Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lori Roddey. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Lori, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?
I always wanted to have my own business. Even as a young kid I was always selling things, whether it was my Smurf collection or selling baseball cards, I’d run an ad in the newspaper and sell these collections. I always had that entrepreneurial spirit inside me.
By the mid nineties, I was working for Costco, I was also a travel agent working from my home, plus I had a third job working for Excel, a multilevel telecommunications business.
But I knew there was a better way, where I could be my own boss and create my own hours. One day in 1998- I had a light bulb moment and said to my husband I want to start an online business.
Granted this was before most people had email address’, and was even before Google was a household name.
I asked my sister “what should I sell“, since she owned a wig salon at that time, she said “sell the wigs”! I said “who would buy a wig over the internet”?
Well that’s exactly what I did, I went to the bookstore, bought the only 3 books they had on “how to start an online business”.
️ The stars were all lined up… within 2 months time, my online wig business called Lori’s Wigsite was birthed.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Lori’s Wigsite is an online business that sells wigs and hairpieces to cancer, alopecia patients, and anyone with severe hair loss. We cater to women, men and children by providing high quality affordable wigs, with the most loving, caring service -all across the globe.
From the beginning, the way that my business stood out from the others was I would write personal emails and notes back and forth to my customers. Since they couldn’t see me behind the computer, I tried to be as friendly and courteous as possible to establish a great trusting relationship with them.
After 25 years in business, still to this day we have many of our original loyal customers because they sense and know how much we truly care for them. We go above and beyond to assist their every need. It was never about the money, it was always about “serving our customers” world wide!
Hair-loss is a very sensitive topic that can be quite difficult for those dealing with it, I realized early on that by being as open and honest with my customers and what their expectations were from our company was imperative.
By establishing good communication, trust and integrity, the service our customers received through our caring nature, fortified our business relationship to continue long into the future.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
As a small business owner, who ran the entire operation alone in the beginning years, there were many obstacles I had to learn how to navigate. There were too many hats that I had to wear, my days and nights were filled with all the business obligations.
With an online business, its quite difficult to see how hard one is working, and others can’t see it either because it’s all intangible, everything is literally behind the scenes /screens- so burn-out can come very quickly.
I cared so deeply about my customers and their needs, that I forgot about my own self-care needs. After many years of handling it solely, I finally broke down and asked my husband to come work with me.
I was completely unaware that I needed to create proper boundaries. I thought that having a business that’s strictly online, meant you had to work day and night just to keep up with its demand. But something had to shift, we couldn’t continue working in this capacity.
The reason I bring this up, is because we all have ideas about starting our own businesses, but we get so busy, and become so committed to our dreams, our business then starts to OWN US, instead of the other way around!
I now see that I needed to ask for help much earlier, way before my burn-out set in.
I needed to set good work / life boundaries.
I especially needed to look after my own self care.
Self care is not selfish, it’s actually self-less!
Because if we are constantly overwhelmed and stressed out, then everyone is affected by our imbalanced state of being.
I wanted to bring up this point (to all business owners), we’re so programmed and conditioned to work so hard, at all costs, thinking our self-worth is based on our productivity…
but this is an illusion, a complete falsehood that needs to be changed in our “materialistic society”.
And many times, “us” -the business owners are the last to see how over burdened we really have become, because it just becomes our new normal, we just keep adding more to our plates.
*We think we can handle it, until we can’t and our body lets us know.
It’s up to us to see the signs before we get sick, or something happens to us, that will slow us down completely.
That’s usually what happens, when we’re out of balance and our body isn’t in the proper alignment – something happens “for us” not “to us”, for us to get its wake up call”.
Luckily, for me my burn-out/ was my break through to find yoga and meditation to help realign my frazzled mind and exhausted body.
I’m beyond grateful that these medicinal practices taught me how to become still, to just stop, be in silence. And mainly it reminded me to Breathe!
When we’re stressed -we forget to just breathe, our shallow breath then causes us more anxiety, which makes us feel even worse.
In my yoga / meditation practice: by consciously breathing & moving my body and my “e-motions”, (energy in motion) we’re literally helping to move stuck emotions that are unconsciously being held within our body, causing us to be out of balance. And possibly could cause dis-ease.
I noticed how much calmer I became, I finally had a new tool on how to handle my stress levels.
Not only was I now back in balance, but because my mood was uplifted, my family life received the benefits from my new loving self care practice too. It was a win win situation for my marriage as well!
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Something had to shift….. It wasn’t easy being a loving, married couple but also committed business partners. The lines often got blurred and I knew we needed a big change.
After many many years of frantically working the business together, my husband and I no longer had any free time to travel, or do the fun things we used to enjoy together.
I often said to my husband,
“we need to find a couple just like us.. who would treat our customers like gold, and take as much pride in our business as we do”!
I literally put this above request out to the universe, and sure enough, our prayers were answered.
Now, we have the most trustworthy, loyal team, who are our Wigsite Angels 😇 as I often call them.
I am so beyond grateful that I was able to see that I couldn’t continue to work at that capacity any longer.
By Letting go of control, it was a welcomed lesson for me. Now, knowing that we have a wonderful team, that runs all of the daily operations of our business so beautifully, it freed up a lot more of our time.
My husband and I both are able to focus our attention back on our personal relationship, plus it also gave us our time back to learn and experience the things that we enjoy most.
Asking for help, and finding such devoted team members, was and still is our biggest blessing!
I am beyond grateful for this life lesson- being in balance and harmony are our birth right, being happy and having freedom to enjoy what we love, is truly priceless!
Contact Info:
- Website: Wigsite.com
- Instagram: https://www.Instagram.com/wigsite
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wigsite
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/wigsite
- Youtube: https://www.YouTube.com/wigsite
- Other: [email protected]