Wanting to start your business usually means to have some dreams. Even more so when you are a creative as it is very likely you are linking your passion and your job together. That's what we did 7 years ago when we opened Scandaleuse. We had a plan, our heads were filled with dreams bigger than us. While we have accomplished some, we realized not too long ago that we unconsciously gave up on many in the process.
How the hell did it happen to begin with?
1) The pandemic.
This is definitely the biggest reason of it all. Everybody's world went upside down, and like many other businesses, we saw our work possibilities crumble and our future extremely uncertain.
The pandemic made us enter a survival mode: we couldn't actually work and we didn't know for how long. Once we got slightly out of it, starting to work some bigger dreams was completely out of the question: we had to recover from our losses and we had to do it fast. On top of it all, it's also left us with the reality that nothing is really that stable, and that's the perfect recipe to develop self-doubt.
2) Our ideas weren't doable to way we wanted to initially.
Back in the day, many of our big ideas were a lot more accessible. For example, getting a studio on our own was not that out of reach with the growth we have been having pre-pandemic. Since the inflation entered the chat, this idea started crawling away and instead of reshaping it and adapt it, we labeled it as "impossible” in our brain and we… ignored it. Until some feelings started creeping in…
The consequences on our well-being
It is pretty safe to assume that, if you don't work towards something bigger and more exciting than what you are currently doing, your mental health takes a hit.
Our productivity, our drive, our creativity and even the confidence in our ability went down. We were stagnating in our growth. But the worst was this small feeling of emptiness settling in our minds without us noticing. Then it grew bigger and bigger, leading us through one existential crisis after the other. What are we building and where are we going were the 2 key questions floating around. At some point, we had to face the fact: we just didn't allow ourselves to dream anymore and it needed to change.
How we got out of it: the mindset shift
The first step was to acknowledge and make peace with the reasons stated above. Then, we had to understand that we were thinking about some ideas backwards. The biggest one being that we needed to reach a certain amount of cash flow before executing bigger projects. Of course, you need to, to a certain extent, but the reasons above made us forget that you also need to invest money and take risks to… make money.
We also starting talking to our closest friends and loved ones. While we expected to have to deal with discouraging comments - mostly because we were giving them to ourselves - we were pleasantly surprised to hear than everybody was excited and positive. Even better, they gave us some options we didn't even think of.
Slowly, the fear barometer lowered and the confidence one increased. And the butterflies in our stomach have started to come back.
Now what?
We have decided to work on getting a proper space for Scandaleuse. It is truly outside of our comfort zone, but the feeling of excitement it gives us makes it worth it already. While it probably won’t be easy, we have no doubt that we will have a beautiful space ready to welcome all of you and host many more projects we have had in mind for years.
It is such a nice feeling to let yourself daydream about what you can do and we are strong believers in the fact that it is going to unblock some dormant energies we haven't seen in a while…
Thank you for following us in our entreprenarial journey. We cannot wait to share more with you!