It's been a minute and as my executive coach Paru Radia reminded me just last week, LI can be an incredibly valuable tool for CEO's, so I'm trying to really post more. Between Fifty Six and The University of Chicago Booth School of Business things have been pretty crazy (to say the least) and I wanted to share a bit of reflection I've done over the past few months.
Very few classes have impacted my work over the past year quite like Waverly Deutsch's Building the New Venture. One of the options for our final exam during our summer semester was to "as an entrepreneur analyze a startup you have been personally involved with from the beginning" - well hello, I think I qualify. It was the first time in over 20 months I took the time to really assess not only how far Fifty Six has come BUT how far I've come on my entrepreneurial journey. To say I poured my soul into this final sounds about right, it's one of my pieces of writing I'm most proud about (like - ya know, ever) and I checked with Waverly to make sure it was okay if I share it here. So here goes. Read it, skim it, skip it - fair warning, it's really long - but most importantly take the time to reflect on yourself and how far you've come, I promise it's really cathartic. Buckle up…
In Building the New Venture as a class we have reviewed strategic tools and frameworks, a “How to Be an Entrepreneur” if you will. Hindsight being twenty-twenty I started my current venture - Fifty Six - relying on these same frameworks, albeit unknowingly at the time, and in my own head as fractured thoughts not nearly worthy of putting down on paper. Jumping right into it, in December 2020 with the future of the pandemic still rather unknown I started Fifty Six. Less than a year later I found myself owning an S-Corp, having a payroll all while starting my MBA at Chicago Booth, ending an engagement suddenly (but oh don’t worry she was just like a sister to him – insert eye roll), cancelling a wedding and moving to the dreaded Upper East Side after nearly a decade and a half having been in Chinatown, New York. Safe to say this time last year I was struggling to keep my head above water, let alone taking the time to reflect on the business I put my blood (true), sweat (also true), and tears (absolutely 1000% true) into. And if I wasn’t clear, there have been plenty of tears.
Taking after my father, I always knew I wanted to work for myself; I just never knew what my “thing” was. From 2009 – 2020 I climbed the corporate ladder, as one does, working my way up as a Buyer at a unicorn slash digital darling all the way to being the COO of a retail brand in New York City. Waverly’s note about one never works at a startup until you’ve been “fired” from a startup, or in my case, leaving due to differences, resonated with me. Here I was in December 2020 transitioning out of a job I loathed with no idea what came next. Let’s face it, if I had a business model framework or even a remote idea of an elevator pitch, I think things would have gone a bit easier, but what came next sort of just happened. I sat down and without knowing it at the time applied the bird-in-hand principle and thought about what I was good at; 1. eCommerce and Marketing Strategy – check. 2. More broadly, based on my experience I am great at scaling luxury retail brands from nothing to $10MM within two years – boom, now we were on to something. I quickly threw up a website positioning myself as some sort of eCommerce/Marketing Consultant/Advisor/Fractional C-Suite - lots of slashes – and we were off to the races. Before I knew it, I had worked my network and had my first real client[i], an optical brand that hired me to lead their brand creation, site build and overall go-to-market strategy based on my prior experience. Once client quickly grew into two, two quickly grew into four and I think at one point four grew into nine. By then not only did I start to lose track, but I knew I needed help. I hired my first employee in April of 2020. As good as I am as an operator, I needed someone who can keep us on track. In the agency world we call that a “Producer”, and I needed one, badly. Flash forward to 2022 and here I am taking Building the New Venture currently owning one that recently turned 18 months old - applying a weeks’ worth of content into my now over-1M-in-revenue-with-multiple-employees first born business.
I didn’t start Fifty Six with a mission, vision, elevator pitch or clear idea of who my customer or what my business model even was. In my head I knew I had a value prop and there was a client base out there. Having worked in the industry for ages I knew there was a gap in the market for a marketing-first agency specializing in early stage DTC brands, and since I had struggled to find one, why not just start one myself. Since then, with the help of my executive coach I have evolved and developed this;
Founded out of the necessity for a women-owned nimble agency that cares about your goals as much as you do, Fifty Six is “not your mother’s” agency. We’ve been there, and we know what brands want - a world where marketing is easy to understand, and growth is inevitable.
In hindsight not having a clear business model from the jump absolutely caused some hiccups along the way. Without formalizing it I had a rough outline of my value prop, developed my customers after I landed my first one and knew in my head, I was open to any-and-all revenue streams. I spent the first six months of Fifty Six working on saying yes to everything. Before you judge, yes, I have heard that there is a power in saying no, but I couldn’t afford it. I had clients I hated but kept the lights on and clients I loved that cost me profitability. Like Collin at Digital Innovations, in those early days I made quite a few decisions out of sheer desperation. I did not have a clear understand of my value prop and the market. Rather than pricing at willingness to pay by identifying our differences, I found cheaper labor (in the form of college students willing to trade profits for experience) and priced my offerings cheaper than my competitors. Looking back now one of my biggest areas of opportunity in the beginning was to take the time to really think through the decisions I was making in how to position Fifty Six in the market, things were just moving so fast I made reactive decisions on the fly in order to close a sale and build our reputation.
I financed Fifty Six with my own money, depleted my savings, 401k, and anything else of value in efforts to remain 100% independently women owned. The idea of seeking outside investment has never been a goal of mine, quite frankly I like not having to report back to anyone (*cough straight white man in a suit*) about our financial ongoings and the state of our business. In those early days I sped through “Idea Inception”, conducted “feasibility testing” as I landed more clients and quickly found myself in the “Traction” and “Scale” phases. Now that I’m there, like Grant noted, I spend at least 25% of my time on hiring. I split the rest of my time across new business development, sales, and working with our clients on their marketing. Of course, I have made more mistakes than I can count (and continue to do so) along the way. As discussed in our conversation with Grant, I know I cannot pay people what they are worth, and sometimes have lacked the ability to hire experts to relieve some of our burden because I simply cannot yet afford to. We have an internal team who works on Fifty Six internal brand utilizing the brand deck I created, that as a marketer myself I have been able to rely on using my industry experience and sheer intuition when building my venture. We have evolved our pricing since launch based on competitive research and willingness to pay analysis through talking to clients, expanded our product offering based on feasibility and our experience as an agency in efforts to streamline our processes to make Fifty Six not only a competitive player in the agency space, but a great place to work as well.
Looking back, and assessing my own journey as an entrepreneur, regardless of framework, it’s something I’m always evolving. And listen, I loved this class, it gave me the motivation to reflect on my own decisions in my personal evolution as an entrepreneurial CEO, but I also think a big portion of what has defined my success as a founder was that I was never afraid to try, test and pivot. I didn’t start Fifty Six with the intention of a massive news breaking exit comparing myself to the likes of Sophia Amoruso, Emily Weiss or even Ty Haney. I wanted to build a new venture because deep down, it makes me happy, and I enjoy the life I have built for myself. Relying on my industry knowledge, networking, fortitude, and resiliency I have been able to build a new venture that I am proud of, no matter how small and one I hope to never give up.
It's been a minute and as my executive coach Paru Radia reminded me just last week, LI can be an incredibly valuable tool for CEO's, so I'm trying to really post more. Between Fifty Six and The University of Chicago Booth School of Business things have been pretty crazy (to say the least) and I wanted to share a bit of reflection I've done over the past few months.
Very few classes have impacted my work over the past year quite like Waverly Deutsch's Building the New Venture. One of the options for our final exam during our summer semester was to "as an entrepreneur analyze a startup you have been personally involved with from the beginning" - well hello, I think I qualify. It was the first time in over 20 months I took the time to really assess not only how far Fifty Six has come BUT how far I've come on my entrepreneurial journey. To say I poured my soul into this final sounds about right, it's one of my pieces of writing I'm most proud about (like - ya know, ever) and I checked with Waverly to make sure it was okay if I share it here. So here goes. Read it, skim it, skip it - fair warning, it's really long - but most importantly take the time to reflect on yourself and how far you've come, I promise it's really cathartic. Buckle up…
In Building the New Venture as a class we have reviewed strategic tools and frameworks, a “How to Be an Entrepreneur” if you will. Hindsight being twenty-twenty I started my current venture - Fifty Six - relying on these same frameworks, albeit unknowingly at the time, and in my own head as fractured thoughts not nearly worthy of putting down on paper. Jumping right into it, in December 2020 with the future of the pandemic still rather unknown I started Fifty Six. Less than a year later I found myself owning an S-Corp, having a payroll all while starting my MBA at Chicago Booth, ending an engagement suddenly (but oh don’t worry she was just like a sister to him – insert eye roll), cancelling a wedding and moving to the dreaded Upper East Side after nearly a decade and a half having been in Chinatown, New York. Safe to say this time last year I was struggling to keep my head above water, let alone taking the time to reflect on the business I put my blood (true), sweat (also true), and tears (absolutely 1000% true) into. And if I wasn’t clear, there have been plenty of tears.
Taking after my father, I always knew I wanted to work for myself; I just never knew what my “thing” was. From 2009 – 2020 I climbed the corporate ladder, as one does, working my way up as a Buyer at a unicorn slash digital darling all the way to being the COO of a retail brand in New York City. Waverly’s note about one never works at a startup until you’ve been “fired” from a startup, or in my case, leaving due to differences, resonated with me. Here I was in December 2020 transitioning out of a job I loathed with no idea what came next. Let’s face it, if I had a business model framework or even a remote idea of an elevator pitch, I think things would have gone a bit easier, but what came next sort of just happened. I sat down and without knowing it at the time applied the bird-in-hand principle and thought about what I was good at; 1. eCommerce and Marketing Strategy – check. 2. More broadly, based on my experience I am great at scaling luxury retail brands from nothing to $10MM within two years – boom, now we were on to something. I quickly threw up a website positioning myself as some sort of eCommerce/Marketing Consultant/Advisor/Fractional C-Suite - lots of slashes – and we were off to the races. Before I knew it, I had worked my network and had my first real client[i], an optical brand that hired me to lead their brand creation, site build and overall go-to-market strategy based on my prior experience. Once client quickly grew into two, two quickly grew into four and I think at one point four grew into nine. By then not only did I start to lose track, but I knew I needed help. I hired my first employee in April of 2020. As good as I am as an operator, I needed someone who can keep us on track. In the agency world we call that a “Producer”, and I needed one, badly. Flash forward to 2022 and here I am taking Building the New Venture currently owning one that recently turned 18 months old - applying a weeks’ worth of content into my now over-1M-in-revenue-with-multiple-employees first born business.
I didn’t start Fifty Six with a mission, vision, elevator pitch or clear idea of who my customer or what my business model even was. In my head I knew I had a value prop and there was a client base out there. Having worked in the industry for ages I knew there was a gap in the market for a marketing-first agency specializing in early stage DTC brands, and since I had struggled to find one, why not just start one myself. Since then, with the help of my executive coach I have evolved and developed this;
Founded out of the necessity for a women-owned nimble agency that cares about your goals as much as you do, Fifty Six is “not your mother’s” agency. We’ve been there, and we know what brands want - a world where marketing is easy to understand, and growth is inevitable.
In hindsight not having a clear business model from the jump absolutely caused some hiccups along the way. Without formalizing it I had a rough outline of my value prop, developed my customers after I landed my first one and knew in my head, I was open to any-and-all revenue streams. I spent the first six months of Fifty Six working on saying yes to everything. Before you judge, yes, I have heard that there is a power in saying no, but I couldn’t afford it. I had clients I hated but kept the lights on and clients I loved that cost me profitability. Like Collin at Digital Innovations, in those early days I made quite a few decisions out of sheer desperation. I did not have a clear understand of my value prop and the market. Rather than pricing at willingness to pay by identifying our differences, I found cheaper labor (in the form of college students willing to trade profits for experience) and priced my offerings cheaper than my competitors. Looking back now one of my biggest areas of opportunity in the beginning was to take the time to really think through the decisions I was making in how to position Fifty Six in the market, things were just moving so fast I made reactive decisions on the fly in order to close a sale and build our reputation.
I financed Fifty Six with my own money, depleted my savings, 401k, and anything else of value in efforts to remain 100% independently women owned. The idea of seeking outside investment has never been a goal of mine, quite frankly I like not having to report back to anyone (*cough straight white man in a suit*) about our financial ongoings and the state of our business. In those early days I sped through “Idea Inception”, conducted “feasibility testing” as I landed more clients and quickly found myself in the “Traction” and “Scale” phases. Now that I’m there, like Grant noted, I spend at least 25% of my time on hiring. I split the rest of my time across new business development, sales, and working with our clients on their marketing. Of course, I have made more mistakes than I can count (and continue to do so) along the way. As discussed in our conversation with Grant, I know I cannot pay people what they are worth, and sometimes have lacked the ability to hire experts to relieve some of our burden because I simply cannot yet afford to. We have an internal team who works on Fifty Six internal brand utilizing the brand deck I created, that as a marketer myself I have been able to rely on using my industry experience and sheer intuition when building my venture. We have evolved our pricing since launch based on competitive research and willingness to pay analysis through talking to clients, expanded our product offering based on feasibility and our experience as an agency in efforts to streamline our processes to make Fifty Six not only a competitive player in the agency space, but a great place to work as well.
Looking back, and assessing my own journey as an entrepreneur, regardless of framework, it’s something I’m always evolving. And listen, I loved this class, it gave me the motivation to reflect on my own decisions in my personal evolution as an entrepreneurial CEO, but I also think a big portion of what has defined my success as a founder was that I was never afraid to try, test and pivot. I didn’t start Fifty Six with the intention of a massive news breaking exit comparing myself to the likes of Sophia Amoruso, Emily Weiss or even Ty Haney. I wanted to build a new venture because deep down, it makes me happy, and I enjoy the life I have built for myself. Relying on my industry knowledge, networking, fortitude, and resiliency I have been able to build a new venture that I am proud of, no matter how small and one I hope to never give up.
