The Boss of You

I hate to start off blog posts with excuses, but this one really needs a lit­tle ’splain­ing as it were. I con­tacted Jean­nette Ordas, a local Van­cou­ver designer/blogger/all-round-crafty-gal back in early July with this idea that I would run a local sum­mer series of pro­files of some of my local indie busi­ness hero­ines. Then my first trimester of preg­nancy caught up with me (read: very ill, very tired, barely mak­ing it through the day) and my beloved cat became very sud­denly and ter­mi­nally ill. In hind­sight that seems like rather silly rea­sons to have let this interview/profile of Jean­nette lan­guish in my inbox for so long, but at the time I just couldn’t tackle one more thing.

Last week, how­ever, I had the great joy of finally meet­ing Jean­nette for the first time at the One of a Kind Show here in Van­cou­ver and my resolve to get this out of my inbox and up here was strength­ened. Jean­nette is just as lovely as you might expect if you hap­pen to be a fan of her cards, her foodie blog or her web design work. She’s an inspir­ing and very cre­ative entre­pre­neur and I owe her a big thanks for doing this pro­file (and for bear­ing with my delays).

How long have you been run­ning your own show (shows?). That is, how long have you been the one respon­si­ble for pay­ing your salary?

I’ve been work­ing for myself since Feb­ru­ary 2005, which was when my job as Web Designer at a local ad agency went belly up. I started apply­ing for jobs, but wasn’t hav­ing much luck – but at the same time I started putting out my own feel­ers and started get­ting my own web design clients through word of mouth and from ex-co-workers. The month that I was laid off, I started my food blog, Every­body Likes Sand­wiches. About a year later, my now-husband and I started our own web design com­pany, Match­box Cre­ative. Also at about the same time, I decided to devote some of my down-time to Etsy and really started to get my greet­ing card busi­ness, The Beau­ti­ful Project, up and running.

One could eas­ily apply the labels “Entre­pre­neur” “Artist” and “All-round-creative-gal” to you, what with co-running your own show for you day job, and then doing The Beau­ti­ful Project and your food­blog on the side as well. If you had to pick a label, which do you think is most apt for you?

I do like the term “all-round-creative-gal” since I def­i­nitely do have my fin­gers in a lot of cre­ative pots. I’ve never been a one-track-mind kind of per­son. For a long time I wished I could have had just one pas­sion to do some­thing and do it well, but instead, there were just so many things that I was inter­ested in. It made things dif­fi­cult when I was younger. Now I think it’s okay that I’m pas­sion­ate about so many dif­fer­ent things!

What inspires you to keep being your own boss?

I’m very focused and self-directed so it’s easy for me to be my own boss. I love being self-sufficient and I love the inde­pen­dence of work­ing for myself. Being able to choose the type of projects that I want to work on leaves me feel­ing that I’m liv­ing the life I want to lead.

What sup­port net­works do you turn to as a busi­ness person?

My biggest sup­port net­work really comes from my hus­band (who is also my busi­ness part­ner). He’s my biggest sup­porter for all my cre­ative endeav­ours but he’s also my biggest critic when it comes to design­ing. The only time we fight is when it comes to his cri­tiques of my designs. We really hash out all the design prob­lems and short­falls of a piece and I feel my designs come out stronger because of it. I also have made a lot of female friends with cre­ative peo­ple who are sell­ing on etsy, who are artists and design­ers, and who are try­ing to make their liv­ing from their craft. When we meet, we meet up as friends, but our dis­cus­sions about what we’ve learned, the mis­takes we’ve made, and how we’ve grown our busi­nesses really help solid­ify that we’re not in this alone and that we can make our dreams come true.

How do you define suc­cess as an entrepreneur?

Suc­cess to me means that I’m liv­ing my life how I want to live it, by tak­ing on the type of projects that I want to work on, by cre­at­ing a strong body of work, by feel­ing con­fi­dent in my skills and abil­i­ties. It means tak­ing on chal­leng­ing work and learn­ing new tech­niques so that I stay sharp. It also means that I have the money so that I don’t have to scrimp and save (though I think those things are inbred from child­hood). Suc­cess means that I feel good about my life and my choices and it means that I’m happy.

Can you tell me any sto­ries about awe­some feedback/customer inter­ac­tions you’ve had? ie/ Great sto­ries peo­ple have told you about how they use your cards or artwork?

I always just assumed that peo­ple would give away my cards to oth­ers, so I was really sur­prised that so many peo­ple framed the cards and hung them up as art­work. One of my big sell­ers is a card with a pretty pink flower and text that reads “Hooray for Me and Fuck You” and I always won­dered who would peo­ple send that card to. At a recent craft fair, a woman came up to me and proudly told me that she bought the card and has it hung up in her office! I love that! I also par­tic­i­pated in the Got Craft mini fair in June and one guy was so thrilled that he had found my cards. He said he recently told his part­ner that some­one should come up with cool cards, anti-Hallmark cards. “These are those cards!!” He was so excited and it really made me feel great about my work!

And, do you do in per­son sales — craft fairs and the like — or just focus on Etsy?

I first started out on Etsy and only focused on that for a few years until I did my first craft fair in Van­cou­ver last sum­mer. It was really easy to remain online and sell anony­mously. I always think I’m kind of shy and mak­ing chit-chat to strangers scared me. Turns out, I’m not shy and I loved meet­ing peo­ple at craft fairs. I also decided to start whole­sal­ing to stores, so I’m start­ing to branch out and sell my cards that way.

Can you tell me about the name “The Beau­ti­ful Project”? I love it, by the way and am won­der­ing how you came up with it.

Thanks! I didn’t want to restrict myself to any­thing, so I didn’t want to choose a name that made ref­er­ence to some spe­cific craft. In fact, my first list­ing on etsy in 2005 wasn’t even a card, it was a small stuffed ani­mal. I chose the name The Beau­ti­ful Project because I wanted to cre­ate beau­ti­ful things and I liked the idea of it being my own per­sonal project, some­thing to keep me inspired and get me work­ing on my own things rather than client-work.

If you had to play favourites, do you have a favourite design now (or of all time)?

My cur­rent favorite is my You Look Beau­ti­ful Today card. It’s colour­ful and who wouldn’t want to hear that they looked beau­ti­ful? But my all-time favorite is my Dutch birth­day cal­en­dar. My hus­band is from a Dutch fam­ily and I loved that his fam­ily had these funny lit­tle cal­en­dars that they hung in the bath­room. The cal­en­dars them­selves were pretty ugly so I decided that I’d make a beau­ti­ful one filled with Dutch motifs and imagery.