Still in Philadelphia, we left Teresa in Fishtown hopped downtown to meet up with Jackie Gusic an architect who of course had worked magic on her own Philadelphia townhouse. We enjoyed our conversation on her awesome roof deck. Here are a few things we left thinking about:

Amy – I liked how Jackie said that saying no to a particular project was liberating and empowering. It allowed her to focus on the types of clients she wanted to work with in the long run.

Adelaide – I thought it was quite strategic that Jackie has arranged to consult to another business on commercial work in order to get some additional benefits (for example challenge, collaboration) while avoiding the common commercial downsides (for example the work can be more limited and less creative).

Thanks, Jackie!

-Adelaide & Amy

On our second trip to Philadelphia we were delighted to meet with the amazing ceramicist Teresa Chang in her lovely studio in Fishtown. We were wowed by her experience and her insights. She has clearly learned a lot through all her years in business. Here are just two things that we picked up:

Amy – I was really struck by Teresa’s philosophy of approaching her business just like she approaches her life. She treats customers the same way as she treats friends and looks for ways to infuse her value system with her business practices.

Adelaide – I was so impressed that she has been able to morph her business several times throughout the years to meet her needs. She has played with several business models and subsequently been able to adjust her hours and income and benefits with surprising results.

Thanks, Teresa!

-Adelaide & Amy

A few weeks ago The New Yorker magazine had an article on Agatha Christie. It took an in-depth look at her life and career and her relationship to her work. She was a writer with a prolific reputation who had penned more than 50 novels AND whose work helped to define and shape an entire genre of writing. I was surprised to learn however that she was not always content with her work. It seems that as her life evolved and changed she was, at times, quite disenchanted with her writing and dissatisfied with many of the novels she produced. Yet she continued to churn out mystery novel after mystery novel. This didn’t reflect the tenor of the rest of her life…she was married to an archaeologist and spent much of her time traveling the world, going on digs, and helping to restore the treasures they found. Not only did it bother me that she continued producing work she didn’t enjoy but this work/life incongruence bothered me as well… It seems that she got stuck in a certain role, with a certain reputation and was limited by her readers’ and publishers’ expectations.

Yet this story didn’t seem new as much as it served as an excellent example of what can happen when we forget that our businesses are best seen as living organisms rather than puzzles to be put on auto-pilot as soon as a winning formula is discovered. What bothers me most is the wasted opportunity. She had fame, notoriety, skill, and creativity yet she continued to do the same thing over and over rather than adapt, evolve, or change her business to suit her changing life and needs. There’s nothing wrong with replication or doing something over and over in so far that you love it, find it challenging, stimulation, intriguing…anything…just not boring.

As entrepreneurs we work hard to build our businesses so that we have the freedom to chart our own course and to keep them interesting in the ways we see fit. Agatha’s story can serve as a great reminder for us all about seizing the opportunity to build something that can grow with us and evolve to meet our changing needs and interests.

 Posted by Adelaide Lancaster

Image courtesy of starbee.

We were delighted to speak with Jen Boulden about her experiences starting and running Ideal Bite and also about her work, speaking and consulting since the company’s sale. She had tons of amazing things to share with us. Here are a couple things that we were reflecting on at the end of the call:

 Amy – I was struck by how, in Jen’s experience, critical surveys and data have been to making decisions about new products or services. At the company, they had a minimum of 300 responses required to even begin to make sense of a trend or request or to take a new business initiative seriously.

Ad – I love how clear Jen was and is about her decisions on partnership. Before bringing on her partner, she made sure they had sufficient experience working together, that they were both fully committed, and that they had complementary skills.

Thanks, Jen!

-Adelaide & Amy

One of the women we interviewed for the book, Alice Cheng who is a clothing designer and owns a fabulous boutique in Brooklyn called A.Cheng, shared that she reads the Sunday Business Section of  The New York Times  each week. She felt she learned a lot from this habit and at the least suggested that others read a weekly feature called “Corner Office.”   Each week, there is an interview with a CEO and often the interviewer asks a lot about leadership habits, experience and lessons. Since interviewing Alice, I have now made a habit of reading this section weekly.

This past week, there was an interview with Lisa Price who is the Founder of Carol’s Daughter – a natural beauty product company based in Brooklyn. I was introduced to the company many years ago when I received a gift from a friend who thought I would like the products but also loved that my mom’s name was Carol – thus making me “Carol’s Daughter.”  In the interview, Lisa talks a lot about learning to take things in the business less personally. She speaks about how as a manager and leader of the company, this was a difficult, sometimes painful but extremely important skill to develop. When asked how she learned to take things less personally, she responded insightfully, “My biggest obstacle is myself — being afraid, being nervous. So it’s hard sometimes to get past yourself, to just get over yourself.” I was struck by that statement as I often find myself thinking about how often we get in our own way. This of course happens in our personal life as well as in our businesses. We create drama, unnecessary obstacles, make work when in reality, there is often an easier or certainly less challenging path. Of course there are forces outside of ourselves that impact any situation, but ultimately, how we respond to a situation is something we do have a lot of control over. 

Recently, I was speaking with a business owner who was complaining that she was exhausted, overworked and feeling like she was going to burn out but at the same time, she was listing countless reasons as to why she was the only person who could do the work. I asked her more about the nature of the work at hand and started to divide them into buckets (administrative, creative, new business development). After I pointed out how they could each be categorized, she started to see that the creative aspects of the business were really where she needed to add value (which was challenging when she was feeling burned out) but that the administrative aspects were something she could delegate and for the moment, she could put the new business development on hold as her plate was full. She started to see the light, and more importantly, realized that she could get out of her own way.

We have been in touch with Jennie Nevin ever since she started Green Spaces and have enjoyed watching her company grow over the last few years. She generously shared her reflections on her experience with us. Here are a few things that we ended the conversation thinking about:

Adelaide – I love that Jennie knows and reminded us how important it is not to make things overly-complicated or get in your own way when starting a business. Instead, take small steps and just keep moving forward.

Amy – I admire how Jennie realized that expanding too quickly before they had the bandwidth would take too much energy away from the existing business and could put the whole business at risk.

Thanks, Jennie!

-Adelaide & Amy

I’m generally known for my sense of urgency and quick reply emails. Preparing for my maternity leave and the related disconnection was a great exercise for me. It was challenging to anticipate all the ways that I wouldn’t be available, create new paths of communication in our business, and to resist wanting to be involved in every conversation.

Earlier this year, I resolved to have a “close down”, end-of-business time to my day.  A designated time when I would stop checking emails and switch into my home mode. I loved the freedom and space that this resolution created. My maternity leave has been a reminder in how valuable being disconnected can be.

Some of these disconnected circumstances I took proactive steps to create, while others occurred sort of serendipitously. For example, I had spent the month prior to my leave doing some common sense things (redirecting, auto-filing, unsubscribing, etc) to reduce my flow of emails. It is unbelievably liberating to open your email and find only those things you NEED to read. On the serendipitous side, I ended up dumping about 30 ounces of water on my BlackBerry the first day home from the hospital. The phone and text functions survived but my data and email functions were destroyed. At first I thought it was a disaster but after a few days of not being distracted by emails every time I checked the time or picked up a voice mail, I decided I wasn’t in any hurry to fix it.

Recently there was an article in Business Week about executives who choose not to have cell phones. These folks aren’t complete luddites, they have emails and many have Twitter accounts, but they don’t feel that being available via phone at anytime is an effective business practice. They don’t want to always be reachable. This and my recent experiences really have me thinking about all the ways that you can be creative about your connectivity.

How often do you advance to the next level of availability just because it is expected or newly popular? Do you need to be immediately available? Via how many channels? What systems and channels of communication really work for you? What helps you be most effective in your role?

To be sure, it shouldn’t be impossible to get a hold of you…that probably wouldn’t be good for business! But my point is that we actually have quite a lot of choices AND I’m sure that effective messaging around your communication preferences could make almost any scenario work.

I’d love to hear how you may have made choices about when and how to be connected or disconnected.

As for me, I reached a point where the no data thing was starting to be a pain in the rear and I broke down and replaced my phone yesterday. And, I was so pleased to find that my new phone has a very cool “dis-connection” feature! On the new Blackberry Bold there is a “bedside mode” where you can easily set preferences for being disconnected. For example, my LED indicator light turns off in this mode, the lights dim, only a clock is viewed, and I’ve selected to only receive notification about incoming phone calls – though you could turn this off as well. This is just one example of the recent abundance of apps, programs, and software that helps to manage our boundaries and level of availability…for all of us who find it hard to establish those boundaries on our own.

So, before we get back into the full swing of fall I encourage you to take some time to evaluate your connectivity and availability. Does it work for you? Is there anything you’d like to limit or change? It is certainly your prerogative and the benefits may be greater than you’d imagine.

Image courtesy of lolasroom.

It was our pleasure to speak with Sara Horowitz the pioneer and creator of Freelancers Union. We are long-time admirers of her work and the organization that she has created. Here are a few things that we left the conversation thinking about:

Amy – I admire how it has been so incredibly important to Sara to build a culture where people are not afraid to fail. From her perspective, this kind of culture encourages people to be creative and experiment, rather than hold onto ideas that do not work.

Adelaide – I was intrigued that the role that Sara has created for herself allows her to emphasize her strengths as a good prioritizer. Her role enables her to chart the course for the organization and also to be intellectually free and creative as she is heavily involved in figuring out the next big challenging, solving the puzzle, and finding a solution.

Thanks, Sara!

-Adelaide & Amy

This song should be a no-brainer for those of you who came of age in the 80’s and watched the popular (what would now be described as a “tween”) show, “The Facts of Life”. I spent countless hours with my sister watching Blair, Jo, Tootie, Natalie and Ms. Garrett weather the life of a private school family. I cannot really remember any of the lessons learned from the show but the song stuck (sorry if you can’t get it out of your head after reading this) and I guess by extension the song’s message stuck too.

And today this song popped into my head as I replayed yesterday’s events in my head where I made a business decision that I am not entirely comfortable with in part because I am not sure it was the right decision. Nonetheless, it was a decision that I am going to stand by. The short version: I run a weekly market for artists and designers in Brooklyn called Artists & Fleas  where 50 vendors a day come to sell their creations and collections. We have numerous designers who set up shop and sell every weekend and often cultivate a strong following. We aim to have a diverse selection of artists and designers and the application and screening process for new vendors enables us to do so. A marketplace is the ultimate place to test merchandise and get customer response.

The decision I made was to not permit a new vendor who came to sell last weekend and wanted to continue selling because this artist’s collection had a very close resemblance to a vendor who has been selling each weekend for over a year (it was this “veteran” vendor who brought the situation to my attention). I looked at both sides of the story: the new vendor felt that they had a right to sell and that customers could decide for themselves, the vendor who has been selling consistently felt their sales would (continue) to be impacted as it was difficult to distinguish between the different designs and customers would not purchase from either vendor as the uniqueness of the creations were diminished. I decided to support the vendor who had invested in the market to reciprocate our loyalty and support their business. But the discomfort I have persists. A key goal of our business is to support artists and designers and I recognize that I am compromising this goal. I am not sure if it is the right decision and I welcome some perspective. I also know your can’t meet everyones needs and that… Is a fact of life.

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Calling all almost-there businesses and laborers of love:

In honor of DailyCandy’s 10^th Anniversary, they are launching the Start Small, Go Big Contest to find the next big thing in fashion, food and fun.

Want to take your fledgling enterprise to the next level? Enter Daily Candy’s Start Small, Go Big Contest by September 6.

One winner from each of the signature categories (fashion, food, and fun) will win a $10,000 trip to New York City, a write-up by DailyCandy editors, and a day at DailyCandy Academy, where you’ll mingle and brainstorm with the now-iconic entrepreneurs we knew way back when.

For more information, please visit http://www.dailycandy.com/startsmallgobig/contest.html.

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