You can’t stay in the pre-launch phase forever — Founder Lessons 001
By: Jessica B
Tags: Startup Life, Entrepreneurship, Founders, Startup Lessons, Founder Stories

What more could the world want from me? *internal screams* this was me for the past couple of months

Welcome to Founder Lessons 001! In this series, I give you all the gems, lessons, and mistakes so you don’t have to make the same ones again! We see so much content online about the successes of people’s businesses (no shade), but we hardly see content about the hard-learned truths. Entrepreneurship is not a walk in the park, and hopefully, this series of blog posts should give you that insight into the realities of entrepreneurship.

For the newbies here, I’m the Founder of Baked Kurls — the world’s first CBD-infused, natural hair care brand dedicated to kinky and curly hair textures. I’m a philosopher, student Trichologist, creative, techie, playlist curator and sometimes I create digital content. Ok, now we’re well acquainted, let’s get into the stuff you came here for. Here are the lessons I’ve learned since launching my business:

Lesson #1 — Doing things by the book, means a lot of time just… waiting

One of the things I wanted to do from the jump with Baked Kurls was to do “everything by the book” — what I mean here is to make sure that I had all my legal documents in place before I launched.

This was really important to me because I didn’t just want to get products out there without having the legal backing in place needed. For me, this meant registering my business as an LTD, buying a domain name, setting up an email, having accounting software for taxes in place for when I begin trading, and most importantly getting my products verified by a lab to make sure that my formulas are safe for use.

Since I work with CBD, my formulas are pretty groundbreaking in the sense that there are not a lot of people/companies who have the same ingredient combinations and quantities as my formulas. I also wanted to create products that are safe, and although I had created hair care products for myself 2 years before this, I knew that this is not the same as selling products to the public. Working with a lab or chemist in the beginning stages can be pretty pricey, and this definitely does raise up your startup costs, however, this is really important because you’d rather get the green light from a professional in the beginning, rather than looking to start selling your product and then have customers tell you that your products are harmful to their skin or giving them an allergic reaction. All of this could have been avoided if you had shown your formula quantities to a professional in the beginning so that they can give you advice on alterations.

One obvious con to this is that with a lot of things like getting Product Safety Reports done, there is a waiting time for processing. Of course, since we are in a global crisis, this is even slower. But the long-term peace of mind is something that you can’t get by just making a product, selling it, and hoping for the best. If you are thinking about launching a business in the beauty industry, or you have already launched, I’m begging you to get your reports done!

Lesson #2 — Imposter syndrome lives on

Hi, my name is Jessica, and I have imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome, in a nutshell, is the feeling of believing that you are “inadequate”, or a “fraud” in your field, or that you don’t deserve your accomplishments because there is someone “better suited” or “more qualified to do what you’re doing”. I used to feel this in the past, but not so much. However, as soon as I started calling myself a Founder or a business owner, this feeling went into overdrive.

I didn’t have a lot of people to compare myself to, and this further brought on the feelings of angst that maybe I’m not the one to do this job I’ve given myself. Because I don’t have anyone to compare myself to, or because I don’t have the same resources or privileges that others do when starting a business, does not mean that I’m not good enough to start a business? Without a doubt, no. After all my wins or accomplishments, I always found myself in mental limbo, constantly asking myself if I’m the person to do this or maybe someone else is better suited for the task? To be honest, I declined a lot of opportunities in the past because of this, and I need to take a moment to apologise to my future self for doing this… sorry.

Once I gave myself the grace to understand these feelings, I had to accept that imposter syndrome will never really go away. It’s here to stay and that’s ok. It is how you treat yourself after these feelings come up that’s important. I’ve learnt to be kinder to myself, and tell myself I am enough, and I am more than capable of doing this. Self-affirmation is key here.

Lesson #3 — Never neglect product design/development

This may be an obvious lesson here, but for some reason, I didn’t understand this lesson until I made the mistake. One thing about me is that sometimes if I’m nervous about completing a certain task, I am great at putting this off until the very last minute when I can’t avoid it at all. This is what happened with my product labels.

I’ll set the scene: it’s two weeks to go until the launch, I decide it’s time to tackle my product labels. Obviously, I’m already panicking. I’m not going to lie, I had a lot of anxiety around my labels because of the fact that my products are infused with CBD. The labeling requirements for CBD products were so intricate, and a lot of statements were needed in comparison to regular cosmetic labels.

The before and after speaks volumes

As you can see above, I ordered some product labels which were absolutely terrible. After a strongly worded email, I was able to get a free replacement for my labels, and I took this as an opportunity to change the size and design of the labels slightly, focusing on size, dimensions, and spacing. I really cut it close when doing this, and luckily my labels came in time for the launch.

For most businesses, product design is super important as it is one of the things that a customer views when encountering your brand. It’s even more important if your business is in the e-commerce space, your product represents the brand, you could even say that it is at the core of your business.

So with all this importance held on my labels, I learned as soon as I received the first version of the labels, that I had to fix up in the future, this was not something that I wanted to do, especially if the mistake was easily avoidable.

Lesson #4 — You can’t stay in the pre-launch phase forever

I saved this lesson until last because this one is a biggie, it’s one of the reasons that I decided to start this series.

A quick backstory:

The concept of Baked Kurls came to life in 2018.

The screaming and shouting about the brand, didn’t start until March 2020.

The launch of the online store came about on Black Friday, November 27th, 2020.

Can you see the issue here? There’s a 2-year gap between the conception of the business, and the beginning of the pre-launch promotion. There’s also an 8-month gap between pre-launch promotion and actually launching. This happened for many reasons, first is simply because of funding, I had to accumulate some funding (either through grants or through personal investment) before I could launch. More importantly, the second reason is that I’m a perfectionist.

Hi, my name is Jessica and I have imposter syndrome and I’m a perfectionist.

To be fair, some people could argue that what I did here is a normal timescale, and some would argue against that. I don’t really know what the answer is to that question, but I can tell you this: staying in the pre-launch phase for a long time (whatever you deem “long” to be) is harmful to your business. When buzz is created around a brand, you can’t do it forever, especially in the time that we’re in, people lose interest quickly, people consume so much content everyday you can’t keep regurgitating the same type of content, especially as a brand who relies on social media to build awareness. Also, the pre-launch phase is draining, staying in one phase for a long period of time can make you lose passion or interest in the business altogether and that’s where I was mentally getting close to.

All throughout my life, whatever I did, I wanted it to be perfect because I saw it as a representation of me. Being a perfectionist can sometimes have its benefits because you want to make sure that you release something to the world that doesn’t look half-hearted, however how long can you keep holding off something until it’s not perfect? Have you ever created something, and changed it around so many times that now you can’t even tell whether it’s good anymore? I’ve been there, I’m always there. It got to that stage with Baked Kurls. I had a lot of issues getting ready to launch as you do, and it definitely set me back quite a lot. And as a perfectionist, one thing I can say is Baked Kurls is honestly only halfway where I wanted it to be when it launched. However, I had to get comfortable with the brand being “imperfect”. This is because I can now test things in quicker sprints, realise issues that I couldn’t have if I was still in pre-launch mode, the list goes on.

“Perfectionism is self-abuse at the highest order.” — Anne Wilson Schaef

Conclusion

Writing this piece was a really good opportunity for me to reflect on these past few months, it’s been a rollercoaster and a ton of lessons learned. I hope this post gives you an insight into my thought processes and realities as a Founder. I know that I said in the beginning that entrepreneurship isn’t pretty, but the true reality of it is it is fascinating, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. As I move into the next phase of my business, I’m sure that there will be a ton of lessons learned again too, so I look forward to bringing you along this journey with me.