June 30, 2010 was the last day I was gainfully employed full-time.
July 1, 2010 marked day one of me doubling-down on whether I could sustain my growing freelance design side-hustle as a full-time business and work from home to have more creative freedom (and more freedom in general). I wanted to be more accessible to my children, who were at the time 11 and almost 15. I was walking away from the coveted title of Art Director at a weekly publication, and a very decent salary for someone in their 20s (my children are adopted if you’re trying to do the math; and when you start out with half-grown kids, you have even less time with them and they just literally grow up overnight 😭😭😭).
Anyone who’s ever started a business or gone out on their own knows the special brand of fear that only we have felt. And let me tell you, there is not a special measure to let you know you’ve “made it” or a guarantee that everything is going to be OK… ever. Even though the yardstick keeps moving, ten years feels like a huge milestone worth acknowledging.
It’s very satisfying to know I’ve garnered up every penny of my salary, ALL the taxes I pay, and my savings out of thin air for ten whole years, without any magical matching dollars or the security that comes with knowing a certain sum will be direct-deposited into my bank account every two weeks. When you’re self-employed, no one tells you when you’re due for a raise or a bonus (ha!), you just keep your head down, work hard, and keep showing up every day.
It feels like I’ve worked at least a tiny bit through just about every vacation – taking calls from the printer while standing on Alcatraz island, sending emails from the beach, and sneaking out of our hotel room to get a signal at Big Bend National Park just to check in and make sure everything is OK. I’ve even sent orders to print from a moving vehicle using my laptop and my phone’s hotspot (something that wouldn’t even have been possible for me ten years ago). As business owners know: you can never 100% “turn it off,” walk away, or “leave it at the office.” I’ve worked hard to put boundaries in place that work for me, and over ten years I’ve fully transitioned to B2B-only business (which makes boundaries a lot easier).
It takes a special kind of person to own a business, and that’s why we love working with other business owners and independent businesses. We get you. You’re our people.
I’m eternally grateful to EVERYONE who has thrown business our way over the last decade, from the very beginning, all the way to our current clients, both large and small, and every wild and creative project in between.