Kyn you even believe it?? KYBI is almost FIVE YEARS OLD. I’m not crying – you’re crying! 😭
5 feels like a pretty big milestone, so you knowwww I’m going all out with All The Things like usual (cake, balloons, candles, a birthday collection) but I’m also adding a 5 for 5 blog series into the mix!
This is blog 3 of 5 in the “5 for 5 series,” where I’ll be posting a blog with “5 things [xyz]” every week leading up to the biz birthday.
Today’s blog is a bit different from the others that I’ve posted and have planned; whereas most are tips & tricks, this blog is more of a diary entry.
The biz birthday always causes me to turn really reflective and sentimental about how much I’ve changed and grown since starting KYBI, so I thought it would be fun to delve into 5 personality traits that I’ve either developed or refined over the past five years that play a major role in having made it this far.
Majorrrr disclaimer before I go any further: none of this is to say “if you don’t develop these five things, you’re destined to fail.” It’s just five things I’ve noticed that have helped me, and tbh – I bet a lot of long-time business owners would weigh in to say these things help them too.
Anyways, in no particular order, let’s dive in!
Delusion
Let’s kick this thing off with referencing one of my all time favorite TikTok audios: “And what gave you the confidence?” “Delusion.”
I genuinely can’t think of a better way to describe the past 5 years of my life, other than to say I deluded myself into believing everything would eventually work out, and what do you know? It did.
The word “delusion” seems to have a bad rap, but the term “confidence” is thrown around so often that I don’t think it gets my point across. In my mind, confidence comes and goes based off of outside factors; delusion is forever. 🙂
The more poetic way of telling you this is that I wrote down a quote very early on that said “continue as if success is inevitable,” and I took that to heart, and it’s guided me ever since. It’s not to say that the past five years haven’t been filled with ups and downs, because believe me – there have been plenty of both! This is just to say I believed in myself whole-heartedly from the very beginning, and that fact alone is a huge reason to thank for where I stand today.
(Also – on a side note – I know a gazillion more techniques, programs, etc than I did 5 years ago, and every single one of those has started from a delusional learning space of “I mean, it can’t be that hard, can it?”)
Take it from me: delusion will get you sooooo far if you truly embrace it.
Blinders
Delusion was with me from day one, but the blinders I needed in order to trust my path and ignore everyone else’s?? Yeah, those are forever a work in progress.
If you’re working on something and you really want to lose all your confidence and derail your progress, here’s a tip: go follow a bunch of people on social media who are doing things similar to you, then do nothing but compare yourself to them and tell yourself how much better they are and how you’ll never get as far as them.
Yikes – amiright?
This was my reality for the first two years of KYBI. I put myself in the biggest comparison trap ever, and as a result, was always facing low self-esteem, loads of negative self-talk, and just general disappointment in the state of my business.
Some time in 2021, I unfollowed all the people on social media that made me feel bad about myself, and vowed that I would only follow accounts that genuinely brought me joy and/or that I considered to be a friend (internet or in-person).
Quick note: the “unfollowing” thing has nothing to do with the people who were running those accounts and everything to do with my inability to stop comparing myself. They were all lovely people! Unfortunately I needed a cleanse and physically hitting that unfollow button is what helped me. I have since started following many of them again!
Today, I’m able to fully embrace the sentiment of “community over competition” and can cheer on other business owners while understanding their progress is not at the expense of mine – it’s just proof that I can do it too!
I keep blinders up to focus on my own lane, but continue to cheer on my friends and fellow business owners. And if I ever find myself creeping back into a comparison trap (because it’s never fully escapable), the “mute account” button is right there until I’m ready to see their stuff again.
I will shout this from the rooftops: putting up blinders for yourself will do your confidence and self-esteem sooooo much good.
Resilience
My first business failure was in July 2019. I had launched KYBI a few months prior, and was ready for a shop refresh. I spent WEEKS designing new products, photographing them, getting them listed, ready to sell out… and friends: I sold one item the day things went live. I cried myself to sleep that night thinking failure was my destiny. (Let’s just say my delusion levels that night were non-existent.)
I’ve had many business fails since then, but not nearly as many nights of crying myself to sleep. I’ve learned to accept that failure is just part of running a business, and ultimately, failure is just a lesson in what doesn’t work. You can take it and learn from it!
Failures will happen, there’s no doubt about that. The important thing is that you have the resilience to get back up and try again whenever you’re ready.
Patience
When I started KYBI, I had this notion in my mind that it would take a few months of work, then I could quit my retail job and go full-time with my business. The failure I just referenced was a major reality check for me, and I soon realized it would be quite a while before I could go full-time with my business, if ever.
The pandemic forced me to go full-time a bit sooner than I expected, with my retail job stopping hours for a bit, then me realizing I definitely didn’t want to go back when they started back up. I was able to focus on my business alone from March 2020-March 2021 with the help of my fiance-turned-husband who helped make ends meet, and then I got a part-time job for the bulk of 2021 in order to bring in a bit more cash flow.
During this time, sales were steady enough, but nowhere near where they needed to be in order for me to bring in a full-time income. I ended up going full-time again in October 2021, and have been since. That said, we lived with my parents from July 2021-October 2023, where rent was cheap.
I didn’t start making a livable salary until October of 2022, over 3 years after starting my business. Growth has been steady since then with a few spikes here and there, but I can’t express just how much patience I had to have over the first few years of business.
I think there’s this idea when it comes to running a business that you’ll get “found” and go viral very early on, and from there, it’s smooth sailing. I can’t express just how much that isn’t the case for most people.
Growth is slow, steady, and a major waiting game. My advice to you? Embrace the fact that “slow growth is still growth” and use those early days to get all your ducks in a row on the back-end, that way when things take off, you have a solid foundation. This is how things played out for KYBI, and while I was frustrated about the slow growth at the time, I’m now grateful it played out the way it did.
Flexibility
If there’s one trait that’s incredibly full-circle for my experience with KYBI, it’s flexibility. If you don’t know my story, I started this business after abandoning my teaching certificate the semester I was supposed to start student teaching.
That decision continues to be one of the hardest ones I ever made, though a big part of that is due to the fact that society puts SO MUCH unnecesscary pressure on 18-21 year olds to decide what they want to do with their life before their prefrontal cortex is even fully developed.
Societal norms aside, that decision was my first big lesson in flexibility. Plans will change, things won’t play out the way you expected them to, pandemics will happen (I mean hopefully not again in my lifetime, but you get the idea). When life throws you a curve-ball, the best thing you can do is adapt to the situation and take it on the best you can.
Being a pathological people pleaser and all, this is another trait of mine that will always be a work in progress, but my willingness to adjust plans as needed is so much better now than it was five years ago, and truly – it keeps me sane at the end of the day. Being flexible with all the aspects of my business allows me to bend without needing to break, and we loveeee that.
And with that, this blog comes to an end. I’m sure there are many other traits that I have yet to develop and lessons I have yet to learn, but after five years of business, these are the traits and things I’m most thankful for. If you have anything to add, feel free to leave them in the comments below!