Entrepreneur

I have a small business - making artisanal home fragrance products.

A little background, previously I was in sales, made 6 figures but I hated it to the point of constantly suicidal hence I decided to screw it, move home and started this business.

Fast forward, I was lucky the business grew tremendously even with a very lean organisation during covid and to date we pulled > 1m in sales. It’s coming to my 4th year but this year I’m having major loss of motivation.

I’m not happy about how this business is going since I’m doing everything by myself almost (I’m FT; my co-founder PT and another PT staff) and not feeling competitive in the market. I don’t feel the business is that successful since we are small in size and at times feels inferior to my peers who stayed in corporate. Since mid year, I had took the gas pedal off by not putting much effort at all and have been wanting to sell the biz and go back to employment. Naturally, my sales reflects my effort and the biz lost momentum.

Currently I’m at the crossroad to continue by expanding my business (at a big city, think 15x more population while maintaining my current office) or sell my business. I had many prospects fell through the past few months and only have 1 solid offer as of now. The offer is not very attractive, much lower than my asking. The buyer is offering only 1/2 of average net profit from a year with value of physical asset (raw materials + equipments). Bear in mind I have tons of formula for current and new products with strong product and brand recognition.

I don’t know if I should sell simply because of this loss of motivation and loneliness or just pull through. The business is still making money (average 10k/m profit on this low effort year) and realistically going back to employment to start again if I sell my biz I’d only make perhaps 1/2 current profit as the salary. My partner is very supportive of my journey so financially I don’t have much commitments.

Any advice on this please?