Hello! This post might initially seem more personal than business, but trust me–it’s every bit as much about running a small business as it is personal.
A couple of years ago, I announced Ken and I were moving to Chicago, only to denounce it a couple of weeks later.
We finally found our “what’s next,” and I decided to wait until it was a done deal before mentioning it publicly. Lesson learned (link will take you to a Medium blog post).
Alas, here we are with a for-real announcement:
On August 8th, Ken and I closed on a house with a detached shop on 10 acres of fenced desert land.
There’ve been lots of questions, and I have lots of answers. (See the Q&A section at the bottom of this post for a few to start!)
But there’s also a whole lot more to it than just snatching up a new place.
I’ve been trying to figure out where to start with the whole story, but my indecision has kept me from posting at all, which is the opposite of what I want. I want to share with you!
So, I will experiment with weekly posts to see if I can unfold the story as we go.
This entry is to give you some background. Let’s call it:
Where and Why
Ken and I (married in 2020) own a super sweet online business that we built together. We launched in August of 2016, working with a local (Las Vegas) manufacturer for printing/cutting/sewing, and packing/shipping orders from our home.
In Aug of 2018, we started leasing a warehouse, bought some machinery, and took over the manufacturing so we could own, learn, and understand the whole process end-to-end. We moved packing and shipping out of our home and into this new shop.
We always wished we could run things entirely from our home. It’s a fully online business with no foot traffic, and personally, I hate the 30–min traffic-riddled commute, even if it is to our own place. I’ve harbored a little resentment about it for years because it took me away from home. Working from home and owning my time was the whole point of walking away from corporate work in 2011.
When we launched Picture This Clothing, I was already running a mid-six-figure coaching/speaking/writing business I’d built up between 2013–2016, working fully from home so that I could be a more present mom for my two daughters.
We launched this company, and as awesome a story as it is, I chose to sideline the coaching business in order to focus on building the clothing business with Ken. This is not a complaint–I acknowledge I’m damn lucky getting to choose which of my own things to focus on building. I tried to do both, but it was too much combined with independent momming.
The mixed feelings were real.
We live in an HOA community in our Las Vegas house, and residential zoning is not OK with having the two Ford Pinto-sized machines in our garage. So, renting a commercial space was the only option if we wanted to grow the way we wanted.
A few months ago, we learned that in Pahrump, NV (a 1 hr 13 minute nearly traffic-free drive from our current home), there is a possibility–with proper Rural Homestead zoning and pre-approval via planning commission–to own land that accommodates both:
• a house to live in, and
• a shop where we could operate our small, online family business.
We could WALK to work! 🤯
As our lease renewal date for the warehouse approached, we found a home and shop for sale on 4.3 acres that wasn’t perfect. It was a smaller home than what we have now, but a bigger shop that needed a few big things (electrical and a rolling door to start,) and the land was about 4 acres more than what we have in Las Vegas, which seemed dreamy.
We figured it would suit our immediate needs, and we could make it our own over time. We got excited, and our imaginations started churning on all the possibilities of having so much space to work with.
We made an offer, it was countered, and as we prepared our counter to the counter, we were outbid. We didn’t even know we were competing with anyone else.
Heartbroken, we started looking again.
Our realtor shared this really interesting Zillow post of another home and shop on 10 acres. I wasn’t all that optimistic. The list price was way outside our budget, and the photos…
It seemed like these folks had TONS of STUFF—good stuff and “junk”; inside and outside.
Take a peek…
Our realtor said not to get hung up on the price, it had been listed a while, and there was some flexibility because it was a “need to sell” situation.
We decided to go look.
The homeowners were there when we went by. This always feels a little awkward, but “Jim,” the 87-year-old homeowner, was endearing from the moment he opened the door with his dog Lulu.
As we toured the place, Jim explained that his wife, “Jan”– 86 yrs old, has stage 4 kidney disease.
They built this home in 2004 and didn’t want to move, but it had become a necessity.
We could see the beauty of the home and the shop–it was beyond perfect for both:
• our dream of consolidating our work and life into a walkable distance;
• a long-game vision of building our own remote desert dreamland with no HOA.
We were so emotionally torn by how sad the situation with the current owners felt, yet everything about the property itself felt right.
We decided to make the best offer we could right out of the gate.
At first, we were told they’d countered, and we accepted the counter–we didn’t want to lose this one. But when the paperwork came through, they had decided to take our original offer.
Stay tuned! Chapter 2 is called: “Surprises.”
Q&A
Here are a few of the questions I’ve received so far. Please feel welcome to ask more!
Where is this place?
→ Pahrump, NV
Did you sell your house in Las Vegas?
→ Nope. We have a lot of pets and a few other personal circumstances that require a slow move, so we’ve kept our Las Vegas house. We are currently working on cleaning out the new place and hopefully clearing out of our current warehouse lease by the end of August.
How big is that shop?
→ 1900 square feet
Did you end up with all the stuff?
→ No. But you should definitely clap/comment/follow and come back next week to find out more about that. 🥰
☕️ -Jaimee
It's great to see how the right things happen at the right time if we persist and give it time. I am happy for you!❤😊
So excited for you! I totally adore Picture This and show it to young families when ever I get the chance. Although retired now I did 2 startups during my career but “work from home” just wasn’t a thing then. I think this is a brilliant move to allow you to control + grow the business while getting maximum enjoyment out of everything . Best of fortune to you and yours on this exciting new step in the journey.