This will be a multi part series because in 6 years I made a TON of mistakes, some need more explaining and reflection more than others. I find it’s probably best to give some context as to how this got started and our intentions from the beginning.

In late 2019 we had moved out of Boston into a suburb on the New Hampshire border. With zero public transportation options my husband looked into different things he could possibly do to generate an income while being home with our oldest who was still under 2 years old. Little did we realize that Covid was going to hit and I was going to be laid off while in my second trimester of my last pregnancy. After doing some research we decided to get him a cricut machine and got him started with a little business. For the first 6ish months I handled all of the marketing and talking to customers and my husband made all the orders that came in. He ended up having to find a job outside of the house when I got laid off which added to the pressure. Eventually I did have him teach me how to do all of the stuff so I could take over. We never expected that business to generate any form of income at all, it was a hobby that we considered ourselves lucky if we got an order.

By some miracle in 2020 I had booming success with these ridiculous sex candles. Such a simple thing but it brought in $10,000 and a bunch of attention to our little business. At this time I had also been making an income as a side hustle selling used cloth diapers. I could write a novel about my time in the cloth diaper world, but it would be a miserable read. When you think cloth diapers I used to associate it with hippies and generally nice people but the reality of that world is far from my original impressions.

I made a bunch of money capitalizing on my shopping addiction that resulted in a grossly large collection of diapers, looking back I can admit I made a lot of really bad choices when it came to the diapers as a whole. Did I learn any form of a lesson when the selling of the used diapers went sideways due to a boycott of the Mama Koala brand? No of course not, I am a dumbass. Instead of realizing the diaper game was a risky one, I decided to start my own company. I invested money I had no business spending on Chinese manufactured cloth diapers on not one, not two, not three, but four different occasions at $1,000+ shipping cost per round (never mind the cost of the products). The amount of mistakes I made with the diapers was too many to count, I will start to go over them in these posts as the advice can be applied to those currently running businesses.

My biggest mistake with both the clothing and diaper company was my pricing- I consistently cheapened my brand with non stop sales. I ended up many times working for free because I hadn’t factored in all of my production costs before selling something. I would justify it by saying “we have this business to help people” but there were many times that the helping of others came at the expense of my well being. If a business isn’t generating a consistent profit it’s not going to make it past the five year mark. It’s common to lose money when starting and establishing a company but if you’re consistently working for less but your bills still need to be paid- the pressure can be unbearable.