read this if you’re afraid to start

don’t give up on your dreams.

First of all, congratulations! You’re human. A human with hopes and dreams...and a growing desire to act on them. But there’s another voice in your head that’s louder — it reminds you of all the reasons that it could go downhill, convinces you that things are fine just the way they are, and mocks you for even daring to think “what if?”

I call this voice Janice. It’s unfortunate that Janice lives in my head. But I think we all have a Janice and she plays an important role in our lives — she keeps us safe and asks “are you sure” before we do something stupid like uber couriering something valuable across town that will inevitably get lost. And sometimes she happens to be 100% right, which makes you want to believe her. But what if we want to expand, to grow, to try something new? Janice tries to convince us to stay the same because it’s safe. Comfortable. Predictable. Janice thrives in predictability. And don’t be fooled by her many forms — sometimes Janice is someone in your life, a parent, a friend, a partner. Sometimes we call Janice “being realistic.”

But what about what you want? What if you know, deep in your core, that there’s something else, something greater, something more aligned out there for you? How do you reconcile that pull with the fear of getting started?

This is a topic that comes up often in my conversations. And on a more personal level, the only constant in running a business is change — which means Janice is never far. Here are some ways I counter my internal monologue.

“What if it’s the wrong choice?”

Take stock of your life today. Are you living the exact life you envisioned for yourself? If you are, it’s a rare gift to know what you were destined to do at an early age. Personally, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t pivoted from their childhood dreams. Hey I was supposed to be in the middle of the ocean studying dolphins and orcas for months at a time. Maybe I would’ve been happy doing that. Who knows? You can’t A/B test life.

There are no should’s, no have to’s, no right way to do life. No destination to get to, no “arrival.” There’s no making it. So as long as you’re still playing the game of life, still marching forward, you’re winning. I find that really comforting.

There is no right or wrong choice, only a choice. But you have to choose. Because if you don’t choose, life chooses for you. Everything is stressful. Growing is stressful. Staying the same is stressful. Running a business is stressful. So is being poor.

And something I repeat to myself on a loop — all you know is what you already know. You can see all the ways that things can go wrong because you’ve experienced it or witnessed someone else who did. So naturally you heavily weigh the downsides without seeing the full upside potential. But that’s not the full picture. You’re making decisions with a lack of information. I can sit here today and know for a fact that starting Freja was the best choice I ever made, but it certainly didn’t feel great for the first two years.

“But I have to ___”. Do you? I think it’s worth challenging everything we’re told, especially the beliefs we accept as truth. Life is whatever you want it to be. And as long as you’re not hurting anyone else, what’s the harm in trying?

Life is so short. But life can feel really long if you’re unhappy in your situation. Why not leave room for possibilities?

“What if I’m not cut out for this?”

I watched the movie didi this past week and it reminded me of how tough adolescence was. Remember how it felt like the end of the world when you didn’t have any friends to sit with at lunch, or you sent an embarrassing text to the boy you had a crush on who barely acknowledged your existence. I laugh now at how silly these problems were, but it’s also true that they felt so all encompassing and earth shattering at the time. Because that was our entire world frame. And guess what — you’ll feel the exact same way looking back at the problems that consume you now.

The first negative customer review is devastating. I felt like a fraud and lost so much sleep ruminating over it. The second was painful. The 30th one still hurts, but gets promptly addressed, tagged, and filed away as a data point that we review monthly. What about your job? Remember how overwhelming your first week was? You can probably do the same tasks in your sleep now. And the first time you get sued it’s an all hands on deck high stakes emergency. By the 70th time it’s probably just mildly annoying. You’re going to feel bad. A lot. But you can feel awful and still do what needs doing.

The problems never go away. But you get better. You get tougher. You become tolerant. You rise to the level of the challenges life throws in your face. Future you is so much stronger than you can imagine. So knowing this, what if we applied this frame to approach everything that feels especially heavy in our lives now?

“But what if I fail?”

You will absolutely fail. Many many many times. But you only need to get up one more time than you fail. That’s it. Every time you fail you learn what not to do and you go into the next attempt armed with new information and a better plan of attack. After all, so much of success is dependent on knowing what not to do.

PS — if you don’t tell anyone what you’re doing they won’t know if you failed. Only 4 people knew I was working on Freja for the first 1.5 years. Two of them were my parents. If I’m going to fail I’m going to do it quietly (thanks Janice).

PPS — I really dislike the word failure because it feels so final. I prefer to say that something just “didn’t work this time.” Because what do you do when something doesn’t work? You try again. You can always try again.

“What if I suck?”

You probably will. That’s ok. It’s a rite of passage. If you keep going, you’ll start to suck less. You’ll identify areas where you can improve. You’ll develop your own sense of taste. And then maybe you’ll start getting good. But no one starts out good.

So set the bar low. Now lower it some more. I set a goal for myself to design one bag. Just one. It took me a year and I was never in love with it, but it was good enough. And at that point, good enough was the goal.

The one line I kept repeating to myself was “no one is born a designer.” If I put in the time consistently, maybe I could become one. I still don’t consider myself a designer, but as someone who churned out 4 technical designs on a whim last Tuesday evening, I’m certainly more confident in my abilities today.

Going along with that, we overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in five. Please take the pressure off yourself to make something incredible in the next 365 days, it’s rather unlikely. But what if you did a little bit each day over the next five years? The time is going to pass anyway…

For my creatives — there’s a quote called “The Gap” by Ira Glass that sums it up beautifully.

“What if people judge me?”

They will probably judge you. And then they will forget about you. And then when you make it, they will come back to you. Or they won’t. You can’t control how others perceive you. But you’re not living this life for them.

“Why me?”

Why not you?

I’m not special. I graduated college without a job (twice) and not for a lack of trying. I felt like a failure for most of my early twenties — broke with no direction and no friends.

There are moments in my life where a sense of knowing washes over me seemingly out of nowhere. Time freezes. It’s random but feels significant, akin to deja vu or some sort of out of body experience. I call them mental snapshots and I keep a log of them in a special section of my journal.

One of these snapshots was back in August 2020 — it was 8pm. I was sitting alone surrounded by a mountain of unsold bags and half constructed packing boxes, staring at my Shopify dashboard. $834. We had only sold 3 bags that whole month, six months after launch. I felt so lost.

And I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but time stood still for a second and I knew with conviction that I would one day look back at this exact moment and give 24 year old Jenny a hug and tell her that it all worked out okay. The first two years were really slow, but we kept moving forward. And today over $10 million in sales later, I think we’re okay. And we’re just getting started.

Don’t give up on your dreams.