Build Ecosystems, Not Empires
Formerly Brown CEO Letters / Written by Gelaine Santiago
Hitting Your Goals Without Going All Out.
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In August, my jewelry business hosted our first pop-up in the US. We rented a bright and beautiful venue in Pasadena, California and partnered with local vendors in LA.
Hosting a pop-up in California had been a long-time dream of mine. But people don’t talk enough about how stressful cross-border selling can be for product-based businesses. Here’s some behind-the-scenes 😅
Expenses added up quickly (especially with the dreaded conversion from USD to CAD 😫) and we felt the pressure to do everything to maximize sales. For us, that meant “selling as much as possible!” which involved emptying out our warehouse, shipping everything across the US, and ramping up marketing efforts 1000%.
We spent several weeks packing, labelling, and shipping tens of thousands dollars worth of inventory. On top of that, our insurance wouldn’t cover us since this was outside our normal operations 😰
Needless to say, it caused a lot of stress and friction for my partner and I.
After the 5th consecutive night stuck at the warehouse til 11pm, we took a step back and asked, “do we need to be pushing this hard?”
Why max out our sales?
How much risk are we comfortable with?
What would be “good enough”?
That pause made all the difference. We named a minimum sales goal (the number we’d need to break even) and a champagne goal (the number that would have us spraying champagne at each other like Formula 1 drivers 🍾).
Instead of trying to ship, sell, market and push as much as we physically could, we calculated how much effort we’d need to reach both goals, and accepted our fate from there.
The pop-up ended up going better than we dreamed - we surpassed our champagne goal on day one! *Cue the Formula 1 havoc!*
And we did it without pushing to the max.
The takeaway:
Instead of constantly chasing an unknown, unreachable number, what if you name exactly what you want and stop there?
Set realistic expectations. Define your bare minimum and your champagne goal, then put in the level of effort that matches those targets.
Business doesn’t have to feel like pushing a big ass rock up a never ending hill. Make room to pause, look up, and if you like the view, stay a while and enjoy!
Sending easeful vibes & champagne! 🥂
Gelaine
🍉 PS - I'm still offering Instagram Tune-ups for families in Gaza! Get a free Instagram mini-audit when you donate to a family in Gaza. Available til October 4th. More info here.
Thoughtful Finds 🌸
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