My business week v. 12+ vacation

Hello in the cottage! I am back in business now after 2 weeks holiday !! Wihoo!

If I've been fine? So good! We came home last Friday after some delays so it was a bit of a suitable weekend right after the holiday. I love when you have time to land at home before you start working again, unpack and wash everything in peace and quiet. And baby cuddles with Mileya of course! :) And my cat haha!

Á la author
Now I have written three chapters on my book! And above all, I have honed the whole story and layout, mostly in my head but also on a scrap paper. So now it's mostly me to get it down in text. One night I sat out on our bungalow balcony and wrote while Miska took a powernap and when he came out I exclaimed "my book will be so heavenly GOOD!"Hahaha, sometimes you have to be so non-humble;)

The plan is not for my new career to become a writer, but I have long had the desire to write a book, I love to write! And now I really only do it for the simple reason that I can. Make sense?

I do not really know what the book is like as a genre but exciting, mysterious, romantic and a bit supernatural! But not supernaturally in a fantacy way but more spiritually. And if everything goes according to plan, it will be a fun twist in the end too!

Are you curious? :)

Here I sit and draft ideas in the shadows haha!

Meditation & healing
I have recovered from throat infection and fever in March so far, but over half the holiday I had so swollen lymph nodes in my armpits that one day I could not swim, could not even put on deodorant because I had so much pain and lots of visible, red bumps in the armpits. So my immune system continues to fight but it's a change anyway, maybe the glands (thanks to my healing?) Managed to take the whole blow so that I avoid sore throat and fever this month? Hope!

This trip was mainly a rest-meditate-and-write trip. A fresh start for health simply. And so it really has been! We lived in a quiet hotel with our own beach, so often you were completely alone and bathed and I visualized how the blue waves cleansed me and lots of flum;)

I have also taken blood samples via Werlabs now (which tests more than what the health center does) and I have booked professional healing next week as well! Plus trained! So I continue my health journey haha. I have a little too high blood levels (red blood cells) and on the verge of too low with Vitamin B12 which is common for vegetarians. But otherwise it looked good :)

Here I sit after the blood test and comfort myself with a chocolate ball because they dug so much into my blood vessels, I was completely sore afterwards. I'm the worst adult baby when it comes to blood tests, I do not like it at all!

NEW LOCATION listen and be amazed!
How did the business go during the holidays then? Good indeed! There has been a time difference so I have answered emails every morning after breakfast and then in the evening it has been pinged with answers in the mobile which I partly answered directly and partly postponed until the next morning. It has been unusually much emailing I must say.

In addition, we have made some decisions at a distance and talked a lot with Annika.

Our new room is on the verge of size, it works well now but when Annika starts working again (even though it will not be full time) it would require more schedule puzzles to get it together. In addition, storage space is on the border.

When we decided on this little room, we really would in addition rent another room across the street, for staff rooms, babysitting (for Annika's baby when she has customers), storage and a treatment room for Annika. So not a room that is "face out", it is a basement room. But it would make it a lot easier and it is cheap to rent so it kind of makes up for it financially. But another tenant got the contract instead and then the decision with the move was already decided. Which I then thought was a little nice actually because the basement room needed to be renovated as well and I was so tired of it, I do not want to paint another brushstroke and also the floors were itchy too.

But what happened during the holidays then? Well the landlord got in touch and said that it did not go as planned with the first tenant, so we can rent it for the same amount AND it has been renovated !! Nice light gray parquet floors, fresh bathroom and white painted walls + a kitchen area. How good? It is a small hall, bathroom, three rooms + a small storage room.

So it is not a change of premises but we have one more simply :) Facilitates a lot!

There is no electricity in the room right now so I could not take a picture of it, but here we are signing the lease! Access April 1 :) Now there are some things you wish you never sold haha, when we suddenly need a dining table and chairs, another treatment bed, storage cabinets etc. But it was probably still the intention that we would not get the room until now , so we did not have to renovate ourselves + that we would probably have saved too much stuff if we had had that storage option. You know "uh, we can put this in the basement" even though it is a gadget you will never use and many small streams have suddenly created a labyrinth.

You can think that things are unlucky until you realize that it is just the opposite :)

Back to work
It was a summary of what happened during these two weeks. This Monday we kicked off with a packed day:

1. Take blood samples
2. Bvc with baby
3. Finish fixing the very last thing in the old room (the opening hours were still on the front door and some small things like that)
4. Meet the landlord for the basement and sign a contract
5. Meet the landlord for the old premises and leave keys.
6. Download packages at DHL with press samples from PIXI
7. Leave documentation (receipts etc.) to the finance company that handles our accounting.
8. A gap in the schedule where I have time to answer emails and contact the tax authorities regarding a question.
9. Customers at the salon while Miska and Annika have lunch.
10. Finished 18.00, homecoming and on the way pick up another package with press samples from Linda Hallberg.

This post I wrote on August 17, 2015, when we had just received the keys to the room and now we have returned them. Moving to a smaller but better room was the best and hardest thing I have done in a long time. Now it's over!

Walking around the completely empty and newly cleaned room while the sun shone in was more nostalgic than I had expected. Even though it is 300% in better condition now than when we rented it, I still got exactly the same feeling as when we were inside it for the first time. When you walked around the large, bright and echoing empty room with such high expectations. What a big step it was. And it felt exactly the same now, though we said goodbye to it. Magical anyway!

This brow transformation that I did last Monday I blogged about earlier this week as well, but I was so happy for this customer that I have to write a little more! I almost only take regulars now when I work from home, I can not remember when I last took a new customer. I love regulars, you become like friends! But they know exactly what they are getting, so even though they are always super happy, of course, it will not be that Cinderella smile in the mirror that you get from new customers who are completely put off by the great result!

If all customers had lit up in the same way as this customer did when she looked in the mirror, I would have been able to work for free, I would not have had to eat, I would have just lived off the joy hahaha!

Her mother said "what fun that you could receive us, she has been looking at your pictures for several months and wanted to come to you" and then they only drove from Bromma to Creative Makeup in Uppsala just for my sake. So I know I'm good, but the pressure on those expectations mixed with how honored you feel is almost too much haha.

Hug meeting
Due to parental leave, we have not had hug meetings this year yet, the last one we had was before Christmas. We have good communication via our program Quip that we use (with lists, conversations etc.) and I have sent financial reports via Dropbox that the staff has been able to follow, so they have gone well anyway but nothing is as good as sitting down together and talking !

And on Wednesday we finally had a meeting again! It went really well, we got together a whole list of things to fix and what to focus on before the summer.

Managed to get the mood in the picture when they were not ready haha!

So good colleagues I have ♥

Mileya was at the meeting as well and it went great! She was awake but lay in Miska's arms and chilled all the time :)

Work from home and check off the to do list
I had a whole after-vacation list that was actually a little hard to open on Tuesday when I worked from home all day. It was not so awful but you know things that you have postponed when the time is not enough and which have become a long list that you do not even remember what it says, it still takes a little reading to read it haha.

But I rolled up my sleeves and it's with a nice feeling I was able to take a weekend ago because oh so much I've done! GREAT!

So fun to get smeared with makeup again!

So luxurious to walk around your own store and pick things you need to refill before spring :)

Buying shares for the first time?
Miska has invested in various companies and bought shares for a while now while I myself am more of a savings account person haha. But now I'm thinking of making my first investment in a completely new company (they have not registered the name yet so I am not allowed to print it) which feels like a good Helena company!

This with alcoholism is very warm to me and my heart as it is a disease that I have had around me all my life type. Many relatives have had problems with alcohol and my wonderful mother who suffered from mental illness self-medicated with alcohol and tried to the last to get well, she had been sober for 3 months when she passed away 2.5 years ago now. Had the care worked better, I really think she would have lived today!

This company that I am now considering investing in was started by Daniel Benitez who himself is an alcoholic and co-founded Kontigo - an breathalyzer that is connected to an app in the phone that you regularly do breath tests in which is sent directly to a contact person in healthcare . Kontigo (which already exists) is linked to healthcare and focuses on people who are already in care and should avoid relapse / get help faster in relapse.

The difference with the new company that I want to invest in is that it focuses more on individuals who want to use the product anonymously or non-anonymously. You do not need to be in care already and you do not need to have a fully developed alcoholism. It is cheap for private individuals, easily accessible online and in stores e.g. pharmacy. You can do it anonymously, but you can also link the answers to a caregiver and relatives.

The breathalyzer has several purposes, eg:

1. Check if you are at risk, do you have an alcohol problem? Forms where you just tick different answers are not as reliable as actually blowing in a meter.
2. There are then different programs depending on how bad your alcohol problem is.
3. A therapist is just a push of a button away, like Kry and these apps where you can talk to a doctor or psychologist via video call.
4. Faster help in case of relapse
5. As a sober alcoholic, you are often wrongly accused and distrusted, being able to prove your sobriety can save your family situation.
6. The plan is also to create groups etc. in the app so that it becomes a community where you can help and support each other.
7. It also works as a regular breathalyzer (then with a simpler free app) but is extremely reliable compared to other gauges on the market.

The app tells you when to blow, which are always different times, so it is not possible to plan your drinking so that you have time to sober up in between. At the same time as you blow, you hold the selfie camera against you so you can never fool the system with someone else blowing instead.

The reason why this company sounds better in my ears is because you can overcome the problem before it goes to the forest. It will be more accessible to everyone! In addition, I am absolutely convinced that more people would use it if you can start by being anonymous. My mother came home from an AA meeting once and told me about Kontigo but said "it's nothing to me"And I think it will be too big a step for many when the care is connected directly and you may feel a little" stuck "in some way? She would have needed this solution instead, with an addiction therapist just a call away and a support group without having to leave the house and go into town.

Too bad this available variant comes a few years too late, but I think of all the lives it can save in the future instead!

We met Daniel this week and went through everything that is on g. Next week I will decide if I should invest or not!

Since Daniel already has a lot of experience after the Kontigo trip and this is a slightly safer company but lower costs, I do not think it is as high a risk as many other start-ups.

High risk gives a high return and there are great opportunities to double the money in a fairly short time. I just have to ask myself how bad I would feel if I get rid of the money completely, because it's actually a risk. Waah!

Do you usually invest with high risk? Do you have any tips on how to dare? :)

Here you see a demo on the breathalyzer! It is really high quality and gives safe results that you can trust.

Today I keep my fingers crossed for the spring sun and thought maybe take out a blanket and my computer and write on my book on the patio :) Would be so cozy!

Hugs are ♥