I started my very first business, Ezzy Lynn, when I was 24 years old. Three years later, my co-founders and I decided to call it quits and I finally feel okay to talk about it.
When you end a business you lose a part of your identity. It's so easy and normal to feel shame and hopelessness. You wonder if you'll ever be an entrepreneur again.
In this episode I share my story of starting and ending my first business, along with the most powerful lessons that shaped my current freedom lifestyle.
Additional Links:
About the show:
✨ Freedom Lifestyle is an online community and podcast series that empowers the movement towards flexible work. Sam Laliberte interviews remote workers, digital nomads and self-employed people who've pursued a lifestyle that allows them to work from anywhere. Sam discovers their version of the Freedom Lifestyle, learn how they got there and reflect on the impact its had. ✨
I started my very first business, Ezzy Lynn, when I was 24 years old. Three years later, my co-founders and I decided to call it quits and I finally feel okay to talk about it.
When you end a business you lose a part of your identity. It's so easy and normal to feel shame and hopelessness. You wonder if you'll ever be an entrepreneur again.
In this episode I share my story of starting and ending my first business, along with the most powerful lessons that shaped my current freedom lifestyle.
Additional Links:
About the show:
✨ Freedom Lifestyle is an online community and podcast series that empowers the movement towards flexible work. Sam Laliberte interviews remote workers, digital nomads and self-employed people who've pursued a lifestyle that allows them to work from anywhere. Sam discovers their version of the Freedom Lifestyle, learn how they got there and reflect on the impact its had. ✨
44. Why I started and ended my first business
[00:00:00] Who says a business has to last forever for it to be successful?
yYou're listening to episode 44 of the freedom lifestyle podcast series. Thank you for tuning into another episode. The second episode of season four, it's been really great to be podcasting again. I feel like I'm in flow after taking a few months off to regroup and rebrand the show. If you haven't already listened to last week's episode, I highly recommend it. It was with nomadic Matt, who is a full time travel blogger and nomad. Matt's been a digital nomad traveling full time for the last 10 years. He had some really great insights about how COVID-19 has impacted the travel industry, what he thinks the future will look like, how he's pivoting his business and what he thinks it takes to be successful as a travel blogger in 2020 and beyond. Super proud of that episode. So please check it out.
This week though, we're not doing an interview. I'm going to do a solo episode. And this is what I'm thinking for season four, unless I get your feedback that you're not into it and you have another idea, which I am so here for those ideas. So bring it. What I'm thinking is I'll do an interview every second episode. And then in between, I'm going to do solo episodes. Couple of reasons why one, it takes a frigging long time to produce an interview style podcast episode.
It probably takes me anywhere from 8 to 10 hours to have a fully produced podcast interview.
That includes finding the guest, pitching the guest, preparing the questions for the guest, having the actual interview, editing and producing the conversation. I don't have the luxury of what I've done today, wherever essentially I've scripted what I want to say. So if I do it right, the whole thing that I'm ready to record for you today is going to be interesting and it won't require as much editing out.
And in interview style, honestly, not all of it's that engaging or entertaining. And if I'm going to ask you to spend 30 to 40 minutes with me, I really take the time to cut out the fluff.
Or the parts of the conversation that just aren't that engaging or interesting to be frank. So the first reason I'm doing solo episodes is because it's going to be quicker. I really want to be able to do weekly content for you. So interview style followed by solo episode, followed by interview style, followed by solo episode. So that's one reason. Reason two.
I want to find more opportunities for me to be able to pass on my story and my learnings and my entrepreneurial journey. The things that I've learned, the hard way.
Resources and advice that have been passed on to me through mentors and members of the community and throughout my network and really be able to weave all of that into the show. There's so much that i'm doing outside of recording these episodes as a freelancer as a nomadic person myself as a business owner as a remote worker so i want to be able to pass on all that stuff that i'm doing outside of interviewing and incorporate that into the show.
Which means that for these solo episodes, they're going to be told in story format where I'm going to recap an experience that I had in my journey to becoming free. However, instead of just being like a story, which Sam, you just said, you're not going to do any fluff. I'm going to weave in practical lessons, actions, and resources throughout it. So it'll start with a story. And then at the end, I'll summarize what the key lessons were. That's what I'm thinking. Let's see how today's episode goes. Please. If you have any feedback.
Sam@whatsyourfree.com. I would love to hear it as always, if you keep listening, I will keep talking. But before we hop into the episode, let's hear from one of our freedom seekers.
Do you want to win an ad in an upcoming episode of the freedom lifestyle podcast, head over to whatsyourfree.com/freead, where you can upload a 20 second voice note promoting your own small business. You might just hear it in an upcoming episode.
Now for today's episode, why I started and ended my very first business, Ezzy Lynn. Despite this business being such a big part of who I am. It's not something that I've spent much time talking about over the last three years. We ended the business in 2017. It's 2020 when I'm recording it. And I've pretty much just closed the book on this chapter. Not really referenced it and just tried to move on primarily out of respect for my two co founders, the three of us aren't that close anymore, unfortunately, and I just wanted to move on from that. So on the off chance that either of them are listening.
I want them to know how fond I am of these memories, creating this episode today and thinking back on the three years we spent together building this business. I had the biggest smile on my face. I giggled so much. It was definitely the funnest few years of my life.
So I started the business when I was 24 years old. I'm 30 now to put it into perspective. And this was the first time I quit a job because I didn't like the nine to five life. So I've actually done this a few times where I've had a job left, gone and been an entrepreneur, gone back and got a job, realized it's not for me left and became an entrepreneur.
Right now I'm at the three year mark of working for myself from self-employed. I work online. So I think it's here to stay, but you never know. At this time, early twenties, I was in sales. I had learned a ton, but I'll be frank, it was a toxic office culture. I remember getting in trouble for so many things that are at the core of what I don't like about the nine to five in the office culture, where I can see you. I still have vivid memories of being a few minutes late for work. I was living in London, Ontario at the time, and there was a train track that I had to pass on my way to work. And sometimes the train would come and it would make me a few minutes late and I would get in trouble and it would just be the most stressful time. It was also when I got my kitten, Bagheera.
Who I love as, you know, if you follow me on Instagram or I'm sure I referenced her in past episodes and I had a 30 minute lunch break and I would literally race home and eat in the car. Just so I can spend a few minutes with her over lunch so that she wasn't left alone all day. I was there eight months and there wasn't even one day I worked from home during that period.
With that said, I learned a ton. The founders were super smart. They taught me sales. I remember, I'd have to do a hundred calls a day, not 100 conversations, but I had to pick up the phone and call a hundred different stores a day. So I learned a ton. About rejection, perseverance, how to pitch something very quickly, how to sell someone on something and how to repeat that process over and over and over again.
Tons of learning there that I really value as well. The entire business was run on Shopify. So again, this was 2014. Now, Shopify is a Canadian darling huge company. I've played around with Shopify multiple times since then, but then it was extremely empowering. I was watching how they were selling a product to anyone from anywhere around the world, in a drag and drop type of website. I was updating the website. I was updating the inventory. It was very simple. And really, it was a light bulb moment for me of why can't I just do this for myself?
So I had already been at the company maybe like six months at the time when I really realized that this wasn't working for me, but I kept hearing you have to be in a job for a year before quitting. You can't just have a job on your resume for less than a year, honestly, that's BS. Forget that.
Now, I don't even use a resume anymore realistically, but what I chose to do instead was say, okay, rather than say, I have to be for here for a year. What's a milestone in terms of the amount of impact I can make it this company, and then I'll feel comfortable, quitting. So I decided it was, I want to get them in a hundred stores. My job was to get this retail business carried in different retail locations across Canada and the United States. So I was selling to brick and mortar stores, asking them to buy our stock and resell in their stores. So once I hit a hundred stores, I quit. That was eight months in and I was ready to move on. I was ready to be an entrepreneur, but I knew I did not want to do it by myself.
And I also knew I wanted the [00:10:00] business to be something meaningful at this time, social enterprises we're really starting to gain popularity. Toms was getting a ton of traction with their one for one model. And we were really woken up to a new form of business, which it wasn't just about making money. And it wasn't just about making impact like a nonprofit, which I had already decided was too slow of an industry. For me, it was a blended approach and it was somewhere in the middle and that was extremely, extremely exciting for me.
At that time in my life, I was training for the weekend to end women's cancers, which is a 60 kilometer two day walk in Toronto. And I was doing it with my best friend at the time we were training together. So we would go on long walks multiple times a week. And I would tell her how frustrated I was at work.
And I wasn't excited. And she was an entrepreneurial person herself. She had already started a few other business prior to that. So I knew she was someone who I could talk about business ideas to. So when I told her that I was going to quit, basically pitched her on coming on an entrepreneurial journey with me. And she was so down, she wasn't 100% happy where she was either. She wasn't necessarily ready to quit her job yet, but she was open to start something. So we agreed. We wanted to be business partners. We agreed, we wanted it to be something that we can sell on Shopify. And we agreed. We wanted it to be something that was a social enterprise. She was very passionate about nonprofit and philanthropy herself so long.
story short after multiple walks and some creative business sessions, we came up with scrunchies that save animals. We taught ourselves how to sew, we jumped on the scrunchie hype that was just starting out in 2014, we partnered with the world wildlife fund. They had an adopt an animal program that still exists today. That's super successful.
And we launched the business at a music festival. I remember it was May, 2014. And it was a music festival in Wasaga beach, a couple hours from Toronto, it was $500 to be a vendor there. And we went, we made $1,000 that day. We sold out of our inventory early on in the night. We packed up everything in our car, all of our little displays. We joined the party. We drove home with a business.
Shortly after that experience, a mutual friend of ours wanted to invest in the business and wanted to join. She had saw about our success we had had from the first festival and what we were doing. And we were both friends with her. And at that time in her life, she really wanted a side hustle to complement her nine to five. She was working in finance and had a full time job there and really wanted like a creative, fun side hustle that she could be part of. So after that, we were a team of three and honestly, with Epic.
We went to dozens of music festivals around the world. That's primarily where we sold our product. In addition to our Shopify store. And addition to that wholesale strategy that I had just learned at my old job, we had more fun than I ever had in my entire life. It's how I got to party with Taylor Swift, which is a whole other story about crashing the Saturday night live 40th anniversary party.
We were featured in the globe and mail. We were notable entrepreneurs of the day. We got to be on the cover of London business magazine. Our product was in dozens of stores across Canada, a couple in the United States. We ended up turning a business that was just scrunchies that we made ourselves into a full collection of sustainable apparel. We made handmade crop, top sets. We got to outsource the entire production and had amazing women producing the apparel for us by hand.
And most importantly, we adopted hundreds of animals through the world wildlife fund. We became friends with David Miller, who was the president at the time and the former mayor of Toronto.
It was a blast. But unfortunately, three years later, by nature of how we were producing our garments and the fact that we had a partnership with the WWF, it was really hard for us to scale production. And it was really hard for us to scale sales. Our customers loved us. We were able to sell a $20 premium scrunchie, but even at that price point, the margins for sustainable production, they were just too thin.
To do anything that meaningful with, from a cash perspective and from an investment perspective. And then at the same time, The three of us from ages 24 to age 27 so much changed in our lives during that period. These were character building years for these three women that we were. And at the end of the day, we all started to want different things for our future.
And for the business. So on the three year, Mark May 2017, which is funny because I'm actually finally talking about this in producing this episode May, 2020. So it seems to be every three years as a milestone or related to as Ezzy Lynn. We ended things. It was the, one of the most painful periods of my life. I was devastated to see it go. It felt like my entire identity at that time was as Ezzy Lynn, I had no idea who I was without the business.
If you're curious about this journey, we actually created a tribute website. You can head over to ezzylynn.Weebly.com and learn more about our story and see some of the amazing impact that we made and all the fun that we had in this journey.
Okay. What are the lessons for you from this? The first lesson is that it is not about the first business idea that you have, okay. It's about building your entrepreneurial skills when you are developing those skills. You are developing resilience. You are developing an appetite for the ups and downs that come with entrepreneurship.
You're learning to stomach the rollercoaster and getting a taste of what it's like to be your own boss and decide if that is all worth it for you. You are learning the trial and error of what type of business you even want.
There were so many learnings from how we operated Ezzy Lynn that I realized that's not how I wanted to be spending my time or the type of business that I wanted to have.
For example, one of the things we did as Ezzy Lynn is we held onto all our inventory. We did the fulfillment ourself. It was such a waste of time. Honestly, I was so resentful about it. I remember thinking over and over again, I should be focusing on selling and marketing the business, not shipping this product, not worrying about inventory levels and how much inventory we have in stock versus what's on the website.
We just did that stuff. Old school, in my mind, a lot of brick and mortar stores who would hear that we had an eCommerce store with think that was very innovative, but honestly, now that I've had another business since then, that's in eCommerce. The first thing I did was make sure the entire business was a drop shipping business.
I remember when Jared and I were launching our product, the LDR activity book, which is a resource for couples in long distance relationships. By the way, if that sounds relevant to you, you should totally check us out at ldractivities.com
But business plug aside, I remember Jared and I fighting in Canada post, which is where most people do their shipping across Canada from Canada about this issue because you get there and you get a quote from them and you compare it to what it would be to outsource this and yeah. It's a lot cheaper to do it yourself.
That's why we did it the first time. It's also seems pretty convenient. There's so many locations. One right down the street from our house, you know, we could just get into a cadence of once a week or maybe we could hire someone locally to do it for you. And I was like, no, I am not spending another second and Canada post.
I feel very strongly about this.
I also didn't want to hold any of the inventory. I was now living in a smaller apartment. I've moved since from London to Toronto, so I didn't want to give up a single square foot of space for these books.
And you know, I won that battle and I, I know he's grateful because last year we traveled for six months on and off throughout the year. We would not have been able to do that if we were worried about shipping our product, holding onto inventory, updating the inventory on our website, dealing with the fulfillment, tracking orders for people.
It's so important to me to be location independent and have that freedom in my business, which I only learned from running a business that was only halfway there. Yes, I was, my own boss and creating my own schedules, but I wasn't working from anywhere yet, and that was super important to me.
That has now shaped this version of my journey. If anyone's not familiar about drop shipping, by the way, essentially how it works is we have a couple warehouses across the world. When someone orders a book on our website, that warehouse gets a notification, they grab the book, they ship it to the customer, they sending a tracking notification to them, and we never see a book.
We don't hold on to any books, and it's really done that way. So that was a huge learning for me in terms of what I do. Didn't like about that first business that I've now applied to my entrepreneurial journey, but then there's also so many things that I learned from that first business that I love about business and it's why it keeps me going and it's how I decide whether a venture is worth my time.
As he Lynn was truly a lifestyle business and when a lot of people are evaluating whether an entrepreneurial idea is quote unquote worth it, they evaluate it primarily on the financials.
And as he, Lynn was so much more than that. I was single in my early twenties . I loved music. I love music festivals. I loved being around friends and people, and I'm not going to pretend that it wasn't a huge perk. Being able to go to all of those festivals. We had VIP wristbands as vendors.
We got to bring a bunch of our friends along for the ride as well. Brand ambassadors, [00:20:00] and it was extremely Epic. I loved that. And now when I think about investing my time, I look more than just at the financial reward. As a podcaster, if you have a show, you know, people love to ask you like, how are you even making money from this.
How much money are you possibly making for this? Like what's the ROI on your time? And I can answer that question confidently to myself and into the public for anyone who asks that, yeah, I make money from it, but it's so much more than that. It gives me access to people that I have no business reaching out to.
I got to interview nomadic Matt last week. How cool is that? These are now contacts that I have for life that are in my network, that are part of my entrepreneurial journey and who knows what's happening next because it's not about your first business idea. It's about building yourself as an entrepreneur, deciding it's for you, and then keep going.
The second lesson is really the pros and cons of having co-founders. So the pros. We made decisions a lot quicker when I'm by myself. Now it's analysis paralysis.
I'm overthinking whether something's a good idea. I don't have someone on standby that I can just message who can quickly give me feedback or positive reinforcement of like, Hey, that's a good idea. Run with it. The way we ran as Elan is because there was three of us, we ran a totally democratic system where everyone got to vote whenever we needed to make a decision.
It was majority rules. We didn't dwell on it. We just said, okay, accepted it and moved forward. We also got to celebrate our wins together sometimes. Now in this journey, I'm spending most of my time with my fiance. Yeah. And sometimes I'll be having an amazing day with tons of wins and I'm ready to celebrate. But he might not be having that type of day. He might actually be having a really negative day and it's not the best vibe, you know? It's awkward. It's forced. It's not the same as when it was when we were riding that high together.
The cons. It's not just your business, so you don't get to ultimately make the decision on something like when should the business end? And I'll be honest with you, I still wonder what that business could have been, what it would have been like if it was still running six years into it.
And that's heavy to sit with. And now that I'm out on my own I really get to decide how long I'm going to run with an idea or a venture, and I get to make those decisions for myself. So I think that was a pretty big con of not being able to decide really the fate of the business. It wasn't in my hands.
Another thing that was really hard for our dynamic was that we weren't. All full time and all in at the same time. I had quit my job to start the business, so I was full time the whole time, but the other two weren't. we played back and forth with what that looked like.
But more often than not, it was a negative experience. , I found myself wanting them to commit more and invest more and feeling very resentful at how long things would take to get approved or move forward. I felt I was being held back a lot of the times because we had that democratic. Decision making process as well as I wanted their opinion.
I really saw what the power of the three of us were and how much potential there was there and of course there's ways that you can combat this. And I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs do this really well where, one person owns more of the business or has certain decision making power.
But for us, the fact that we weren't all in it full time and all in was a negative and a con.
And the other thing was that we were friends first, and that really was one of our mottos. And that was another thing that I felt like really held the business back. A lot of people ask, what was it like to be in business with your best friends at the time? And the winds were really great and it was super fun.
Yeah. But when you had to have challenging conversations or when things weren't going well, or when someone didn't follow through with something, they said, we often bit our tongues more than we probably should. We let each other get away with stuff. We were more lax because we wanted to be empathetic and understanding of what was going on in that person's life, and we had a friendship first perspective.
Overall, no regrets. The business would not have been what it was without all three of us. We each brought totally equal, unique value and different skill sets, and honestly, when the three of us were together, we felt pretty unstoppable. So lots of deep love and admiration there. But we'll be honest.
There's pros and cons of having co founders and this time around, I'm doing it on my own.
Final lesson, the power of reinvention. It is so easy to tie your identity to a business, especially if it's a business that's in the public and getting a lot of media attention. You're doing speaking engagements and using your personal brand and your personal social channels and getting your friends to buy and just like really going all in on a business from a public perspective and from a personal brand perspective.
I felt. Like when we were ending as a Lin that we had failed and that I had to justify it, or even worse hide the fact that the business was over. I didn't know who I was. If I wasn't an entrepreneur, I couldn't see a future where I was happy and fulfilled and satisfied without as a Linn, I didn't think I can move on from it.
And I'll never forget when one of my cofounders actually gave me a pep talk about how Sam, maybe there's something even bigger and even better waiting for you and that if you're holding onto this business that it isn't scaling. We were not seeing eye to eye on how to grow it. I'm going to continue to miss out on this potentially.
Baker opportunity that's out there. So I remember that pep talk, and of course she was right. I still wonder what as Elan would have been, but sure enough, I'm an entrepreneur again, living this new version of my dream life with the new businesses. And this wouldn't have happened if I didn't just let that go and allow myself to reinvent myself and reinvent my personal brand and my identity, and now no longer.
Do I tie myself and my worth and who I am to one business. I've reinvented myself so many times throughout my career, and sometimes that looks extreme and it looks like me cutting my hair and it looks like me moving to a different city. And sometimes it just means that. I end a freelance contract that I had for a really long time that I was excited about, but it's not the end of the world because I know that there's just another contract waiting around the corner or there's something even better and bigger and it's all flow and you're constantly reinventing yourself and you don't have to be tied to one thing.
Just because of business ends. It does not mean it's a failure. That was another pep talk I had to give myself. We had adopted hundreds of animals and made a huge impact. Who says a business has to last forever for it to be successful?
So there you have it. That's my very personal story about how I started and ended my first business.
It isn't something I've spoken about over the last three years since we ended it, but it's a huge part of who I am and it taught me so much about the type of entrepreneur I am, the type of lifestyle I wanted to have, and frankly what I was capable of. love to hear what you think of this style of episode.
Do you like this story style? Is it interesting? Would you like me to do something different or do all interviews? Please, please, please tell me Sam at what's your free.com or DME on any of the social media platforms? If you did like it and you dig the content and you liked where this is heading, please share this.
With another freedom seeker or with your social media network so others can find the show. If people keep listening, I'll keep talking. If you're listening to this show on Spotify in just one click, you can hit that share button right to your Instagram stories and amazing hack for people who do not have that 10 K swipe up feature.
If you're listening on Apple, . I would love for you to leave me a review. You can also hit subscribe while you're at it so that you never miss an episode. I'll see you next week with an interview with someone up back. I'll give you a hint.
I met her at envision music festival on still on the music festival circuit. She was giving a talk there. It blew my mind. I reached out to her. She was on my dream interview list. She said, yes, listen for that interview next week, and until then, enjoy your freedom.