blog post. Since I pulled back my second launch for Intentional Retail.

The raw truth of it (in layers) is this.

My first iteration came with a hook of “coming off our two most profitable years at Purple Rose ever.” This was true for 2022 and 2023.

In 2024, I ran my first cohort and four brave souls joined me. The premise of the course wasn’t profit, though. It was connecting to the bones and the roots of the individual’s retail business and aligning it with systems and values that matched them.

The focus was on four pillars: body/your nervous system, your operating systems, your expression/products, and the energy systems that live all around and within us.

After I led four beautiful women in Spring of 2024, we ended up having our least profitable year.

On Thanksgiving morning 2024, I sat on my floor in a prayerful meditation, and asked, “What do we do now?”

Typically, by this time in the season, our holiday sales should have met their metrics, but that year, they just didn’t. Online sales dropped 50%. The shop was only down 10%.

In retrospect, I had a feeling this was where we were headed. After 20+ years in retail, I began to notice a pattern. A cycle of expansion and contraction that was happening every eight years or so, and we were due for one at any moment.

In January of 2024, before I began Intentional Retail, I was sitting in the airport waiting for a flight home from our biggest buying trip of the year when I received a call from our property manager at our 4,000 sq ft warehouse. The owner’s daughter was stepping in and felt rents were too low. Our lease was up in May, and our rent was set to double. Yes, double. We had a really sweet deal, and honestly, the new rate was still going to be lower than the standard in the area, but it was going to be way more than we were comfortable with.

This decision took a lot of back and forth. Negotiating. Considering. Nothing was aligned for us to move out that spring. We needed more time, and we still needed the space. I felt things changing but didn’t have the full scope yet. I eventually negotiated a 50% increase and a one-year lease to feel it out, and they accepted.

Six months later, on my bedroom floor I begged. “Please bring the sales.” I was gripping onto manifesting the outcome to shift. When I finally settled into the stillness, with my candle and incense burning, I dropped into trust and asked "what do we do now". That was when I felt, with the most clarity I’d had in years, that it was time to release the warehouse.

Just ten minutes before that, when I was operating from a place of controlling the outcome, if you had told me it was time for that decision, I would have probably reacted and lashed out.

That didn't support "the plan".

Up to this point, the dream was continued scaling and growth for our ecommerce. We shared a space with our neighbor, who had an additional 5,000 sq ft, and I would imagine knocking down that wall and expanding. Bringing on a bigger team. Having all this spaciousness and material expansion.

But in reality, I was ragged. Muling the products to and from the retail space. Stepping in to ship, receive, count orders, and price orders constantly. Alway optimizing the space for smoother systems. Never time for my creativity to flourish.

Something in me was detaching from all of that logistical excellence that had defined me in my retail career for so many years. I knew it was strong, but the grit it took to hold it together was slipping away. I wanted more freedom in my schedule. More flexibility. More support, and something was keeping me from reaching the "there" I had always envisioned.

On December 1st, I told the property manager that we would not be renewing our lease in May of 2025. Honestly, the thought of finishing out the lease for six more months had now become uncomfortable. Before I even made the call, I felt like I wanted out sooner. And with impeccable confirmation and timing, she asked, “Do you want to leave sooner? Your neighbor wants more space.”

We were out by January 31st, 2025

Somehow (but I know how), we were ready and logistically capable of moving every bit of it into the shop without friction.

I like to think of it as a recalibration. That trade show in January of 2024, we had already set the intention of buying less before that call came, because we felt it in our bodies first that the cycle was downshifting.

I found myslelf viewing it as how everything was workinf for us vs against us. The phone call in the airport. The rent increase. The neigbors need to increase space. Like a recalibration in the unseen.

But the most important revelation didn’t come until another year later, when the recalibration once again showed itself, setting more precise confirmations.

Part 2: The Ascent. Read here.

Want to receive updates on my latest posts and episodes?

Subscribe Here