PINTEREST

Sometimes, taking time off to evaluate your priorities is the healthiest thing you can do for your business (and yourself). It allows you to evaluate whats working, whats not, and whats really important. For Lisa Hackwith, taking time has led to much success: After she graduated from college with an art degree, she took a year off to research MFA programs when she discovered her medium – sewing, designing and making clothes. Over the next five years, Lisa sewed daily and sold her work on her Etsy shop and through wholesale orders, but in order to make her business sustainable, something had to change.

In February 2013, Lisa again took time off to rework her business model and re-launched Hackwith Design House in September 2013. The new model centered on her priorities: staying in Minneapolis, manufacturing all the clothing in the U.S. and making sure she loves everything with her name on it. As a result of this time, her limited-edition model was born where 2-4 designs are released every Monday, with no more than 25 pieces of each. Since then, Lisa has hired three seamstresses and has partnered with Erin Husted to run operations. She hasnt looked back since! Today, Lisa and Erin are chatting with us about the four things that have forever changed Hackwith Design House and have made it a success, including, you guessed it, making sure you take time off.  -Sabrina

Both of our parents were entrepreneurs who had a lot to say about what it means to own a small business. Lisa’s parents were optometrists who owned their own practice, and Erin’s dad is a financial advisor with his own branch supported by her mom as his branch manager. We met in college and stayed friends after Erin moved to New York for law school.  When Erin moved back to Minneapolis after practicing law for a couple years, we realized that we had an opportunity to partner together to grow Hackwith Design House (HDH).  It’s hard work being a small business owner.  While you are independent from a boss and “management,” you are bound to creating and maintaining a profitable business.  It’s rewarding and exhausting, exhilarating and risky.  We love what we do, but through frustrating failures and disappointing outcomes, we have learned a few things along the way.  It’s our privilege to get to share them here.

1. Start with what you know and love.

When starting a new business, begin where you are comfortable.  Lisa started HDH on Etsy making orders as they came in.  Starting small gave her the time and experience to build her expertise and hone her craft. When she launched her own online store in September 2013, she’d put in the 10,000 hours suggested by Gladwell. and she knew what business model best allowed her to do what she enjoyed.  She started with what she knew and loved, and taking the risk to start a business out of that led to some success.

It’s also important to know what you don’t know. Find the people who do know what you don’t, and ask for help (we have found this organization helpful).  Surround yourself with people smarter than you.  Keep in mind that if you don’t love what you’re doing, it will be incredibly difficult to put in the time to make it succeed.

2. Take risks.  

As usual, we agree with Amy Poehler, “great people do things before they are ready.”  While it’s easy to want to keep researching, practicing, and preparing, at some point, you have to dive in.  It’s scary, but it’s the only way you’ll have a chance at succeeding.  Don’t settle with where your at. Taking risks will help you diversify, and diversification will help you take more risks. Our Makers Alongside project, which allows us to be the buyer and to promote and support other like-minded small business owners, was not instantly successful, and we are still building it.  We can continue to do so because we have a variety of products in our store.

3. Trust your instincts.   

By the time you’ve done the work to start your own business, your gut will know things that your brain can’t necessarily identify. Go with your gut. Common sense matters in business. Work with people you trust. We have had meetings with people that say all the right things, but we both felt there was something off.  When we continued to work with someone after a feeling like that, we realized we should have listened to our instincts.  If for some reason you feel unsettled about something, there is probably a reason.  You don’t have to explain it or justify it, just listen.

Both of our dads often told us that the best way to have a stable portfolio is to diversify, diversify, diversify. Your investments should not be all in one place.  Spread them out, or you become someone who loses everything when the tech bubble bursts or the real estate market collapses. So when we joined forces last spring, we started talking about how to diversify HDH’s business. Out of those conversations, and through listening to people smarter than us, we pursued a number of wholesale accounts so that now our business is split fairly evenly between online sales and wholesales. This in turn gave us the capacity to launch a new line, HDH Basics. which remains in stock on our website all the time. Just a few weeks ago, on January 26, we launched our second line, HDH Swim, which will have ever rotating styles of swimwear.

Once you have taken that leap and started somewhere in which your expertise can shine, you have to build out a business that can be maintained, even through a down market. Move some eggs to different baskets. If you have a strong online store, start building up your wholesale accounts. If you have solid wholesale customers, figure out how to do some direct retailing. If you have one really successful product, use that to launch a different one that appeals to a new market of customers. In our experience, talking with other small business owners or other people in our field helped us think through the best ways to diversify.

Part of diversification is making room for the next idea. You can build a business on elbow grease and adrenaline alone, but to maintain it, you have to take time to rest, to be inspired. You have to sit back and let your mind take a break so that the next idea has room to get in. We find it incredibly helpful to have a weekly concept meeting that forces us to sit down and just talk about the big picture.  At first it felt like we didn’t have time, but without an intentional meeting that compels us to get outside of the daily minutiae, it’s easy to get bogged down by running the business. If you’re constantly working, then you might not be able to see the next steps. Give yourself a vacation, take a day off, enjoy a long lunch break. Find the time to talk through your dreams, your goals, and get creative about how to reach those.

We are constantly reminding ourselves of these four things. We check in with one another and see how we are doing on living up to our own advice. We hope you find this helpful, and thank you for reading. We wish you the best of luck as you pursue your dream and build your business!  And we leave you with the ever wonderful words of Maya Angelou, “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

Fantastic advice! I love your HDH even more now!

This is a really empowering interview for me. I am a designer and new mom trying to find my path back to doing what I love the way that Lisa has taken time to cut away what is not necessary and focus on what works.

Such an inspirational post

I love this interview. I particularly love the quote that part of diversification is making room for the next idea. I think a lot of small business owners dont give themselves the brain space for proper innovation. That is a tough, but important, lesson to learn.

Im proud to have HDH here in Minneapolis. This is such a cool city to be in right now for art / design, and theyre definitely part of what makes that community strong. When I decided to put down roots here I was worried I might miss opportunities only available in NYC or LA, but I really think Mpls has so much to offer.

Great article. Three cheers for HDHs choice to use swim suit models with healthy/realistic bodies!!

THANK YOU so much for this interview! This is exactly what I needed to read/hear at this point in my business. I think I need to hang a huge banner in my studio saying make room for the next idea so Ill remember this

essential step in staying inspired and creative.

Really inspiring, and loved the part about diversifying. Thanks so much for sharing! I will definitely apply all of it to my future business plans

Terrific advice!

Thanks. This interview confirmed my thoughts and gut instinct about my brand. Especially, the diversification part.