How To Do It Yourself
In the absence of a team
“It’s just you?????” is something I hear often. Yes, but also no. The truth is two fold, as it often is. Technically I am Nelle Atelier’s only full time employee. Employee is a funny word given that I don’t get paid but we’ll leave that here for the time being.
When you are starting a business you will NEED to learn to love the DIY. This is probably the biggest red flag I see when I talk to founders - the idea that any job is above or beneath them. Before we get any further - if you really want to do this, you have to internalize that the buck stops with you.
I like to think of things in buckets:
The Jobs I Literally Cannot Do: they require hard skills and I would need to go back to school (HA)
The Jobs Technology Can Do (or can help me do): what are the tools at my disposal that scale my efforts or compensate for my lack of expertise?
The Jobs I Don’t Want To Do But Am Capable of Doing: Unfortunately, you have to suck it up here
The Jobs I Am Good At: my bread and butter
This is how you figure out the help you actually need to move the business forward. In my case, as outlined by the examples below:
The Jobs I Literally Cannot Do:
Product Design: I provide direction and mood boards (you’ll find this under jobs I don’t want to do but am capable of) but I am not an apparel designer, so this was a big one I needed to get right early on. Our first designer was a freelancer from UpWork - I drove down to San Diego from LA with our samples for every fitting. It was bare bones but it got me to a place where I knew people would swipe their credit card for my product. Once I knew that, I invested in proper design support.
Certain aspects of E-Commerce Management: Nelle is built on Shopify so much of the site management is self service. I upload new products and manage small changes to the site. Some of the stuff is above my pay grade and requires a Shopify developer to update. She supports me in more ways than one helping to manage larger launches and site upgrades in addition to being an amazing thought partner and friend. She is an engineer, I am not.
Growth Marketing: We have not run ads yet but we do send emails! I had 0 experience when it came to growth marketing before starting Nelle so I had to outsource this. Designing and writing emails to optimize conversion is a skill - since I didn’t have the expertise, it made sense for me to hire fractional help. Especially given that email is one of our two main marketing channels.
The Jobs Technology Can do:
Graphic Design: Sorry, this is an unpopular opinion. You need graphic designers for big projects. You do not need them for small ones. Canva is my best friend. I have made every event invite, ad test, deck etc… on the platform. It costs $11/ month. Enough said.
Influencer Gifting/Affiliate Management: As a founder, I think it helps A LOT to build influencer relationships yourself. I had outsourced this at the beginning and quickly clawed it back. It’s more authentic if it comes from you. I spend hours scrolling IG and Tiktok to find short girls who are the right fit for my brand. ShopMy makes the gifting and affiliate process extremely user friendly for both parties.
The Jobs I Don’t Want To Do but am Capable of Doing:
Creative Direction: This is not my comfort zone (I’m an operator) but alas here I am. Mood boarding for the season and planning our photoshoots gives me agita. That being said, the more I do it, the more comfortable I become. I also think it is forcing me to crystallize my vision for the brand so I am glad I have not given this up quite yet.
Inventory Planning: This causes me a lot of stress but I do it because I need to be in tight control of this aspect of the business. I do all our demand planning myself and write all PO’s. This way I know what is coming in and what is going out - it helps me control our cash flow. I am sure there are people that are better at this than me but I am good enough. No one else is watching our demand play out in real time.
The Jobs I am Good At:
Strategy: I spent ten years getting good at this. I have a vision and I tweak it as I get more data. I think about this company 24/7 and I LOVE thinking about all the new ways we can delight our customers.
Pop-Ups and Events: I love planning our pop-ups and events, so I do most of this myself, bringing in different vendors for support when needed.
Product Development: I manage all the back and forth with our factories. I have done this my entire career so I am comfortable working across cultures and communication styles.
This list is not exhaustive by any means. Although I am a solo founder, I do have help. The important thing is to understand (and be honest about) what you can do yourself and what you absolutely need to outsource. I always advocate for understanding your customer and market before investing a ton of resources and capital into something. Nine times out of ten your customer has it’s own ideas of how it wants things done. Be scrappy.