When Your Handmade Business Fails

In this blog post I want to get real. If you read my past few posts you know I’ve made a major shift in the last year from business owner to full-time employee and that I was unhappy and felt held back by my business, Pressbound. But there is something I haven’t shared yet. So here it goes.

In 2014, my letterpress stationery business failed. Miserably. And I was stubbornly in denial about my business failure until recently. Because I was not willing to see the truth.

There are a lot of reasons why my business failed. Enough reasons I can write an entirely different blog post so I’ll save that for another time. The abbreviated version is that my business wasn’t profitable and there was no choice. I could no longer ignore that I needed to take action in order to pay the bills. There were only two choices I could make: move on or make major shifts within in my business. I chose to go back to work full-time. It was an opportunity that the universe handed to me on a silver platter, so I took it. But even still, I was not looking at my business as a failure when I went back into full-time employment.

Failure by definition (or the one on Wikipedia) “is the sate or condition of not meeting desirable or intended objectives, and may be viewed as the opposite of success.” Therefor, failure is not something we like to talk about publicly or even admit to ourselves. Nobody wants to look or feel anything less than successful. Certainly not for the world to see. Definitely not in a business in which you are selling creative work made entirely by yourself.  It’s very personal especially if you can't separate your identity from your business/work. There are feelings of shame and rejection not felt on such high levels since middle school.

Last year my identity was still so entwined with Pressbound I could not see that my business failure didn’t mean I was a failure as a human being too. So I chose not to see it as a failure. I told myself and others that I was shifting gears, in my brother’s wedding, getting married myself, figuring things out. All excuses to avoid the truth: my business was a failure and I did not want to save it. 

I can’t say when my mindset shifted entirely. Or the process of how I got here. But something Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in her new book, Big Magic, gives things context:

“What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, I realized, just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time that you spend working on the project, and what that time does to the expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life."

My business, my project of 5 years, failed, but I did not. My life was forever transformed in so many positive ways during that time, which I would never give back. Here are just a few of them:

1. I created something. Not just a business but a ton of work. An entire line of cohesive stationery products that many people enjoyed. A website (several times). Promotional products (endlessly). Custom work (when I could). A trade show booth. A craft fair display. I filled an entire studio to the brim with stuff I made.
2. I 100% committed to something and gave it all I had for nearly 5 years of my life. But when I was ready to move on I did not let the feeling that I wasted time, money, or effort overcome my decision making. 
3. I learned and grew more than I could ever imagine both professionally and personally at a rapid pace. Then I applied what I learned in my full-time job, in teaching at Emerson, here on this website, in my relationships with friends and loved ones, even in my wedding planning! It spilled over into everything. I am a much stronger, grounded and  practical person than I was when I started. And believe me I used to be hugely impractical. 
4. I appreciate things more. Money. Time. Family. Friends. These are all things I did not have enough of in my life when I was running my business. I also appreciate the hard work and dedication of other artists and makers like never before. Because I’ve been with you in the trenches. The life of an artist is not glamorous.

So, if you're struggling with the idea of failure because your business (or project) didn’t succeed or didn't live up to your expectations, let go of the sacred and think about how you grew and what you learned during that time. I’m certain that you'll find it was transformative for the better. And that's not a failure in my book.

My Career Do-Over: From business owner to employee

In the last year things turned out very differently than I imagined. By now, I should be running a sustainable letterpress stationery business. My studio should be in a bigger space. There should be a small staff to help with printing, packaging, shipping, and even selling. My work should be wholesaling in an impressive list of national retailers. I should be selling a line of invitations featured in blogs and magazines. I should… I should… I should. There were a lot of shoulds.

Instead, I’m working a full-time job with these aspirations happily left in the dust.

It took me a long time to accept that none of the above dreams were going to come true because they really weren’t what I wanted anymore. For nearly two years I fought against what my intuition was telling me. A feeling deep inside that my letterpress stationery business wasn’t in line with my values. I refused to see that instead of creating a calling I created a job for myself within a business. A job with long hours, little pay, and was not sustainable long term. But I was stubborn and didn’t want to be seen as a quitter.

In October of 2014, a friend contacted me about taking on an in-house freelance job. I initially said no. It was the beginning of the busy holiday season with many craft show commitments, workshops to teach, products to produce and ship, and two design courses to teach at Emerson through early December. But my intuition told me I was making a mistake. So on a whim, I emailed my friend that I changed my mind and thus began the next chapter of my journey.

Although I was only freelancing part-time at first, the relief from running my business full-time was almost immediate. Sure, I missed a number of things: setting my own schedule, the short commute, and the sense of pride that I was creating my own thing. But the freedom of responsibility from making money from my work was overwhelming. I stopped dwelling on the things I should do to make my business sustainable all the time, everyday, and usually in my sleep. I finally felt clear headed enough to face the question I’d been avoiding: whether this struggle was worth fighting for anymore. 

My freelance position bought me time to reflect for couple of months while still having my foot in both the worlds of business owner and contract employment. I am incredibly grateful for such an opportunity. It helped me realize that there were a lot of creative projects and exploring I needed to do beyond my business. I got really excited to start writing again, spend time practicing hand lettering and sketching, and read everyday during my commute. It started to feel like my business was holding me back from being my whole self and using my time intentionally.     

So in March of 2015 I accepted a full-time offer as a senior graphic designer from my freelance employer with no regrets. I moved on from being a full-time business owner, yet I don’t see myself as quitting. Pressbound and letterpress are still a part of my life, I kept my studio and still printing. But instead of it being all consuming, letterpress is now just one small part of the whole. I am living a much fuller life than I did a year ago and that’s what matters most.

Do you have a similar story? Have you run your own business and decided to go back to full-time employment? You are not alone! And I’d love to hear from you!   

Where is the Pressbound website and what am I doing here?

Where is the Pressbound website?

For now, I've taken the Pressbound website off-line. The future of my former full-time business is up in the air since I'm working an in-house design job and my time is limited. Although I'm not selling my letterpress equipment or giving up my studio. In fact, I'm still occasionally printing—most recently the thank you's for my wedding. I still love letterpress just as much as I used to but I'm also interested in exploring new mediums and forms of expressing my creativity. I don't want to feel held back by specifically running a letterpress business, even part-time.

So for now, Pressbound is a very part-time side project. The Etsy shop is still active and most inventory is available at 50% off until it's sold out. Since I was overzealous with my quantities there is still quite a bit of inventory hanging around. I make time every Saturday (or Sunday if something comes up) to ship out orders. So please spread the word: Letterpress at 50% off!

What am I doing here?

I'm not ready yet to write a manifesto. But this blog is a long time coming. I overthought what I wanted it to be or even be named. I wrote plenty of potential posts in my notebook but never shared any of it because I didn't have time to develop a new site. I hesitated even putting up a site, being a designer, because there isn't a branded look yet. But now that I'm back from a 2 week honeymoon in the Caribbean, I'm content to let this site develop fluidly, over time. Because sharing my work and story is something I must do.

The blog on this site (my former portfolio site, revamped using Squarespace) is a result of the shift in my life from business owner to employee; from doing what I thought I should do to what I must; from ignoring my intuition to living from my values. A huge part of me wishes I found the time and courage to share the earlier stages of this journey. But I recently heard this great quote from Brene Brown on the Being Boss podcast:

“I don’t share anything until my healing and growth is no longer dependent on the reaction to it.”

— Brené Brown on #beingbosspodcast

Over the last year I've done a lot of healing and growing. But maybe I wasn't quite ready to share until now.

I'm not making any promises about what this blog will or won't become. It's certainly a work in progress. But I want it to be a place to reflect on how I got to where I am now as well as a place to explore where I'm headed next. My only definitive plan is to show up. I value sharing and want to inspire others to have courage to do what they must and not what they feel like they should. I'm starting with showing up here to share once a week, each Wednesday, with a new post. And I really hope you'll join me on the journey ahead!