Pretend You’re Good At Small Business

10 years later, guest writer Sara responds to her own advice for starting a business.

and

Oct 18, 2023

Hi, it’s me.

In last week’s newsletter I asked — What is the parenting conversation you want to have? Many of you responded and surfaced topics I hadn’t considered. Thanks to everyone who commented so far, including parents of adults and some of you with no kids. If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to please check it out and add to the conversation.

Sarah Ruth

had this to say:

This is a great question because I’ve always felt strongly about maintaining my sense of self through marriage and parenting. I will likely write about this in the coming weeks.

I love that

Julie Hester

chimed in, because her kids are grown, and she brings up some excellent topics I hadn’t thought of:

Shannon Mead

touched on something I struggle with, and I know my mom struggled with this when I was acting a fool as a teen, too:

Thanks to everyone who has commented so far as I fill out some of the blank spaces in my book outline. It’s not too late to:

Read & Comment on Last Week's Post

Today’s Guest Writer

In 2019 I had the best time working in my friend Sara’s card shop, covering some weekend shifts when she needed help. It was the highlight of my week, honestly — a change of scenery from my daily desk job as a communications manager.

Ages ago I ran a small animation studio, writing and producing animated videos that explained big ideas and products. When I struggled with my identity as a Very Important Person who Did Business Things, Sara’s approach to business reminded me to be myself, and my mental health was better for it.

After seven years, I shut down my studio in 2017 because it was no longer working for me. It was confusing to feel a cocktail of emotions: a sense of accomplishment for what I’d done, relief that it was over, and like a failure that I couldn’t keep it going. Sara can relate. And maybe you can too? I’ll see you later in the comments.

Pretend You’re Good At Small Business

by Sara McNally

Ten years ago, I gave a five minute talk at an Ignite Seattle1 event. Jen Zug and her husband, Bryan, were the reason I found myself on that stage, hyperventilating a little in front of quite a lot of people. In the decade since, Jen has witnessed many of the twists and turns of my life and business. She asked me to guest post for her Substack (thanks for the honor, pal!), and requested that I revisit that Ignite talk. Only for you, Jen. Only for you.

I spent the day leading up to my talk in a full anxiety spiral. At the time I was packing an undiagnosed and untreated panic disorder. My memories of this day are soaked in a cold sweat and marinated in dread. Watching it back, I’d like to slap the uhms out of that skinny bitch’s mouth and slap the bangs off her forehead. I’ve obviously come a long way with my self-love and positive self-talk. (We can’t learn it all in a decade, I suppose.)

When you’re giving a presentation in front of hundreds of people, it’s important to position yourself as an expert so that they’ll listen to you. In 2013, I did this by telling everyone that: “I got out of school at 23 and didn’t get a job.” I followed it up with the absolute hubris of stating: “Instead of being unemployed, I decided to be an entrepreneur.” This is solid gold wisdom in 2023 given the fact that every dude has a podcast about crypto and calls himself a CEO on his dating profile. I was a trailblazer.

Sara McNally, Subject Matter Expert (2013).

I was so ready today to write a full rebuttal of every cringey thing that Jess from New Girl impersonator thought and believed and advocated for. There are certainly a few of those rebuttals to be made. But when I break the talk into its main points, it’s annoyingly still true.

Start with what you can handle.

Over the years I’ve talked to so many people who want to start a business. In 2013, I was about 4 years into the process, and I had learned a lot through Google searches and failure and finding people to ask for niche advice. I was eager to be that person for others. However, it felt like people just wanted to pole vault past the slow, annoying part of starting a business. It sucks to not know anything. It burns to order from the wrong supplier, trust the wrong guru, hire someone you don’t work well with, and misspell a word on something you meticulously hand print hundreds of times. But being a dumb ass is an integral part of being a new entrepreneur. You can’t fast forward through it.

Over the years, “start with what you can handle” became: “you can’t do everything, and that's okay.” There will be lots of things you can’t handle and shouldn’t do. You shouldn’t spend more money than you have. (I was never any good at this.) You shouldn’t say yes when you’re not ready. You shouldn’t buy a printing press just because it’s available for purchase. You shouldn’t collaborate with someone who gives you the ick. You should take sick days. Lots of them. You need to take time off when your kids are born. You shouldn’t make things other people want to buy if you’re not into them.

There may come a time when your business becomes something that you as a person can no longer handle. Your business will change and grow. Your circumstances will shift. Your desires and expectations will change. Your finances will ebb and flow. A global pandemic may show up and smash normal into smithereens. What you can and can’t handle will not stay the same.

Find a unique place in the world.

The better you do this, the more yourself you will be. The more yourself you are, the more layers of your personality and trauma and hopes and fears and dreams will emerge. The people who responded well to you when you started out may not like this deeper you. This will feel bad. Keep moving forward. You will embark on side quests that not everyone will join you on. Keep questing. Some people will cheer for you whether you’re designing wedding invites or printing cards about mental health or writing a book about snail mail or shipping a subscription box from your basement or doing their makeup. Hang onto those people. Don’t let them go.

Expect change and be flexible to live through it.

This is wise, but we’re all terrible at this and we probably always will be. We never see it coming. We’re always shell shocked and gobsmacked and pissed off and learning radical acceptance. This is a lifelong quest. Give yourself so much grace on this one. Seriously. Stop beating yourself up.

Ask yourself: Why am I doing this?

This advice is a blessing and a curse. The answer to this question will change over time. Some days, the answer will be: “I don’t fucking know, bro.” On these days you will go look at a lighthouse and feel sad or crawl back into bed and watch reality television. This is an integral part of the creative process.

In 2013, one of my answers was: “I love the people I get to do life with.” Hearing this again made me cringe so hard, I may still be cringing in 2033. The 26 year old who said this was deeply embedded in a problematic church culture. She was trying really hard to prove that she deserved to exist on this planet. She was steeped in shame and terrified of being left alone with her thoughts. She worked too much and thought she’d want to hustle like that forever.

My business was a great way to collect people to prove I’d never be alone. I collected employees, collaborators, vendors, mentors, industry peers, customers, fans, social media followers, penpals, enemies… Gotta catch ‘em all. It was a lot to juggle, and I always fell short. When I look back on the time I gave this talk, I see folks I had falling outs with and people I don’t talk to anymore, people I fired and people I miss every day. At a regular job, your co-workers will change over time, and that’s both normal and expected. As a boss, my goal was to have a lifelong bond with everyone I worked with. This was an abject failure because no one can live up to that expectation. I wish I could save past me the heartaches it took to learn this lesson.

I've spent a lot of time in therapy since then. (8 years!) And while I’m grateful for every person I’ve met along the way, I’m at peace with the knowledge that my life works best when I invest the bulk of my time and energy in just a few. There is a Sara-shaped hole in my home and family when I’m not there. My husband and my son and my intimate friends deserve the fullness of my attention and time. I love spending my life with those people. I’m enough for them. And they’re enough for me. And my job has nothing to do with it. For me, that’s massive growth.

Like I ended my talk in 2013, I do hope that you’ll start your own business.

It’s the ride of a lifetime and a hell of a good way to learn about yourself and the world. But 2023 Sara also hopes you’ll remember that your small business isn’t a life sentence. It doesn’t have to outlive you to have been a meaningful and worthy endeavor.

My business, Constellation & Co., was founded in 2009 and closed in 2022. Since the closure, I have grieved and been ashamed of my perceived failure. For the record, I know that thoughtfully closing my business after 13 years because it no longer served me is not a failure. But damn, that doesn’t always feel true.

Part of that struggle is due to the fact that I got really sick and lost my uterus by force in 2022. Or maybe it’s because I recently quit my rebound job after 8 months and did a whole lot of asking myself, “No seriously, why am I doing this?” But whatever the cause, I’m still figuring out what I can handle, enjoying my unique place in the world, learning to be flexible, and taking time for introspection. And I’m sure I’ll still be doing so in another ten years.

If you’d like to hear my new 5 minute presentation—How the Pandemic Made Me a Small Business Quitter (and why it was a good idea)—let me know.

Pretend You're Good At It

Discussion about this post