Two years, wow!! I can't believe my baby is 2 !!
These past 2 years have taught me so much on many different things and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to reflect on it. Here's everything I learned as a small business owner.
It's a WILD and intense ride, the highs are the highest I've ever experienced but the lows might be the lowest as well.
It's unpredictable, some of my best sellers are products I never thought would be so popular and I had high hopes for products that are actually slow-sellers. Some of the most unbelievable opportunities for gifting or collaborations came out of nowhere, and that's the best part of this journey in my opinion, you never know what could be next!
The best part about this journey is the community you will build. The people that have been following and supporting Sunday from the beginning are the kindest and sweetest. Sometimes offering us the craziest experiences and opportunities. This kind of support means the world.
Create genuine connections, people can see if you are fake and want to connect to advance your network and business or if you genuinely want their feedback, want to be part of their community.
Dream BIG, every year I write down some goals for the brand, some of them are achievable, some others are more on the aspirational side and some are just plain delusional. But I truly believe in the power of manifestation and some of my delusional goals/dreams have actually happened this year so never be afraid to dream because what if it happens?
Be bold, it goes hand in hand with dreaming big and being delusional, but you have to dare and do the things that seem unlikely to happen. Write that DM to your favorite celebrity, offer your products to the influencer you love, write emails to collaborate with other brands, you never know it could actually work and turn into the coolest opportunity.
Take time for yourself and step back. Sunday is a way for me to experiment, turning a vision into reality whether through products or content, and I want it to stay something I love, a project that stimulates me and gets me excited, not something that I dread doing or that's stressing me out. It's quite easy to be in your head and think that you need to work 24/7 for your project to succeed, but you also need a break to recharge.
Learn to not take things personally. You will have moments of failures, a product that will not perform well, moments when you lack creativity, months with very slow sales, content that nobody likes or sees, mean comments on your TikTok videos... Many things can bring you down, while it's great to reflect on them to learn to do better, don't get stuck on it for too long.
Don't take yourself too seriously. At the end of the day, I'm selling clothes, I have 5k followers on Instagram, is it a national drama if I don't post on Instagram for 2 weeks because I don't have any new content? No. It's important to want to do great but it's also important to balance everything.
Never take things for granted. There are days where you'll feel on top of the world, like nothing can bring you down. The content is amazing, your engagement is through the roof, important people are following your brand, you get responses to every DM you send, the sales are going great, your creative juice is flowing, never take it for granted and appreciate the small things.
Celebrate every success, even the tiny ones.
If you are alone in your business, it will get lonely at times, oddly enough, it's when you are at your best that you will feel the loneliest. Having friends and family to share your successes with helps a lot, but at the end of the day, nobody knows how much effort and work goes into your project more than you and sometimes you might feel like nobody can fully understand how big certain achievements are.
Don't focus too much on follower counts, engagement and likes on social media. These do not mean you will have more sales. It's not about really about quantity but quality of your audience and followers, making sure you are connecting with the right people.
On the other hand, don't forget that social media is an extremely powerful and free tool. If you manage to get viral, you can see a 360 shift on your sales almost overnight so take time to see what's trending, what could fit your image and business and have fun whilst trying to figure out the algorithms.
Having your own business is a humbling experience, I did a master in digital marketing but do I have the best website optimisation? No. Is my SEO on point? No. Is my digital marketing strategy perfect? Hell no. It's a learning experience, even if I had good knowledge about these topics I'm still learning so much.
Having your own business is the best learning experience. I create the designs, source products, built and maintain the website, ship the products, create content, take care community management and so much more. I'm learning so much from each aspect of having my own business, it's incredible. It's a lot of trial and error, but learning on the job is the best way of learning.
It takes a huge amount of time. I pride myself in my organisational skills, but this project got my timelines and retro-plannings screwed up. Launching a business requires many many steps, some of them are more time-consuming than others, even if you are knowledgeable in that area. Maintaining a business, being creative, taking time to engage with your community also takes a lot of time, and to be honest I'm still learning how to balance that with my day job.
Be creative, I don't mean that only for your products but also your content, the way you market your brand, how to engage and connect with your community. Try new things, see what works! Some of the things I tried that might have seen "stupidly easy" ended up working the best to achieve my goals.
Money is not a pre-requisite to success, but it helps. My entire marketing strategy is based on organic posting and content and hoping the algorithm and hashtags will put my content in front of the right audience. If I had a budget allocated to do paid ads on social media, I might be able to expend my following and broaden my sales scope much faster. I re-invest all the profit from the sales into influencer gifting which means my budget is limited. If you have the money to order your product in a bulk order and do a BIG influencer gifting all at once, it will have much more impact on your visibility and sales. Same thing for industry connections. I didn't know anyone in the Motorsport industry before launching Sunday, I built this community and my network from scratch. If you already have contacts within your target audience, it will help tremendously to raise awareness about your brand to the right people faster.
Stay true to your ideas, your DNA and brand image. It can be tempting to follow trends on what's stylish product-wise, what's the hottest trend on TikTok... Staying true to the world you want to create will help you build a strong brand identity that people will recognise. Not everybody will like it and that's ok, but the people who love it will love your products and communication for how unique it is and not something you can see everywhere.
It's crazy how time flies when you're having fun and struggling and learning all at once. I'm so so grateful for all the memories, the learnings, the experiences and above all the support and love I receive. Cheers to (hopefully) many more years!
Thank you for everything <3
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