Start Up Princess Discusses Significant Milestones for Year 1 (Part 1)

Now that we’ve eaten our cake and ice cream and are considering which *5* Wishes of Women Entrepreneurs to Grant (you have until Tuesday!) I’ve been thinking a lot about how we started and where we are now and what key factors have made a difference in bringing this blog into a significant site for women entrepreneurs internationally.

This is Chapter 1 of our Fairy Tale:

June 29, 2006 I attended a brainstorming luncheon for start ups with Paul Allen, Phil Burns, and Michael Eager. I attended the luncheon to discuss and learn about the Provo Labs Incubator program for start ups. I was looking for guidance, wanted to network with other entrepreneurs, and advice for launching my kids’ princess retail concept, Princess Sweet.

I was looking for a COO at the time and also for funding ($650k). Princess Sweet had recently won 2nd place at the Wake Forest National Elevator Pitch competition and was a finalist at the Rice Business Plan competition (12th out of 160 world wide teams). I was not a business student, I was a theatre grad student (2005). I had never taken a business course, but I was passionate and surrounded myself with excellent mentors. I took a year off for my 3rd pregnancy and attending the luncheon was the first thing I had done for business since my baby girl was born. I didn’t know why, but I was driven to be an entrepreneur. I knew it would be a challenge with a young family, yet something kept pushing me forward and helped me to make key connections and progress.

At the luncheon three significant things happened:

1. I sat next to Phil Burns and he told me about blogging and that he had just produced the Utah Blogger conference. I didn’t think at the time that I’d be a blogger, (what would I write about and would anyone care?)

2. I found myself wanting to mentor the other woman entrepreneur present and give her ideas, share things that I had tried, tell her what was working for me…I realized that there needed to be a place for women entrepreneurs to talk and share ideas, and not just through email like I was currently doing with a few mom entrepreneurs I knew. There was too many of us out there who needed the same info and why write the same emails over and over again?

3. I went home and looked at a few blogs out of curiosity (what is a blog anyway?)–I looked at Phil’s (too techy), I looked at Paul’s (interesting, but also more for techy entrepreneurs), and then I just started down browsing Paul’s blogroll and bounced around on blogs for a couple hours. I didn’t have any clue about how difficult it would be to blog or whether or not I could do it, then suddenly I developed an interest to blog and discuss entrepreneurship with WOMEN because none of the blogs I found were doing it. I felt compelled to tell my story and what I was learning…I hoped that someone would benefit from my struggles and that it might help them save time…etc. I didn’t even know there was more than one blog platform, I just kept seeing “try wordpress for free”, so I did it. A website template/hosting for FREE? Sign me up!

I knew I needed a good name for the blog, a brand. I’m really into marketing and names, so I thought and thought…”start up moms?” no. “start up pioneers?” no…then I thought about women entrepreneurs and what I wanted them to feel and who I am and what I want to communicate about life-dreams-fulfilling goals-business…and how everyone who is an entrepreneur is fulfilling their dreams…then bam! It hit me! I am Start Up Princess, they are too…we’re all creating and wishing…“Make a Wish, Make it Happen!” It was such a strong feeling, I knew the name was special–that it was saved for us and indeed it was available “dot com”, I wept right there all over Go Daddy.com

Within minutes of deciding Start Up Princess was our name...the whole concept developed. I realized it wouldn’t just be a blog for a few mom entrepreneurs I knew, but I sensed it would be much, much bigger and it scared and excited me at the same time. I saw the vision of it all…mentors would be Fairy Godmothers, Today’s Magic WandNetworking Tea Parties, Start Up Princess profile pages, etc. The brand had life before I ever wrote the first post. (tips), It was such a gift that I felt so privileged to have been asked to bring it forth…
Then I created the original wordpress site first. You can see our old site here: www.startupprincess.wordpress.com

Here’s the very first post from July 13, 2006.

After I wrote the first post I emailed everyone in my address book and told them I had launched it.

I also hand wrote a beautiful thank you card to Paul Allen and told him thank you for inspiring me to help other women entrepreneurs as he had helped me and many other entrepreneurs. I told him about the concept and the vision for the organization. I hardly knew him at that time.

Then I kept writing something every day while I was nursing my baby in the mornings. Short little posts and then I’d interview 1 person and do a longer post on Fridays. I was starting to build an email list of women entrepreneurs and my guess is that we had about 12 regular readers, but in WordPress everything is “views” so it’s really unclear how many unique visits we had back then…anywhere from 60-120 “views” a day at the beginning (views are the same as “hits” I think).

I kept at it and would looked for more prominent entrepreneurs to interview each week and shared tips.

Then in July Abby Miller of Before Kids contacted me, requesting to be profiled and interviewed. I was so excited!! I didn’t know her…everyone previously I knew personally. Abby was from Pennsylvania and had found us via Google somehow. Hurray.

In August we held our first Networking Tea Party at my house. (you can see back then I didn’t know how to do links!) There was such a spirit of compassion and genuine enthusiasm, kind sharing and friendship…everyone wanted to help each other to succeed with our respective start ups. No competition…ever.

I kept writing…wondering…what am I doing? Am I just delaying my dreams for Princess Sweet? I was afraid to talk about the blog to my mentors because I still was very passionate about Princess Sweet, sinking personal savings into developing it, promoting it, joined the CEDO incubator, but it was stuck. I needed direction! My awesome board of advisors were helpful, but they didn’t want to invest…we considered a kiosk for the holidays as an option, but I didn’t have the $20k they wanted at the mall to secure it, plus the money for inventory.

I was considering what do to about my lack of funding for it and the immense weight of starting a national retail business like Build A Bear…I knew I needed a partner and so much funding. The answer would come…I had to be patient. In the meantime I kept interviewing and asking questions. “How did you fund your start up?” “How do you manage a start up and a family?”I needed the answers desperately. The interviews on Start Up Princess were for me.

We held our first conference call in September with Janet Meiners, Fairy Godmother of Internet Marketing…it was very exciting to hear several callers from all over the country on the phone together, it felt great.

In September through a very generous introduction, I had lunch with Shawn Nelson, the Founder of Love Sac and his wife, Tiffany, also an entrepreneur (shoe store called “Pears”). Shawn was very kind and also clearly humbled by the change of leadership at LoveSac and his new position there (he’s still Chief Sac, but not CEO). [side note: He thought Princess Sweet was a great concept...I should move forward, but I left feeling depressed...overwhelmed, what was I thinking!? It is so much work to launch a national retail store...millions needed to be raised. Awesome, experienced leadership...I had no clue what was next or how to proceed. Yet, I persisted...there was a reason I as on this path.]

I wrote a detailed post about our lunch with Shawn’s permission. I emailed Paul Allen and told him about the post and he linked to my post as well as gave Start Up Princess his seal of approval. It was a controversial post…Shawn himself commented also on Paul’s site. Instantly we had a surge in traffic and it helped our stats significantly. I feel that this link/post by Paul brought new readers and increased respect from the Utah entrepreneur community.