Start-Up Life Surprises

I had a great job at a Fortune 500 company in an industry that I loved with people who I admired. Due to personal circumstances, I left the company and took a few months to reflect on my next career move while full time mom’ing it.

As I looked at my options of finding another corporate job locally (this was pre-remote working) or finally pursuing one of my own ideas (even going so far to poll my friends on Instagram about a new work/fitness/nursing hybrid bag) I did a lot of self-reflection. I began putting my objectives out into the universe and suddenly a good friend and former colleague introduced me to her friend, Addie Gundry who founded Pluie.

I began putting my objectives out into the universe and suddenly a good friend and former colleague introduced me to her friend, Addie Gundry who founded Pluie.

Within a few weeks of meeting Addie in person, I decided to join as her cofounder to launch Pluie. I wanted to gain greater flexibility to raise my son and bring to life a much needed solution to a decades old problem. As a mom myself with a product development background, I knew this was a chance to also disrupt a relatively stagnant industry.

At that time, over three years ago, I had no idea just how much life would change so wanted to share some of my start-up life surprises:

• No matter how many hours I work in a day, in a week, in a month it never seems enough.
• At times it feels like the business is the most important thing in life, and that’s ok though it’s hard to admit out loud, especially when juggling momhood.
• I would never have a normal shower again – Addie and I constantly share our “shower thoughts”.
• How critical patience and persistence is when founding a business and a brand – this has become a team motto. We send that fourth or fifth email and always rejoice with happiness when a response comes through our inbox. We also celebrate when a customer who said “not right now” a year ago after initial contact is ready to make a purchase because we established and built a relationship over time.

• I feel a different level of stress, more so than ever in my former career. There are no teams of experts in respected fields adding input or driving decisions. I constantly feel that every decision is critical to our livelihoods. 
• Even if far along with a career, I was essentially signing up to do everything – no delegation and that means shipping marketing materials at FedEx, creating an IG post, drafting a pitch deck, meeting with an enterprise account etc. 
• Time to myself when not working or not being in mom mode has become increasingly important. 
• I have an extremely hard time turning off thoughts of work, even finding myself dreaming of work and waking up with ideas. 
• It’s not a few years’ effort, more like a decade+ effort.
• Hiring is difficult as we need people who are intrinsically motivated and have a fast pace of working with unparalleled output. 
• Corporate experience has been extremely beneficial especially as it relates to operationalizing a business and ensuring the right boxes are checked. 
• All those books and articles about the importance of a network are right and then some.

Written by Pluie Cofounder and COO Brittany Hizer.