Enrich your life by starting your own business, as told by The Learning Sponge

I have become a learning sponge. I’ve been soaking in as much knowledge and trying to master as many skills and techniques as I can. I don’t think I’ve ever so fervently wanted to learn as much as I do now.

One of the biggest changes I have made this year is forming my creative business, Little Lyra, and blossoming into this new side of myself. With that, I have discovered a mammoth and life-enriching learning curve.

It’s important to me that I understand all the parts of being a business owner, even the sides I don’t naturally lean to as a creative soul, like financing, working out marketing plans and generally "being business-y".

The essence of Little Lyra is creativity, and whilst that comes with relative ease to me, there is a huge chunk of being a business that I need to learn to do in order to triumph.

On a practical level, as a solo lady start-up, I also have a very limited budget. With modest means, I’m being forced to embrace aspects of running a business that maybe others could happily/ easily outsource. It’s a huge learning curve and it is difficult but with that difficulty and that grafting comes such a deep personnel sense of satisfaction and achievement. It's fantabulous.

Every week night, after an 8 hour working day, I go home and I sit down and I learn. I can feel so flippin’ tired and sometimes the road to success seems like a very long, arduous one. But do you know what? It’s these long nights, when my bones ache and my eyes are watery with fatigue and I think back to why I started my business.

I want to share the joy of creating with the rest of the world. Art makes me happy and I want it to make you happy too. And that spurs me on. That flicker of why sets me on fire to keep learning, keep doing, keep crafting and keep grafting.

I’ve had an absolute blast so far, soaking in the wonderful knowledge our friend the internet has to offer! And talking with mentors, learning from previous experiences they have walked through so I don’t have to.

I’m a dreamer but I’m also realistic (ish!) and if I discover I can’t do everything myself, of which I’m certain that day will come, I certainly will enlist the help of others. In the meantime, I am just enjoying the thrill of all my learning and how learning to run a business is one of the most rewarding and enriching experiences I have privy to.

What learning curves or new experiences are you going through right now?