From Feb 2010 – about three months after announcing we were closing Affirmagy.
I’ve never not been successful at something before. I always make it work. I am an entrepreneur through and through. And prior to Affirmagy, I started Design Duo Inc, a graphic design and marketing studio. I’ve always made DD work. Through our start up years in the 90s, through the dot com bust in the early 2000s, through Graves’ Disease that seriously set my butt down for the better part of 2004.
I’ve co-owned a seasonal consulting company.
I’ve helped starts up take off, and watched as they’ve stumbled.
I’ve run non-profit boards.
I’ve bought and sold investment real estate. All on my own. Little old me.
I set me sights on something and I make it work.
I always make it work. Until Affirmagy. And then I experienced what it’s like to not have something work. To spend all your money, chasing your dream. To follow your gut, your passion, your vision up and down and in and out.
To step into the great unknown. To leap without a net. To put your own financial health and that of your business partner on the line. To be scared to death and in action anyway. To listen to that deep still voice, and follow it. To have the courage to set it all down and celebrate the journey.
And I’ve learned the true power of choosing how to define success.
Affirmagy was an idea on a napkin in late 2004. I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t see it enveloping my life for the better part of three years.
I didn’t see selling my house (in totally committing to Affirmagy, I gave myself 2 years to make it work… having a house and a yard would slow me down, I thought. So the house went and I downsized. Turns out I sold at the height of the market in April 2006. Talk about unseen blessings)
I didn’t see at the end of three years together, my man – who was in my life from 2005 to 2008 – would tell me he thought I didn’t have a viable business and he didn’t think I would be successful.
I didn’t see not taking a paycheck for 2+ years, and that my business partner would come to work day after day, month after month, because she believes in me.
I didn’t see the tens of thousands of lives we touched. The letters. The stories. The days I would read emails from our customers and I’d cry and cry moved by the compassion and love human beings are capable of expressing.
I didn’t see getting partnering with Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Susan G Komen. I didn’t see creating fundraisers for kids to go to church camp, and raise money to go to take care of elephants in Thailand, and build schools in Malawi (my thanks to Linda Reppond for reminding me). I didn’t see articles in national newsstand magazines, and being considered by a senior producer for the most popular daytime talk show ever. O my! I didn’t see the hundreds of people I’ve met and letters I’ve received. And the countless who told us our blankets helped them say the things they couldn’t when their loved ones were transitioning.
I didn’t see getting on QVC and the financial heartbreak that it was. And the blessing it became.
I didn’t see grieving my identity as the owner of Design Duo after 10 years… and having to reconcile that it wasn’t a step backwards coming back and being that again. (To my shock and delight our past clients we THRILLED we were back in the design/marketing/branding game. I had no idea we left a hole when we stopped taking new work in 2006).
I didn’t see gaining such deep levels of strength, resolve, resiliency and fearlessness that were either a part of me already, or that I gained during this journey.
And I didn’t see that an idea on a napkin would shape the rest of my life by not fully taking flight. You can call Affirmagy a failure. I call it one of my greatest creations and greatest successes to date.
In the coming days I’ll being sharing the lessons I’ve learned and the incredible gift this company has been in my life.
Stay tuned…..
