The Realities of Running My Own Business

Before I started the business, I surveyed all my closest friends to ask their thoughts on all different aspects of the business like the packaging and pricing. I then promptly totally ignored the responses because I knew what I wanted to achieve and the gap in the market I was trying to address better than anyone else. But that meant in the process, I wasted all their time. It made me rethink how and why I ask for advice. If I already know the answer I want to get, then it is disrespectful to the person I am asking to waste their time. I can be incredibly strong minded which makes me a difficult person to give advice to (in my father’s speech at my wedding he talked about his admiration for Harry surviving the trial that advising me can be!). I am working on this so I now go through two checkpoints: (1) take a step back before I ask for advice to check if I actually want it, and then (2) be receptive and listen regardless if I don’t want to hear it.

When I started the business, I had this vision for where I would be in 3 years’ time – I expected it would be a few tough hand-to-mouth years as I kicked off and then everything would be plain sailing. By now I should be just spending all my time making things purely for fun whilst the business is self-sufficient right? For those who have been running their own businesses, you’ll smirk at the naivety. The longer I am in it, the more I realise that is the goal of a self-sufficient business is an enigma, particularly when you are passionate about what you do. Its more realistic that I’ll be pushing, taking risks and feeling a bit exposed for the next decade. Products take time to develop, brand loyalty takes time to build, and in the meantime the continuing investment in the business to move to new premises, launch new ranges, add to the team, means that there hasn’t been a day so far, I had felt like we are plain sailing. I am trying to lose unrealistic expectations on myself, and believe the unless you want to throw a lot of money at the business, then patience is key!

I studied chemistry, I trained as an accountant, I worked in finance for years, I am good with numbers, I thought I understood the mantra cash is king. I didn’t until it was my cash. In these early years of the business, who cares what your profit margin is or how high your sales are, if you have no cash. I have a million and one ideas of ranges I would like to do, products I would like to launch, events I would like to run, but as a self-funded business I cannot do them all. I have to choose which to do, and the moment that starts selling, I reinvest everything into developing the next idea. It’s frustrating to have ideas which, in my gut, I know will be popular, but to not yet be able to pursue them. It’s frustrating to have to put everything back into the business when really, I just want to get a new pair of winter boots. Whilst of course it would be easier to have lots of cash, at least having a constraint forces you to think commercially and to not be wasteful. My hope is that this constraint actually forces me to build a better and more sustainable business, even if at times the stress pushes me to the brink.

For quite a long time, so much of my confidence in what I was doing and my designs was linked to how I was performing on Instagram. Whilst I was feeling great when social media went well, I experience such a lot of self-doubt when my posts didn’t do well. When I looked into it in more detail, more often than not I found that roughly the same proportion of people who viewed a post, reacted to it. For example, the difference between a post receiving 200 likes vs 2,000 likes was just that the first was seen by 2,000 people and the second by 20,000 people. So, in actual fact it doesn’t tell me what my audience really enjoy, it just tells me what Instagram think they will enjoy. Whilst Instagram always boosts pictures of my interiors, the pictures of my interiors have the poorest translation into hits on the website. You may like the interior but have no interest in stitching. Whilst my ego makes its tempting to just keep posting pictures of my sitting room and getting more and more of that dopamine hit, that doesn’t drive the business. So, I switch off the ego, don’t track likes and instead try talk to you all as much as possible to see what you like!

I am totally and utterly obsessed with The Fabled Thread – it is my first waking thought and last sigh before sleeping. Despite a few unique cases (Harry, my parents, sister...), no one cares in the same I do. And why should they – it’s not their life. This has been a steep learning curve in two ways:

• When working with suppliers, I am thinking about the projects constantly and so I had expected certain things to be obvious to them in the same way as me, but not unreasonably, they don’t think about it all the time. So, I have now learnt to overcommunicate what I am expecting and not assume anything!
• When with friends I have to stop banging on about The Fabled Thread. Whilst I may be fascinated by every single tiny detail, most people don’t care about the intricacies of the EU IOSS rules or how you get tubes made or why wooden gingerbread moulds are the perfect inspiration for embroidery. It’s boring for many – I try to read the room. If I am the only one who appears to be enjoying the conversation, then change it! I don’t want to become a bore.

Whenever I meet another small business owner it doesn’t take long for the conversation to move to shipping. Who are you using, how are you doing it, where are sending to, how much is it costing you... Shipping is a minefield, can be so very expensive when you have lower volumes and intensely stressful when it goes wrong (that missing parcel with 10 hand painted frames in it still haunts me!). I was quite casual about it initially and ended getting really stung with huge “covid” surcharges because I hadn’t been checking. I was being charged upwards of £150 for some of my US parcels, it was madness! I wasted because I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t switch supplier early enough. Prepare to spend a lot of time on the phone and act fast if something isn’t working. We have been through pretty much every shipping company since launching the business and have now finally stabilised with a combination that works really well 99% of the time – that’s as good as we will ever get!

Things I do with The Fabled Thread frequently scare me. From smaller challenges like hiring a van to drive across London and start a trade fair, to larger challenges like investing thousands to develop virtual courses, taking on my first employee, to speaking in panel discussions, to designing for collaborations. Most things scare me to be honest, but also standing still and not moving the business forward scares me too. My biggest fear is this not succeeding or having to go back to my old work, so luckily that fear trumps everything else. Fear is a wonderful motivator!

My favourite aspect of what I do is the creative work – whether its mucking about trying different crafts, or designing new embroideries, painting frames, stitching, all of it. However, the reality over the last few years is that I spend 80% of my time working on the business and 20% working creatively. Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy the business side of things, but the balance isn’t ideal at the moment. However, it’s a journey, and next year my target is to be 50:50 – one of the aspects that makes that achievable is the launch of The Journal which means the time spent “mucking about” can now actually be transformed into something valuable – articles, videos, talks – my marketing. I have also gotten much more efficient about how I work and have a team that is able to take on everything that doesn’t require me. In the long run, my target is to go to 80:20 the opposite way, but I know that won’t be the case for a very long time, so finding a way to hit 50:50 is the goal and I will still enjoy every minute of that!

No matter how hard we try, there will always be certain customers that aren’t happy or just want to complain. I am absolutely passionate about our product and so, when it feels someone is being unreasonable, it’s hard not to take it personally. Often, they don’t realise the person they are emailing is the one who designed the piece, prepared the kit, wrote the note, packed the order... it’s a person not a business. Whilst it can be tempting to challenge them on assertions, my studio manager Georgina has the wonderful mantra of “kill them with kindness”. Whilst we are lucky to very rarely encounter these kinds of people, when we do now, I always recite that in my head and couldn’t be lovelier in response. It reminds the keyboard warriors out there that it is a person on the receiving end of their anger.