Let go to evolve
So why did I decide to sell my previous ventures as Brand Packages in the new OP® Shop?
Well, it’s a lesson that took me a while to learn but I finally learned it. To evolve, you need to let go. Let go of past ideas, dreams and visions to make room for what is.
Over the past few years, as you might have seen on Wayward Group, I dedicated most of my time, energy and money to start new ventures/experiments. I figured I had to step out of my comfort zone to scale my learnings. I wanted to see what else life had in store for me besides running a design agency and a SaaS startup before my time runs out. Maybe there's more within me that could be unlocked with new challenges.
For the ventures, I picked four areas where I felt most excited about: Incubator/Accelerator Program/Fund, Fashion, Self-Care products, and exploring a new multi-purpose retail/event space.
For each, I hired a small team of 1-3 members, sat clear time constraints for each phase of the process and begun the work. For reviews and decisions, I created a simple 3-step process to keep all members in sync with each others plan and accountable to their progress. No decisions were made in the silos by team leads. All decisions had to be made in the open channels by majority votes, and everyone had to participate. This way the learning and responsibilities for our next steps were shared among the members. In other words, less "founder" stress for me.
Fast forward to two years later, at the end of 2022, we launched three ventures and paused one. We launched a high-end fashion brand, released our first self-care product, and built a new retail/event space and formed an accelerator program, pitched a conglomerate for funding and paused before we begun (too many dependencies, more on this later).
But at the end, I decided to shut down almost all of them.
It was hard. Going from 0 → 1 on ventures you haven't worked on before is especially difficult. Because most of the time, you experience growth pain. Every step of the progress, comes with friction. In the form of uncertainty. Just this background noise that gets louder the more you spend on a venture that you might be on the wrong path. Because you don't know what the right path looks like.
But, we learned the way. We paved the steps. We created the process. And we applied them to OFC.
And for all of our physical product exploration, and experimentations, we brought them all to BR. Our new brand. Blank Residents.
TLDR; It took me a long time but at the end, I learned the only way to truly grow outside of your own way, you need to let go of your old self. Your old ideas, visions, fantasies. To create new ones. Adapted to your present self with your present mind to stay present.
In my journal, I wrapped these two years under the first two phase of our creative process: Explore and Experiment. Now, we are entering our third: Execution. In the next post, I will share more of OFC and BR.
Until then,
Have a look at our new Brand Shop.
You might find the Brand for your next venture there. ;)
Blank
✌︎☺︎
Well, it’s a lesson that took me a while to learn but I finally learned it. To evolve, you need to let go. Let go of past ideas, dreams and visions to make room for what is.Over the past few years, as you might have seen on Wayward Group, I dedicated most of my time, energy and money to start new ventures/experiments. I figured I had to step out of my comfort zone to scale my learnings. I wanted to see what else life had in store for me besides running a design agency and a SaaS startup before my time runs out. Maybe there's more within me that could be unlocked with new challenges.
For the ventures, I picked four areas where I felt most excited about: Incubator/Accelerator Program/Fund, Fashion, Self-Care products, and exploring a new multi-purpose retail/event space.
For each, I hired a small team of 1-3 members, sat clear time constraints for each phase of the process and begun the work. For reviews and decisions, I created a simple 3-step process to keep all members in sync with each others plan and accountable to their progress. No decisions were made in the silos by team leads. All decisions had to be made in the open channels by majority votes, and everyone had to participate. This way the learning and responsibilities for our next steps were shared among the members. In other words, less "founder" stress for me.
Fast forward to two years later, at the end of 2022, we launched three ventures and paused one. We launched a high-end fashion brand, released our first self-care product, and built a new retail/event space and formed an accelerator program, pitched a conglomerate for funding and paused before we begun (too many dependencies, more on this later).
But at the end, I decided to shut down almost all of them.
It was hard. Going from 0 → 1 on ventures you haven't worked on before is especially difficult. Because most of the time, you experience growth pain. Every step of the progress, comes with friction. In the form of uncertainty. Just this background noise that gets louder the more you spend on a venture that you might be on the wrong path. Because you don't know what the right path looks like.
But, we learned the way. We paved the steps. We created the process. And we applied them to OFC.
And for all of our physical product exploration, and experimentations, we brought them all to BR. Our new brand. Blank Residents.TLDR; It took me a long time but at the end, I learned the only way to truly grow outside of your own way, you need to let go of your old self. Your old ideas, visions, fantasies. To create new ones. Adapted to your present self with your present mind to stay present.In my journal, I wrapped these two years under the first two phase of our creative process: Explore and Experiment. Now, we are entering our third: Execution. In the next post, I will share more of OFC and BR.
Until then,
Have a look at our new Brand Shop.
You might find the Brand for your next venture there. ;)
Blank
✌︎☺︎