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6. Seeking Option "C" with Margo Stoney
20 Plays2 years ago
Sometimes you have to step back to take a step forward.
Margo Stoney, Founder of High Mountain Creative, knows this all too well. Her entrepreneur origin story has a few stops and starts, but she’s grateful for the ups, downs, and turnarounds that got her where she is today.
A graphic designer by trade, and a snowboarder by choice, Margo lives for fresh powder, passport stamps, and outdoor adventures with her pup Rico. Though she remembers her years in corporate life fondly, insatiable wanderlust eventually won out.
Learn how she honed her craft on the open road—and the #vanlife malfunction that led her to cross paths with her now-husband. Then hear about the climate crisis reality check that pivoted her entire business model toward supporting conservation nonprofits and sustainable brands.
“Choose your eco focus and run with it,” Margo advises fellow entrepreneurs struggling with climate anxiety. Whether it’s integrated into your business, personal life, or both, small steps can make a big impact. Volunteering for trash pickups, planting trees, sustainable commuting, upcycling, and embracing Leave No Trace ethics while recreating are just a few ways to get started.
At every turn, Margo has a knack for finding (or creating) an “Option C” in situations that seem black and white. If you’ve ever wanted to infuse more purpose into your work (without going back to school for a Masters Degree in Biology), press play.
For more inspiration, subscribe to Unbound Turnarounds on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts!
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Transcript
Introduction to Unbound Turnarounds
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Unbound Turnarounds, a podcast all about the challenges women business owners think about constantly but rarely voice. We're Nicole and Mallory, entrepreneurs, friends, and co-founders of Business Unbound, a community helping women alleviate the headaches, heartaches, and backaches so work actually works for life.
Mission of Business Unbound
00:00:23
Speaker
This is your safe space for the ups, downs, and the turnarounds.
00:00:32
Speaker
Welcome back to Unbound Turnarounds. Mallory, it's good to see you today and hear your
Winter in Montana & Guest Introduction
00:00:37
Speaker
voice. How's it going up there in the frozen north? It's good. I'm glad to be here. It's a little chilly. We are full on into winter now. And I guess we'll just stay this way for several slash many months. Many months, that is correct.
00:00:52
Speaker
But I am mostly excited because we have another guest today.
Margo's Career & Personal Interests
00:00:56
Speaker
And today we have Margo Stoney with us. Margo is a Montana-based creative who's dedicated to using graphic design to save the planet. So I cannot wait to get into this. She runs a design studio called High Mountain Creative, where she collaborates with conservation and environmental nonprofits to develop visual storytelling pieces that raise awareness, increase impact,
00:01:19
Speaker
and make environmental causes easier to understand and more accessible to everyone. In her free time, Margot likes to snowboard, so she probably loves living in Winter Wonderland, Montana. She likes to hike and explore new places while looking at birds and sketching in her notebook along the way. She lives in Missoula with her husband Isaac and border collie Rico.
00:01:43
Speaker
Welcome Margo. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. What a wonderful intro. Thank you. Yes, of course. So just a reminder to our listeners in this first series, we're digging into the whys behind women starting their own companies, because those motivations can definitely be diverse. But we're really excited to talk to you and share your perspective because you're working for a really specific cause. And we want to hear kind of from you how that role influences your decisions around your business.
00:02:12
Speaker
But before we get into that, we kind of have to set the stage for how you got to where you are now.
Margo's Snowboarding Journey
00:02:17
Speaker
So can you tell us a little bit about your early career in the outdoor industry before you pivoted to nonprofit services? Yes. Let's rewind to 1996 when I first discovered snowboarding. I grew up in Michigan. Me too!
00:02:31
Speaker
Then you know that Michigan is not well known for snowboarding or snow or mountains or anything like that, but I loved it. I was 11 years old. My brother sort of taught me and by taught me, I mean probably pushed me down the hill when I wasn't ready. And ever since then, everything was snowboarding. I loved reading the magazines. I would go every day. And then when I was 16, I got a job working as a snowboard instructor at Mount Brighton, which was our little local neighborhood hill.
00:02:57
Speaker
From there, I just had this excitement about the snowboard industry and just all that it entailed. And when I was 16 years old, I was in high school and there was an opportunity to go do a vocational school where half the day you go to your normal classes and then the other half of the day you go to this other school where there's
00:03:17
Speaker
students from around other areas and there was cooking in like auto shop and then I remember walking through the technical school area where there was a graphic design class and somebody that I knew who was a skateboarder was in Adobe Photoshop designing skateboards.
00:03:34
Speaker
And I cruised behind him while we were on this tour and I said, oh, Patrick, what are you doing? You're designing a skateboard. What is that? And he said, oh, this is Adobe Photoshop. This is design from that moment. And I went home that day and I said, mom and dad, I want to go take this class and learn how to do graphic design so that I can design snowboards. Basically, this was the early stages of me realizing maybe I could have a career that marries like my love for snowboarding and like this career as a design.
00:03:59
Speaker
professional. So that was kind of where it all sparked. From there, I went off to college doing graphic design. All of my student projects were women's snowboard companies and catalogs doing just everything. And again, I was still living in Michigan. So a lot of my instructors were just like, cool, go get them because a lot of folks were like agency focused or, you know, I'm going to go work for in the automotive industry in Detroit and things like that. And me and there are maybe two or three other kids that were like skateboarding and snowboarding. And we were really
00:04:25
Speaker
focused and dedicated to this one thing. And so that's driven everything. I was really lucky in college to have two internships. I worked
Career Moves in Colorado & Tahoe
00:04:33
Speaker
the summer I was 19. I moved to Denver and got to intern at Never Summer Snowboards. And at the time I had gone to the printer and gotten these cool 11 by 17 resume portfolio things made and just mailed them. I went through
00:04:46
Speaker
the snow sports industry of America catalog that had all of the names and addresses of the snowboard companies. And I just sent these out in mass numbers. And they were the only one that responded. It wasn't a design internship. It was just, yeah, come in, like help us in the front office.
00:05:01
Speaker
And then one day I got to know Jeremy, who is still the creative director in Never Summer. I got to know him and I said, you know, I'm a graphic design major and I showed him some of my work and the next day he had let me design some t-shirts and hang tags. My love for the outdoors and snowboarding kind of married together with my career. That all started when I was 11 years old and then it just snowballed, no pun intended from there.
00:05:23
Speaker
That's so fun that you do what you wanted to do. I'm having flashbacks now because I had one course in business school that I liked, Mallory's heard me say this, and it was the graphic design and business class. And I was like, these are my people. Like I've been stuck in these accounting classes and stats and all the things. And it was like the first time I heard of Adobe Illustrator. And I was just like, I love this.
00:05:47
Speaker
And then when I went out to find a job, I created these little graphic design booklets and I sent them to places and they were all specific to the companies and I would bring them on my interviews and that's what helped get me my first job. So I feel very seen by this story. So then you go into this as a career, you're out of school and you do this, but fairly quickly was it or not that you decided to make a big change?
00:06:13
Speaker
It was not immediate, no. So in 2007, I graduated from art school and I bought a four-wheel drive vehicle and I drove to Colorado immediately. And I got a really cool job right off the bat working for the Vale Daily newspaper. They needed second shift graphic designers. It worked from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., which to most people sounds absolutely disgusting.
00:06:36
Speaker
But for somebody who really wanted to take a gap year after college to be a ski bum, like this was the perfect job. So did that for a couple of years. Yeah, you could ski during the day. Oh yeah, it was great. My first season in Colorado, I think I skied 120 days. It was amazing.
00:06:52
Speaker
And then also during that time, and this kind of segues into my career in the actual like ski resort industry, I took a job working for the Vale daily, which is all very ski resort focused and you know, ski town and everything. The first year I was living out there, I thought it would be a good idea to do part-time seasonal work as a snowboard instructor at Beaver Creek.
00:07:11
Speaker
which meant some days, I think it was maybe 20 days a season, I would snowboard instruct all day, get done at four o'clock, and then go to the newspaper job. But I got a free pass. If you know anything about Beaver Creek, the tips were pretty solid. And it also got me on the ground floor of Vail Resorts, which I did not know in the future would be so helpful to me. But two years later, when I moved to Lake Tahoe,
00:07:34
Speaker
I didn't have a plan. I had taken a vacation with some girlfriends to Lake Tahoe and I loved it and I was 24, 25 and I was like, yeah, I'm going to go. And I got a random job working at an art gallery doing sales, which nobody should have ever hired me to do.
00:07:49
Speaker
That also led to design work, but that's another tale for another time. But I got another part-time job in addition to the gallery doing these marketing surveys for Vail Resorts. So I would ride on the chairlift with guests and I had this little yellow PDA and it was net promoter score stuff. Then I became a lead. I was working right below the manager, like leading the team.
00:08:11
Speaker
All the while, I'm still like freelancing on the side. I'm taking logo projects and some random stuff I can get here and there just to make some extra money and not go totally stagnant with design.
Reflections & Desire for Flexibility
00:08:22
Speaker
I was doing really good. I thought I was like ready to go full time with my business. I was making okay money. I had some good clients and then I had two things in a row that happened that made me realize that I wasn't ready. And one was of course your favorite, getting burned by a client and not having a very large invoice being paid.
00:08:40
Speaker
And then another one was a woman who didn't like a logo that I designed for her and then started to threaten me if I didn't give her her like $200 back or whatever ridiculously low price I was charging for logos at the time. With those two things I just felt like it wasn't going to happen and at the same time
00:08:57
Speaker
I was working at Heavenly Mountain Resort in Lake Tahoe and somebody in the marketing department said, hey, there's this marketing coordinator role that's opening up. It's full time year round, great benefits and an awesome team. And so I applied for that and worked my way up at Vail Resorts. And now I was working full time year round and then.
00:09:14
Speaker
had a really awesome boss who went to bat for me to eventually make my marketing coordinator role a full-time graphic design job. And so doing graphic design at the ski resort, I'm just totally helping them bring their brand all together. Everybody at the whole resort was emailing me to ask me for help with things. It was really validating and I learned so much being part of this huge team and working with some really smart marketing and strategy people.
00:09:41
Speaker
And after a few years doing that, I felt like I was really ready to try again to go off on my own. It also coincided with my first trip ever to Europe. I was 27 or 28 years old. And then I also got the travel bug. And I remember coming home from that trip and thinking, well, I just spent all of my vacation time and all of my money on this two week trip to Europe. And I need to do this more.
00:10:04
Speaker
And I think that that's going to be another big benefit to me running a business and working for myself full time. And so 2014, I quit my job and moved back to Michigan and set up shop. So that was the big transition from working full time for somebody else to working full time for myself.
00:10:23
Speaker
So let me pause here before we dive into the big pivot and why you're doing things the way you are now. But what I like is that you seem to have an overall pretty positive experience working in the corporate world and you had a really good manager, which is huge and seems like you got a lot of really good skills and you were.
00:10:40
Speaker
living in a place where it seems like where you live is very important to you and your hobbies. So what were the little niggles in your brain that maybe continuing in that particular lifestyle, even though you were doing it really well, that you might want something else long-term? Was it some of the flexibility pieces, ability to travel more? What about the structure of that lifestyle did and didn't really work for you when you thought about the future?
00:11:06
Speaker
This one might be a little tough because I really did have a great setup. The lifestyle was really fun and obviously I loved snowboarding all the time and I had a lot of great friends and if you've ever been to Lake Tahoe in the summer it's like Beach City but sometimes with those towns and anybody who's lived there knows that it is like Peter Pan Never Never Land sometimes and
00:11:26
Speaker
I was frustrated with dating and a lot of my friends were getting married or like pairing off and I was one of the only single people left. So from like a personal standpoint, I was feeling a little bit like the lifestyle wasn't fulfilling me as much anymore. And I knew that I was going to have to take that step back to take another step forward, which was moving back to Michigan. When I moved back to Michigan, I literally didn't know what I was going to be doing. I didn't know if I was going to end up back out West. I knew I wanted to do some travel immediately, but I didn't know
00:11:55
Speaker
what that was going to look like.
Freelance Beginnings & Environmental Focus
00:11:57
Speaker
So yeah, a lot of it was, like I said, travel and the flexibility and variety of the types of projects. As I went into my second or third season at the ski resort, it was very cyclical, which was good as far as learning the ropes and everything. But then after a while, I felt like, oh, well, now it's August. It's time to start working on the trail map again.
00:12:17
Speaker
And now it's January, we have these events coming up and I'm going to just update the poster from last year. I sort of started to feel stagnant. And so I really wanted to be able to have more variety and be able to take on the types of clients and the type of work I wanted and decide how much I make when I was working and where I was working. I think at the time I didn't necessarily like know all of those things, but now looking back on it, I realized that's what I needed. And that's what was going to be the perfect combination.
00:12:46
Speaker
Well, so tell me when you did decide to quit that particular job and go out on your own full time, were you in the same sort of mode of, I'm going to take every project now. You know, we'll get to it, but you're very honed in on your purpose currently. But I'm guessing in the beginning, and this was, you know, you're 16 years into entrepreneurship now, which is insane and congratulations. What was it like at the very beginning? Were you like, every project? Yes. Doesn't matter. Doing it. Logos for everybody.
00:13:14
Speaker
I was lucky enough that by the time I had quit my job, I'd already probably been freelancing because I started freelancing when I was in college. I was lucky enough to kind of just say, hey, clients, I'm doing this full time now. And the referrals came in. I will also say that maybe I cheated a little bit because I hired my former employer back as a client. They were one of my first big clients.
00:13:39
Speaker
They came to me eight months later and said, we miss you. Can you work with us on a contractor basis? And that was really satisfying. It felt a little bit like training wheels, but it's what I needed at the time. Speaking of full circle things, I also went back and was working at Mount Brighton doing some marketing for them. And I would be on site helping with events and doing some design execution and things like that, because
00:14:02
Speaker
Mount Brighton is also part of the Vale Resorts family now. Heavenly is part of Vale Resorts. They were sort of all under the same umbrella. So I was able to have this one contract and then work with the different resorts. That was really cool for the first couple of years. And then I started feeling the same feelings that I felt when I was working with them before, just the cyclical and feeling a lot of the same projects. And I was also getting ready to just take on some other clients and moving away from more corporate stuff too. Like it was really great for me at the time.
00:14:30
Speaker
That company continues to grow and continues to change the ski industry maybe in a way that I don't appreciate as much as before. Also, that's when I started to get my inkling about what is this doing for the environment and the planet. Tell us more about that. Yes. How did you hone in on wanting to do nonprofit work or work with nonprofit clients?
00:14:51
Speaker
I remember it starting when I still lived in Lake Tahoe and this was probably part of what do I do next process, but I was just frustrated about basically the impact that humans are having on the planet. And I've got to do something else. I'm going to go back to school and get a biology degree or I'm going to go work with wildlife.
00:15:09
Speaker
I felt like I needed to do something that was going to directly help environmental issues, help climate change, help things that were going on on our planet. And it felt really daunting. The idea of going back to school, I also have turned into such a right-brained artist person. I'm like, I could never take a science class or a math class and pass it now.
00:15:31
Speaker
You know, a few years later I started working. It was a referral. It was a nonprofit native fish society in American rivers. I started working with them and at the time it was just work. They need this cool infographic and I'm going to make some graphics and sketches and it was really cool. And I liked the projects and the people I was working with were cool. Then I had that aha moment where I said, well, I don't need to go back to school and become a scientist. I can help these people that are on the front lines.
00:15:58
Speaker
of helping the environment and helping with climate change using graphic design. That's the one thing that I know how to do that they don't. And I can be this bridge of the public and the general population and these scientists and these researchers and these organizations that are doing the work.
00:16:15
Speaker
I was really relieved that I no longer felt pressure to go back to school, but also really excited to just embrace that.
Rebranding & Niche Expertise
00:16:23
Speaker
In 2019, 2020, I did a full rebrand of my business before I was high mountain creative, outdoor industry graphic designer, and then now I'm high mountain creative, nonprofit, environmental graphic designer. How are you going to say it? I'm fully focused on that now.
00:16:40
Speaker
I know there's always the niche first, don't niche argument. And I feel like in my case, I've really been able to do a lot of good by niching down and helping these people. And the thing that I love hearing you talk about that story, and Mallory's heard me say this before, but I'm like an option C person. So it very often feels like you have A or B to choose from. And that for you sounds like it was, well, I could keep doing graphic design the way I'm doing it.
00:17:07
Speaker
not really maybe fulfilling the way that it used to be. Or option B, I could go be a scientist to save the planet. Neither of those feels right. And so you went and made an option C, which was, I'm going to use the skills and the things that I like to do in order to help the planet.
00:17:23
Speaker
And I think that's such a good skill. A lot of people really get stuck in that A or B scenario. And just to be able to say, you know what, I know that's what it's feeling like to me right now that I have two options, but from my experience, there's three and I just have to find that third one.
00:17:40
Speaker
Does that feel like how it felt to you? I love that. It's really nice to hear you say that because I honestly felt like I was taking the easy way out by not going back to school or not doing this huge life pivot. No, you took the creative way. Yeah, exactly. Option C. It's like a pivot in entrepreneurial world. Like you pivoted a little bit from who your dream client was, but you're still the same essence.
00:18:04
Speaker
Just like a lot of entrepreneurs, you're still the same essence, but you're shifting your offering or you're shifting your service. I think it's brilliant and kudos to you. And also thank you for all the work you're doing. Cause that's amazing supporting those organizations who are doing the hard stuff. Because we are not scientists either.
00:18:21
Speaker
And I like how you, even on your site, you sort of frame the fact that you're not a scientist as an advantage, which it is, right? Because you're communicating scientific things to a non-scientific audience, typically. And so when you're looking at something, you can say, does this make sense to an average person?
00:18:40
Speaker
Do you have to be a biologist to understand what this company is doing? And that's your job, to make sure that someone without that background can understand the impact and why it's important to be involved and to turn what you may have initially felt like was a weakness on your part into a strength for
Failures, Growth & Mindset Shifts
00:18:57
Speaker
your clients. That's so option C of you.
00:18:59
Speaker
Let's talk about, though, those first couple years, full time, when you were outside of your career. How has failure been a part of your journey? Has it been a part of your journey? We share certain pieces of our story, we put on a certain mask, but talk to us really about what it really was like those first few years. I think if anybody says that they didn't fail, they're lying. Honestly, it was just a lot of everyday stuff of learning about running a business.
00:19:27
Speaker
filing taxes and contracts with clients. Like that was probably some of the big stuff was just really figuring out who I want to work with and how to filter out the not so good people before it's too late. So there was a lot of failure there, but that just feels like growing pains. I will say I did experience a lot of imposter syndrome with
00:19:48
Speaker
pivoting industries. So if you remember snowboarding, I was doing that since before I was a teenager. And I was a kid, I knew everything about it. It was what I lived and breathed. And then all of a sudden, I'm pivoting and I'm here working with the environment and nonprofits like
00:20:04
Speaker
nonprofits are just whole different ballgame. And so even now I feel some people don't like to say fake it till you make it, but it's just learning as you go. And I learned from my clients every day and I learned from every project that I do. But there were a lot of times when it felt like failure where I felt like I didn't belong working with these people or working on these projects because I had never worked at a nonprofit or I didn't know all the ins and outs of the individual ones.
00:20:32
Speaker
And failure isn't the right word with that, but it definitely was just this growing pain that gave me a lot of doubt. Love what you're hearing? Business Unbound online courses help you implement the ideas from this show and change how your company runs in big and small ways for the better. Our courses are meticulously crafted, packed with tactical tools and solutions, and designed to help women genuinely enjoy the day-to-day business journey.
00:21:00
Speaker
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00:21:30
Speaker
So now you are the 16 year veteran version of who you were. So when you look back at that now, I imagine you do it with a little bit more empathy for your younger entrepreneurial self. And so how do you think about things that don't go perfectly now?
00:21:45
Speaker
I love it and you're probably at this phase too because you're established and every time you fail or every time you figure out something isn't the way that it's supposed to be you say oh cool like one more thing I've learned another feather in my hat and now I know.
00:22:02
Speaker
not to do that next time. And now, if I'm talking to somebody who's a few years behind me in my business journey or my creative journey, I can share that with them. It's just all the live and learn stuff. It's really amazing the way that we can talk to ourselves differently because 10 years ago, if somebody came to me and said, oh, I don't like a logo that you did, I just would fall apart.
00:22:23
Speaker
What you're saying is that you don't like me or my pixels and that's very hurtful. And I should just quit and give up. I will say that it was also a wake up call that, okay, there's something wrong with my process that we got this far, that they don't like the logo. But now if somebody doesn't like a logo, I know the right questions to ask. Is it that they don't like the logo or they're not good at giving feedback or I didn't ask the right questions. You said that so beautifully. It's like you have so much grace for the process now, the experiences of growing in your
00:22:53
Speaker
career and almost not calling them failures, just part of the process. But what is so cool about what you said is a couple of different things. You were talking about imposter syndrome, which I think has come up in quite a few of our episodes already. Yes. So it's something that a lot of entrepreneurs, and I'm going to probably go out on a limb and say, women entrepreneurs think about, and we use that language. But really what it is, is it's us having some intentional, some awareness about ourself of where there are gaps.
00:23:22
Speaker
And then acknowledging it and saying, like, you're saying I learned from my nonprofits every day and you probably still are. So it's really a good thing. And we talk about this in our mindset course, because it's really not a bad thing to have imposter syndrome. It's what you can do with it. If you can take it and fill those gaps and learn, then you're constantly getting further and further and closer and closer to that expertise level.
00:23:45
Speaker
But what I also really like about you said, which is because it was all in this mindset course. It's all in there. It's talking about disassociating your business value from your personal value. Because Nicole was mentioning that. And that your service is not you. And that is something I think we potentially all have our eyeballs into. Why is that so hard?
00:24:05
Speaker
Because it's like you pour everything into your business and it feels like it's you. But to be able to have a healthy relationship with your business, you need to be able to understand it separate from me, right? There are going to be things that people don't like are failures. So I just love that you're like reading our minds because we've talked about this stuff. And it comes up a lot with a lot of people. And it's the kind of thing where, and I didn't do this at the start of my career very well.
00:24:31
Speaker
at all, but I felt like I was a piece of the business I was working on. Not like my business was a piece of the life I was building and I've gotten better about that, but that is a real process. Like you said, I don't think that makes it a failure. It's just now when you talk to people and it could be other entrepreneurs or it could be people working more traditional jobs and you see that. You can see that with individual people.
00:24:55
Speaker
this person is part of their job or this job is part of this person, and that's just a really different lifestyle, I guess I would say, in a different place that you're getting your value. Do you find that that's even a bit more interesting for you since you have pivoted to work that has more inherent value versus separating that from your personal value?
Sustainability & Personal Lifestyle
00:25:18
Speaker
I have a lot of people ask me about doing graphic design for sustainability and the environment and things like that. This may or may not answer your question, but I might get there in a roundabout way. I originally thought that doing this type of work would solve my climate anxiety and that
00:25:35
Speaker
everything would just go away and I would feel really good about everything. But there's still work that has to be done. For me, I still feel guilty when I fly on an airplane and when I buy something that can't be recycled. As far as using that as maybe an example, tying your career to your personal life and to your worth,
00:25:55
Speaker
I think I've gotten really good at separating my emotion from my business. And, you know, I'm working on an annual report right now that is talking about some really sad stuff with the environment. And I have to still remember like not to take that home and let's still just work at the end of the day. And no matter what we're doing, it's something that needs to be separated. And that doesn't mean just because I'm doing really good work with my business doesn't mean that I'm able to do really good work every day in my personal life with sustainability and things like that.
00:26:25
Speaker
It's still a delicate balance. I'm curious because I also have like very high climate anxiety. I would put it probably in my top three anxieties and that is a full list up there, but that's probably top three for me. So I'm curious, what are some of the tools that you have found work for you to manage things that you find triggering, but you can't necessarily fix?
00:26:46
Speaker
How do you disconnect from that? Or how do you compartmentalize that? Or how do you do something more productive with it when you're done working on a project, but you feel like, well, the planet's burning. I like to just pick the few things that I can do really well when it comes to my personal life with living sustainably. Like I know that I can pay probably more than I want to, to get the really good recycling that does the glass and the cardboard and
00:27:12
Speaker
the glass. I know. And so that's something that I know that, and I'm fortunate to have that resource and to be able to do that. You just have to pick the certain things that you know that you can do really well. And I love traveling. And like I've mentioned, I feel guilty every time I get on an airplane, but I know that the benefits that that has for my life and my wellbeing, I do that. So that's not something I do very well.
00:27:36
Speaker
my carbon emissions is not something I do very well. And then having conversations with people, that's something that's really helpful for me too. Just this conversation right now, hearing you say that you experience climate anxiety makes me feel better because I know that I'm not just this person who's talking about it and other people don't get it.
00:27:53
Speaker
You're not a crazy person. I came to realize later in life that I have this habit of writing books that I don't finish. And in almost every one, weather is the villain. And I'm just like, oh, okay, so that's what's happening now. This is why I'm doing it. That's why I'm doing it. Yes, the weather is terrifying. It's fine.
00:28:17
Speaker
But yeah, and I think even like reframing some of the failures, but reframing some of the things that still cause you guilt, travel is you actually being able to appreciate the planet that you care about and seeing the places that you want to protect. And I think that just gives you more of a long-term passion for what you're doing and that
00:28:38
Speaker
and itself is valuable. We have to take a plane. Okay, good news. Every plane is packed. So, less planes, super full. No room for your carry-on, but we're all crammed on there. So, we're killing it there. And just being able to reframe some of the guilt that you feel I think is really useful, but we all just kind of have to create our own mental well-being tools, I would say. And being a business owner is just like a really good way to have to do that.
00:29:06
Speaker
I want to go back to Nicole was just saying about enjoying the planet that you live on. And then maybe that gives you some long-term purpose. So can you talk to us about if we're tying it back to the why Nicole had mentioned that maybe you traveling allows you to experience the planet that you love so much and that you're trying to help save. So that might give you a long-term passion for staying in this line of work. But are there any pieces to actually running the company that you have changed because of?
00:29:36
Speaker
your why. I've had to learn a lot and there's a couple of things that I do. A couple of years ago I took a green graphic design course which was really great because I got to learn a lot about environmentally friendly papers and printing processes. I learned about what you can do to make your website have a smaller carbon footprint like using smaller imagery and having website hosts that are net zero and things like that.
00:30:01
Speaker
From my own business operations, I've incorporated a giving strategy into my business so that every year I donate money back to places like the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, who does a lot of great bird research. In the past, I've been a member of 1% for the planet, where I've donated 1% of my annual sales to environmental nonprofits. So operationally, I've done quite a bit. And then just kind of the way that I approach business,
00:30:27
Speaker
have different standards about who I work with. And if there's a company that comes to me and they're not doing great stuff for the environment or they don't really have a purpose aside from making money, I don't want to work with them. I can earn money from other places that feel good. There's a lot of things that are operationally that I've been able to change. And then just the hard on the ground, you know, printing and things like that have a little bit more of a direct impact in that sense. So those are kind of like the overarching things that I've been doing.
00:30:54
Speaker
Oh, that's super interesting. Thank you. Cause I bet a lot of us haven't thought about that, like imaging on our websites and companies that host it being net zero. So that's a lot to think about. I'm glad you shared
Adventures in RV Living & Community
00:31:05
Speaker
that. And you know, we did talk about the travel piece and your love of the environment has changed the way that you look at different pieces of your life. And I know that you had a.
00:31:15
Speaker
really untethered existence running this business for a little while. And I'm curious to hear about that because this reminds me absolutely none of myself. So I'm very curious to hear about the motivation of something that I would be like, nope, nope, nope, but I totally support you. So tell us about when you lived this RV life for a couple of years doing this digital nomad existence.
00:31:41
Speaker
This is going to turn into like a romance story really fast. So I hope everybody's ready for it. Okay, then I can, okay, good. All right. It all started, you know, my whole purpose of wanting to quit my job and start my business at the time was so that I could travel. And so after I was kind of off the ground, I spent four months traveling around the world to go snowboarding.
00:32:01
Speaker
went to Japan and France and Switzerland. I got to go to all these places to go snowboarding. And along the way, I met a few really awesome European girls who said, I have this van and I just drive around and I'm a CEO consultant. And I just met all these really great inspirational people. And so when I got done with my trip, I, of course, again, had no idea what I was going to do when I got back to the US. So I came back and I bought the Volkswagen Eurovan.
00:32:28
Speaker
Very bad decision. The thing was bright blue. It was really cool to look at, but as a person who knows nothing about vehicles or motors or anything, I had no business owning a Volkswagen or a foreign vehicle of any sort. Anyway, me in big blue, we go on the road. We make it all the way to Park City, Utah, where transmission blows out. I had friends there. I had a friend who let me borrow a car and stay with her. I broke down like in a really great place.
00:32:53
Speaker
All of a sudden done, it takes them four weeks to fix my van. It was an exorbitant amount of money. But along the way, I'm in Park City. It's kind of boring. At this point, I had this itinerary. I was supposed to make it to California and up to Canada and I'm stuck here. And so I get back on Tinder and I'm swiping, swiping, swiping.
00:33:11
Speaker
And I see this guy with a cute puppy and an Airstream. And I was like, well, we could get a beer. What's it going to hurt? Long story short, well, we're married now, but that skips over the fun part of we're both living on the road. He's traveling full time in his Airstream and I'm traveling full time in my broken down van. He's like, I got to go up to Montana. I have this photo shoot up there. And my birthday was the next week. And he's like, if your van still isn't fixed and you want to come up here for your birthday, we can go camping and hang out. Let me know.
00:33:39
Speaker
Van's still broken. I rent a car. I drive to Missoula. He picks me up at the airport with the Airstream and the truck and the puppy. I go to Glacier, and I'd never been to Montana before. And so, you know, van gets fixed, whatever. I dump the van. And then from there, we ended up traveling. We had a mutual friend, and so I knew that he probably wasn't a murderer. A serial killer? Sure. Yeah. That's right. Okay. I feel more aligned with you now. Yep.
00:34:04
Speaker
And so we traveled together in this camper for two years. We did over 10,000 miles. We went to 22 states. He's a commercial photographer and I'm a graphic designer. And so we just park somewhere that has internet and some electricity. And we worked from the road for two years. And it was really fun. And I was lucky that my business was in a place where it was functioning enough where I could still make an income and be doing all this fun stuff. But it would be really difficult to start a business while trying to do that because there's a lot of
00:34:34
Speaker
logistics and a lot that goes on that doesn't allow a lot of time for work. So needless to say, when we were done doing that, we were very ready and it's been great to be able to get back home and kind of focus on business and have a home base. Yeah. So is he an entrepreneur also? Yes. How have you found that having a double entrepreneur family? That's unusual. Most of our guests are not going to be that way, but do you find that that gives you kind of a deeper understanding of what he's going through and vice versa?
00:35:03
Speaker
Oh yeah. I mean, we have like regular work sessions where we're just like, Oh, this invoice is 30 days late and like, Oh, I need to find new health insurance again. So there's some commiserating, but it's also really nice to have that sounding board. You know, his business I realized is still a lot different than mine, even though we're both freelance creatives, like just being a photographer that has to organize photo shoots and hire models and Scouts and things like that is just a lot different. Like during COVID, that's when I really noticed how different our businesses are.
00:35:33
Speaker
were because he pretty much shut down and I was like still running full time during the COVID. So yeah, it's really nice. Most of the time it is sometimes a little stressful having two incomes that are rollercoaster style. And for the most part, we've both been really fortunate in our careers of business ownership. So fingers crossed that stays that way.
00:35:53
Speaker
Oh, that's an amazing story. I love it. And I thought I would. Yeah, because there was romance. I had romance. Yeah, and very little RV, which I loved about it. Yeah, totally. Well, it sounds like you have an amazing partner in a sense. Of course, a lot of people have amazing partners, but I mean in a sense that you can speak about entrepreneurship and he actually gets it and can understand it because we don't all have that where they fully get what it means.
00:36:19
Speaker
But besides him, do you have any other community or support people that you really lean on when you're running your company? Oh, yeah, it's necessary. That's one thing that is difficult for me. Working not in a work environment anymore is not having people and sounding boards, just places to vent and talk about things. So I do a lot of different things here locally. I'm starting a meetup called Missoula Creative Entrepreneurs that is
00:36:46
Speaker
slow going, but trying to take some things like that. I joined the board of the Five Valleys Autobahn Society, which is our local bird club. And that kind of helps me using that to learn about the nonprofit world and to also just get to see other people. And then I've started a couple of accountability groups. And right now I just started a new one this fall with five other women entrepreneurs. Like we meet every other week and we set goals, talk about business and ask questions and get feedback from folks.
00:37:14
Speaker
Pretty much since I've started freelancing, I've organized a group like that one way or the other just over time. Sometimes, you know, they last a year, sometimes they last three years. And so it's really helpful for me to have that group. I still kind of have a lot of lingering connections from the outdoor industry. And so that's where these folks come from, that where they're, you know, like outdoorsy women and their creatives. And, you know, I have a really big network of those folks. And so it's just like tapping into it, being able to have people when I need them and vice versa. I always love being there for other people too.
00:37:44
Speaker
That reminds me a lot of the way that Mallory goes about her entire life, right? I was nodding along the whole time. This is very much how she, you know, you can't always wait for someone to create the community, I think. And if there isn't one where you are, or there isn't the type that you want, sometimes you have to be the one to do that. And other people will gravitate to you, usually the right people. And then suddenly you do have that community that you needed.
00:38:12
Speaker
Well, I just want to wrap up that thought. So how did you go about that? If other people are saying, Oh, I wish I had that group. Did you just email people? Like actually, how did you go about getting that accountability group? If that would be helpful for other listeners. This isn't helpful.
00:38:27
Speaker
for other people, but I'll say it because I do group coaching with a woman who's now based in Vermont. And she has connected me with so many people because I had this group coaching and then she's got this Facebook group. But then also just finding, you know, for me, it was outdoor industry people. And so there's a lot of great Facebook groups for that. So, you know, somebody is working in the nonprofit world or if somebody works in the health industry, just maybe finding some of those groups and putting together a little description of what it is you're looking for.
00:38:56
Speaker
And then also, yeah, if you do have an existing network of people and you want to email them, like that was one way you're like, these are my ideal teammates in this group. And because you also want to make sure that the folks that you have showing up to these groups are going to show up and going to support you and that are going to be grateful for your support and just are on sort of the same page and then the same part of their journey. So yeah, I've been really lucky to be able to connect with so many folks like that.
00:39:23
Speaker
Well, it sounds like more intentional than lucky right to say it that way, but I'm curious since you mentioned creating your own ideal team members, if you creating that outer level of support, do you also have anyone working
Scaling Business & Delegation Challenges
00:39:36
Speaker
with you? Have you delegated out any tasks in the past or is this a business that you've kept really small and tight?
00:39:42
Speaker
I tried keeping it small and tight. I wanted it to be that way. I've never really felt like I wanted to be an agency owner or manage a bunch of people. But I also realized that that's really limiting as far as my growth. And so I've experimented on and off with having virtual assistants and project manager people.
00:40:01
Speaker
It turns out I'm really picky about how stuff gets done. There are certain things in that way that I just have found it not super helpful or I just haven't found the right person. Also, I do have a designer, sometimes two designers, and I found it's easy for me to take on that role kind of more as a creative director than
00:40:19
Speaker
managing a project manager or managing an assistant. Because if I'm working with a more junior designer, I can set things up and say, this is a layout that the client approved. Can you plug in the content for this? Or I'm working on some logos. I'd love to see what you come up with because you have a different brain. And so I found that to be really good. And I've got a good partnership with a gal that I met through the same group of outdoorsy creatives. She was also a van lifer. And so.
00:40:46
Speaker
That's something that I'm really experimenting with right now because this fall, let me see, I stopped working with my VA in July and I was like, I can absorb all these tasks. It'll be fine. And then now I'm just, Oh, I have to publish my own blogs now. And this prospecting document is like, you know, missing all these things that I never input. And so it's really difficult for me to find the perfect balance of getting help because I know I need it. And it's just trying to figure out where it makes sense to put that money in those investments. So yeah.
00:41:16
Speaker
I'm always open to suggestions on that. Well, sometimes those roles change over time. Like I definitely have different people supporting me today doing different things that I originally did eight or nine years ago, and that's okay. Some of those chats I don't even do anymore. The business doesn't have them anymore and that's fine. So it's an evolving process as well. Nothing wrong with that.
00:41:36
Speaker
So one last question for you on your big van life experience. What was your favorite place? Is there any place that all these boss ladies listening should add to their travel list? Is that impossible to answer? Well, if you're going snowboarding, I would say go to Revelstoke in Canada.
00:41:56
Speaker
That's right next to me. Yeah. Yeah, it would be well. And we also spent a week in Banff and Lake Louise in the camper in January and it was 28 below zero Fahrenheit. That feels right. Yeah. This was the RV stories that you were hoping not to hear. This is correct. This is correct. This is when I'm out.
00:42:15
Speaker
Yeah. And then I'm like the worst person to ask because it's like asking me what my favorite song is because I love everything. Everything. But I also, I'll say Alabama Hills down kind of outside of Death Valley National Park in California. It's right at the base of Mount Whitney and a great place to go boondock with your camper or just drive through, watch a sunset and enjoy life.
00:42:40
Speaker
I lived in Phoenix before this, so in the Southwest, I feel like there's a lot there. It's kind of like little hidden gems all over the place. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for chatting with us today. We loved hearing about your story. We loved hearing a really different story than I think a lot of people have heard before in your circuitous journey.
00:42:59
Speaker
Yeah, just thank you for sharing all the ups and the downs. That's, I think what helps people relate to kind of the way that this business journey shows up in our lives and being willing to talk about the things that went well and didn't go well is just really important. So thank you for sharing that conversation with us and we will see everyone on the next episode. Thanks for listening. Hop over to UnboundBoss.com to join our community and leave us a voice memo. We absolutely love hearing from you.
00:43:29
Speaker
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