Mixed is turning 3 this week! The past 3 years have been an intense, condensed crash course on all things entrepreneurship, fashion, and e-commerce. If you didn't know—before Mixed, I was a middle school teacher. I had no formal background in design or fashion, and yet, through curiosity, consistency, and a lot of support from others, Mixed has become a recognizable brand with a tight following and a business that I’m proud of. I’ve learned so much. I've failed so much. I’ve changed so much. Today, I want to share 3 lessons I've learned over the past 3 years:
1. You already know what you need to do, you’re just not doing it. Figure out why.
I was looking back at some of my notes from years 1 and 2 and realized that I'm still dealing with some of the same challenges today, but I've shown little or no change in my behavior. For years, I’ve known what the problem is, I created a plan of action to overcome it, but…I just didn’t do it. Why not? That’s the juicy question we need to answer to break through. Oftentimes, our blocks in business are personal ones, rather than a lack of skill or intelligence. It’s the really hard human stuff that gets in our way. Get to the heart of it and get out of your own way.
2. Building a business is an exercise in learning how to allocate resources in the highest leverage places.
This one's all about focus. And focusing on the right levers. Entrepreneurs tend to have Shiny Object Syndrome, aka paying attention to lots of different things at once. The paradox is that, in the beginning this helps you—as an entrepreneur, you need to multitask like a mad woman to get things off the ground. But in the next level of entrepreneurship, you need to focus in on the highest leverage opportunities. Unfortunately, focus isn’t sexy. It’s pretty tedious, boring and hard. It’s easier to shift your focus to something new, shiny, and sexy. But if you keep shifting your focus, it’s difficult to make real progress. You may push forward on a few new fronts, but you’re not taking big leaps forward. Learning how to put your most valuable resources (time and money) to use in the highest leverage places leads to meaningful growth. How can you make $5k work hardest for you? Do you hire someone (if so, what role?), spend it on marketing, purchase inventory? Where is your time most valuable? Is it on product, hiring, marketing? Getting clear on your highest leverage opportunities makes it so that you get the most out of what you put in. This is how you win.
3. Your creative vision will somehow always elude you.
Even after you feel you’ve done your greatest work, weeks later you’ll have shifted your standards and no longer feel satisfied with what you created. Part of this probably has to do with the speed at which we consume and create stuff these days. So I find it helpful to honor my full body of work, even if it no longer meets my standards today. I have a wall of framed photos in the studio with at least one photo from each of Mixed’s photoshoots dating back to our very first one in the summer of 2021. When I look at all these photos together, I can stop and appreciate the brand’s creative progression rather than just focusing on where I’m falling short today. I feel proud of what I’ve created, how far we’ve come, and feel excited for where we’ll continue to go. Creating is not about perfection, it's about iteration.
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The past 3 years have been absolutely iconic. Not without its challenges of course, but I deeply love what I get to do. I'm so grateful to have the honor of dressing you and I hope we've inspired you to live life in more color. I hope we've inspired you to start, whatever that means to you. And once you start, I hope you keep going.
Thank you so much for all your support over the years. Here’s to Mixed’s 3rd birthday, and many more to come—we’re only just getting started :)
~Nasrin