I am so obsessed with this story, I cannot get enough of it in these newsletters. I’m fascinated and so grateful for you sharing the reality of your life with us. No one else says it like this. No one else executes the truth of it quite like you do (nor takes as much accountability). Life and business are so difficult to navigate and I see so much of my own corporate journey in you (despite mine being on an infinitesimally smaller scale) and learning this from your perspective feels like drinking water after crossing a huge desert. Just stunned. Thank you for sharing with us! I hope it continues. I’m grateful to be here.
As a person who turned my freelancing into a company that exploded (in relative terms) at the height of the pandemic (when I couldn't talk about it, while other people were losing their jobs and livelihoods), I read Part 2 with amazement. Amazement that you could crawl into my head and put into words precisely what I was thinking about all that explosive growth but could not say without sounding "ungrateful".
You've also articulated my own thoughts about entrepreneurship and those selling The Dream of startup culture and Being Your Own Boss. I find so much of the entrepreneur coaching language giving me MLM vibes, like AMWAY. (20 years ago, my brother and his family were caught up in this and I was attemping intervention to save my nieces and nephew from their parents who were slavish to their "uplines". Those uplines were showing off their mortgaged-to-their-eyeballs mansions and on-the-verge-of-repossession fancy cars as a way to motivate their downlines and sell The Dream of limitless wealth.) It's been two decades and I'm still creeped out by it.
My mental health has really suffered in the past 3 years since my business took off, at times red-lining. Meanwhile, the pandemic made things feel so much worse; it was very isolating socially and professionally. My stress levels were through the roof. I haven't smoked since the '90s, but suddenly I wanted to. My mental health has only very recently been improving due to a successful hire in March (after 6 terrible ones across a year and a quarter, which was making me utterly depressed and consumed my morale). I was an island of stress.
I can relate to so much of what you've said in Part 2, I can't wait for Part 3. This is a rollercoaster that feels all-too-familiar and I'm ready for the turn.
oof... I really hear you, Gail. Thanks for your kind words and for sharing this piece of your story, and I'm both happy and sorry so much of it resonated. Finding the right employees can be way more challenging than it appears--and having the wrong people is harder than not having them. I'm sending you ease and grace and continued stress relief vibes!
Great writing and storytelling, Emily. I knew the rough details of your growth and the buyback ( as an outlining stationery person, you here this on the down low) but while I knew you had growing pains, I didn't quite realize how fast and how large the growth was. I'd see your work everywhere and often wonder how you were protecting your creativity (because it's a thing! And so many of us have learned this the hard way!) Your words are wise, thanks so much for sharing your story.
I was busy with my business and in the 'sweet spot' you describe here. I was being encouraged to lease the larger office down the hall, expand and hire more people, etc. (I ran a communications/strategic consulting business.) I say encouraged, but it felt more like being 'pushed'. As if not expanding was heresy.
I was happy with where I was. Starting and running a business for me was already a huge thing. It was all new. I met with a colleague who had done (with a partner) what I was being encouraged to do. To this day, I am grateful to him. He told me essentially what you describe. More people, more issues, you do more Human Resources than anything else. You become a manager and not a 'doer' of the thing that your really good at. He said they were successful, yes, but he didn't sound very happy. Anyhow, I decided, I loved working with the clients and doing the writing and didn't want to just manage people. In the end, I was so thankful I stayed the course. Shortly afterwards, the 2008 financial crisis hit. The other companies around me that had expanded or had all their revenue in one basket went under. Overnight. As for my colleague, their partnership disbanded soon afterwards and he took his own advice and went back on his own. Smaller, but with a life. And likely more of a profit. Looking forward to Part 3.
Kim, thanks so much for sharing this -- and sorry for my slow reply here, I'm still figuring out notifications. :) Good on you, and good on your colleague! I'm also aware that had I gotten that advice, I'm not sure I would have listened-- in fact I think I probably wouldn't have. At the time, I didn't have the clarity to understand how important it could be to resist (or even that resistance was an option!) Apparently we all learn what we need to learn when we need to learn it...
‘Smaller, but with a life.’ I remember dropping out of a high paid job and moving into a lower paid job that paid the bills but allowed me to walk out the door each day and leave the job behind. Refinding my life was Gold. Absolutely recommended. We’re all humans, not machines. Finding your own personal priority (and keeping it prioritised) is the best thing you can do for yourself. (Hugs to all. 🤗🤗)
‘When I say it takes time to metabolize success, this is what I mean. As a leader, slower growth allows your nervous system time and space to get accustomed to each new stage before piling on more. A bigger operation requires greater skill and capacity that can’t be developed overnight, no matter how smart you are. Slow growth (or, gasp, not growing!) allows for your OWN inner growth, for experimentation, for taking the time to repair mistakes or harm before being swept along to the next thing.’
Thanks so much. A terrific read (once I finally found enough time to sit and do it justice)
As an entrepreneur the constant messaging that unless you are growing and scaling indefinitely is so toxic. I've found myself on that roller coaster and it's dizzying. It's very powerful to hear this message from someone that has been there. From the sidelines it looks like you've made it to what every entrepreneur should aim for. People don't like to talk about the darker side of all of it. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you Maria! I really appreciate this. Back then, all my professional advisors told me never to be public about the fact that I was drowning, but I knew what it looked like from the sidelines--and in not sharing the whole story, I always felt like I was lying by omission and contributing to some really toxic misconceptions about success. Arg!
I would be so interested to hear about more instances of this – the times you were advised to do or not do certain things in order to maintain the facade – and how you'd address them, knowing what you know. I've been fascinated by this story and how you've spelled it all out!!! And part of me wonders what Emily NOW would have said in those instances, then. Like, what would today's Emily say to the GMA stylist? What would today's Emily say to UO when they gave you two weeks to fulfill that order? What would you say back to the people who kept insisting they were "good problems to have" and what would you have done (although you did pretty much answer this one, already). I'm just so curious: like if allllllll of this happened all over again (FFS, God forbid / I know it wouldn't but just pretend, IF it did), how would you/your business respond? And what do you think it would've looked like had you dealt with everything in ways that were healthy and sustainable for you? Would you have "topped out" at 5- or 10-ish employees? Just focused on wholesale? Done one speaking engagement/month, etc? Does this question stress you out? lol. Sorry. Obviously you can completely ignore this comment of mine all together. I'm just in awe of all you went through and fascinated by all you've learned and shared! It's like you've evolved so much through it all, that you can almost now speak to two different lives lived. It's truly incredible and admirable. Thank you for sharing them both with us. <3
Hi Sarah! Thanks for all these questions. I may address some of them in future posts. It’s a balance because I write for a general audience here--only a tiny percentage of my readers own small businesses-- so I want to be mindful of not getting too into the weeds with my newsletter. (I’ll also be offering individual guidance as part of my job when my noncompete is up in the spring.)
It’s hard for me to answer a lot of this, for two reasons: 1, the current me wouldn’t start a brand at all -- I’m a super different person than I was in 2011, and I want and value different things. I do think choosing to stay smaller would have been more sustainable for me... and at the same time, I also feel very complete with writing and illustrating cards after 11 years, and I think I would have ended up here no matter what. I also don’t look back with regret on any of my choices.
2. I can’t really issue blanket statements on what’s “right” or “wrong” for a business in a way that can be applied by others, because whether one’s choices are “good” or not depends so much on individual factors like what a founder’s strengths are, the kind of life they want, how flexible their nervous system is, how much support they have, whether they are willing to undergo a temporary sprint to help fund their business in return... for example, was 15 employees too many for me? Yes. Is it too many for everyone? No. :)
I have been hanging on every word - so grateful for this look at the "inside" of these business successes. I will not go into my story because no need, but I have been an entrepreneur for a long lifetime - good, bad, and ugly, up, down and WTF? Many times I have faced the decision to expand in big ways, and I said NO. Everyone thought I was crazy, and I got a lot of pushing and criticism for not wanting to work with distributors between me and my wholesalers, not wanting to go on TV at a time when TV craft shows were a proven path to growth of your creative produxct, not wanting to release an incredibly creative product to the masses to be stolen and copied by Target. Well, I never got rich, but I made it through with my health and my sanity, and I don't think it would have been a better success to have given that up for money. I thank you for making me feel like maybe I made the right decisions for me. Please keep writing about your experiences. You are not boring anybody with these stories - I guarantee you.
Thank you so much, Jessica! I still feel like one of the best things I ever did (for my health and sanity) was to say no when Shark Tank called. Applauding you for the conviction, courage, and self-awareness it took to say no to all these opportunities. <3
Thank you Sherry. This means a lot to hear -- when I sat down to write these, one of my goals was to try and make the storytelling good enough that people who don't own businesses would be entertained and interested!
I enjoy the "real" in how you share your experiences. So many things I hear, see, and read are manufactured-and I don't have the desire or bandwidth to even care why. I find you interesting, validating, and time saving. One question: When you wrote about your absence of boundaries at the outset of your growing business, if you had established boundaries and maintained them, how would that have changed your course? I ask because I'm giving a lot of thought to my own boundaries, and lack thereof.
Good question! My lack of boundaries in the beginning looked like (to name a few) putting the business first no matter what, allowing it to consume all my time, energy, and attention; saying yes to basically all requests and demands from customers and social media followers; not setting clear expectations of my employees; keeping people on staff who were negatively impacting the rest of the team because I didn't want to be disliked... I could go on. :-/
Ultimately, I didn't exercise discernment in what I cared about-- I cared about everything, which as a business owner, is not sustainable. I can't say how things would have been different for the course of my business if I'd had and kept stronger boundaries--it's hard to know that-- but I ultimately think I would have had greater capacity/more energy for managing stress and complexity in the long term, and I probably would have been less overwhelmed.
I am so obsessed with this story, I cannot get enough of it in these newsletters. I’m fascinated and so grateful for you sharing the reality of your life with us. No one else says it like this. No one else executes the truth of it quite like you do (nor takes as much accountability). Life and business are so difficult to navigate and I see so much of my own corporate journey in you (despite mine being on an infinitesimally smaller scale) and learning this from your perspective feels like drinking water after crossing a huge desert. Just stunned. Thank you for sharing with us! I hope it continues. I’m grateful to be here.
Emily! Thank you so much for such a kind comment. Wow -- I deeply appreciate this feedback. Glad you're here.
As a person who turned my freelancing into a company that exploded (in relative terms) at the height of the pandemic (when I couldn't talk about it, while other people were losing their jobs and livelihoods), I read Part 2 with amazement. Amazement that you could crawl into my head and put into words precisely what I was thinking about all that explosive growth but could not say without sounding "ungrateful".
You've also articulated my own thoughts about entrepreneurship and those selling The Dream of startup culture and Being Your Own Boss. I find so much of the entrepreneur coaching language giving me MLM vibes, like AMWAY. (20 years ago, my brother and his family were caught up in this and I was attemping intervention to save my nieces and nephew from their parents who were slavish to their "uplines". Those uplines were showing off their mortgaged-to-their-eyeballs mansions and on-the-verge-of-repossession fancy cars as a way to motivate their downlines and sell The Dream of limitless wealth.) It's been two decades and I'm still creeped out by it.
My mental health has really suffered in the past 3 years since my business took off, at times red-lining. Meanwhile, the pandemic made things feel so much worse; it was very isolating socially and professionally. My stress levels were through the roof. I haven't smoked since the '90s, but suddenly I wanted to. My mental health has only very recently been improving due to a successful hire in March (after 6 terrible ones across a year and a quarter, which was making me utterly depressed and consumed my morale). I was an island of stress.
I can relate to so much of what you've said in Part 2, I can't wait for Part 3. This is a rollercoaster that feels all-too-familiar and I'm ready for the turn.
oof... I really hear you, Gail. Thanks for your kind words and for sharing this piece of your story, and I'm both happy and sorry so much of it resonated. Finding the right employees can be way more challenging than it appears--and having the wrong people is harder than not having them. I'm sending you ease and grace and continued stress relief vibes!
So much yes to the MLM vibes of coaches coaching coaches coaching coaches........ repeating endlessly!
Great writing and storytelling, Emily. I knew the rough details of your growth and the buyback ( as an outlining stationery person, you here this on the down low) but while I knew you had growing pains, I didn't quite realize how fast and how large the growth was. I'd see your work everywhere and often wonder how you were protecting your creativity (because it's a thing! And so many of us have learned this the hard way!) Your words are wise, thanks so much for sharing your story.
Monica! I'm so happy to see you here! Um... turns out I was not protecting my creativity. Ha ha. Thanks so much for your support and your kind words.
I was busy with my business and in the 'sweet spot' you describe here. I was being encouraged to lease the larger office down the hall, expand and hire more people, etc. (I ran a communications/strategic consulting business.) I say encouraged, but it felt more like being 'pushed'. As if not expanding was heresy.
I was happy with where I was. Starting and running a business for me was already a huge thing. It was all new. I met with a colleague who had done (with a partner) what I was being encouraged to do. To this day, I am grateful to him. He told me essentially what you describe. More people, more issues, you do more Human Resources than anything else. You become a manager and not a 'doer' of the thing that your really good at. He said they were successful, yes, but he didn't sound very happy. Anyhow, I decided, I loved working with the clients and doing the writing and didn't want to just manage people. In the end, I was so thankful I stayed the course. Shortly afterwards, the 2008 financial crisis hit. The other companies around me that had expanded or had all their revenue in one basket went under. Overnight. As for my colleague, their partnership disbanded soon afterwards and he took his own advice and went back on his own. Smaller, but with a life. And likely more of a profit. Looking forward to Part 3.
Kim, thanks so much for sharing this -- and sorry for my slow reply here, I'm still figuring out notifications. :) Good on you, and good on your colleague! I'm also aware that had I gotten that advice, I'm not sure I would have listened-- in fact I think I probably wouldn't have. At the time, I didn't have the clarity to understand how important it could be to resist (or even that resistance was an option!) Apparently we all learn what we need to learn when we need to learn it...
‘Smaller, but with a life.’ I remember dropping out of a high paid job and moving into a lower paid job that paid the bills but allowed me to walk out the door each day and leave the job behind. Refinding my life was Gold. Absolutely recommended. We’re all humans, not machines. Finding your own personal priority (and keeping it prioritised) is the best thing you can do for yourself. (Hugs to all. 🤗🤗)
I really like "we're all humans, not machines." That needs to go on a sticky note and posted on the fridge!
Oh the “sleepover party with money” vibes were SO strong then! Truly appreciate you sharing all of this.
Thank you, Liss!
Just noting my favourite paragraph:
‘When I say it takes time to metabolize success, this is what I mean. As a leader, slower growth allows your nervous system time and space to get accustomed to each new stage before piling on more. A bigger operation requires greater skill and capacity that can’t be developed overnight, no matter how smart you are. Slow growth (or, gasp, not growing!) allows for your OWN inner growth, for experimentation, for taking the time to repair mistakes or harm before being swept along to the next thing.’
Thanks so much. A terrific read (once I finally found enough time to sit and do it justice)
Thanks so much, Beth!
As an entrepreneur the constant messaging that unless you are growing and scaling indefinitely is so toxic. I've found myself on that roller coaster and it's dizzying. It's very powerful to hear this message from someone that has been there. From the sidelines it looks like you've made it to what every entrepreneur should aim for. People don't like to talk about the darker side of all of it. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you Maria! I really appreciate this. Back then, all my professional advisors told me never to be public about the fact that I was drowning, but I knew what it looked like from the sidelines--and in not sharing the whole story, I always felt like I was lying by omission and contributing to some really toxic misconceptions about success. Arg!
I would be so interested to hear about more instances of this – the times you were advised to do or not do certain things in order to maintain the facade – and how you'd address them, knowing what you know. I've been fascinated by this story and how you've spelled it all out!!! And part of me wonders what Emily NOW would have said in those instances, then. Like, what would today's Emily say to the GMA stylist? What would today's Emily say to UO when they gave you two weeks to fulfill that order? What would you say back to the people who kept insisting they were "good problems to have" and what would you have done (although you did pretty much answer this one, already). I'm just so curious: like if allllllll of this happened all over again (FFS, God forbid / I know it wouldn't but just pretend, IF it did), how would you/your business respond? And what do you think it would've looked like had you dealt with everything in ways that were healthy and sustainable for you? Would you have "topped out" at 5- or 10-ish employees? Just focused on wholesale? Done one speaking engagement/month, etc? Does this question stress you out? lol. Sorry. Obviously you can completely ignore this comment of mine all together. I'm just in awe of all you went through and fascinated by all you've learned and shared! It's like you've evolved so much through it all, that you can almost now speak to two different lives lived. It's truly incredible and admirable. Thank you for sharing them both with us. <3
Hi Sarah! Thanks for all these questions. I may address some of them in future posts. It’s a balance because I write for a general audience here--only a tiny percentage of my readers own small businesses-- so I want to be mindful of not getting too into the weeds with my newsletter. (I’ll also be offering individual guidance as part of my job when my noncompete is up in the spring.)
It’s hard for me to answer a lot of this, for two reasons: 1, the current me wouldn’t start a brand at all -- I’m a super different person than I was in 2011, and I want and value different things. I do think choosing to stay smaller would have been more sustainable for me... and at the same time, I also feel very complete with writing and illustrating cards after 11 years, and I think I would have ended up here no matter what. I also don’t look back with regret on any of my choices.
2. I can’t really issue blanket statements on what’s “right” or “wrong” for a business in a way that can be applied by others, because whether one’s choices are “good” or not depends so much on individual factors like what a founder’s strengths are, the kind of life they want, how flexible their nervous system is, how much support they have, whether they are willing to undergo a temporary sprint to help fund their business in return... for example, was 15 employees too many for me? Yes. Is it too many for everyone? No. :)
I have been hanging on every word - so grateful for this look at the "inside" of these business successes. I will not go into my story because no need, but I have been an entrepreneur for a long lifetime - good, bad, and ugly, up, down and WTF? Many times I have faced the decision to expand in big ways, and I said NO. Everyone thought I was crazy, and I got a lot of pushing and criticism for not wanting to work with distributors between me and my wholesalers, not wanting to go on TV at a time when TV craft shows were a proven path to growth of your creative produxct, not wanting to release an incredibly creative product to the masses to be stolen and copied by Target. Well, I never got rich, but I made it through with my health and my sanity, and I don't think it would have been a better success to have given that up for money. I thank you for making me feel like maybe I made the right decisions for me. Please keep writing about your experiences. You are not boring anybody with these stories - I guarantee you.
Thank you so much, Jessica! I still feel like one of the best things I ever did (for my health and sanity) was to say no when Shark Tank called. Applauding you for the conviction, courage, and self-awareness it took to say no to all these opportunities. <3
Thank god you did. It probably saved your life!
I have none of this type of business experience, but I love your storytelling! I And your story. You are so good! I can't wait for Part 3. Thank you!
Thank you Sherry. This means a lot to hear -- when I sat down to write these, one of my goals was to try and make the storytelling good enough that people who don't own businesses would be entertained and interested!
I enjoy the "real" in how you share your experiences. So many things I hear, see, and read are manufactured-and I don't have the desire or bandwidth to even care why. I find you interesting, validating, and time saving. One question: When you wrote about your absence of boundaries at the outset of your growing business, if you had established boundaries and maintained them, how would that have changed your course? I ask because I'm giving a lot of thought to my own boundaries, and lack thereof.
Good question! My lack of boundaries in the beginning looked like (to name a few) putting the business first no matter what, allowing it to consume all my time, energy, and attention; saying yes to basically all requests and demands from customers and social media followers; not setting clear expectations of my employees; keeping people on staff who were negatively impacting the rest of the team because I didn't want to be disliked... I could go on. :-/
Ultimately, I didn't exercise discernment in what I cared about-- I cared about everything, which as a business owner, is not sustainable. I can't say how things would have been different for the course of my business if I'd had and kept stronger boundaries--it's hard to know that-- but I ultimately think I would have had greater capacity/more energy for managing stress and complexity in the long term, and I probably would have been less overwhelmed.
Thank you Emily :)