Made to Last Series: A Deep Dive with Jonnie Estes of Grey Theory Mill

Oct 25

This interview is part of Made to Last – a series of interviews we’re doing with established makers who have grown and evolved their businesses over the long term. In each interview, we’ll look back at where the maker was a few years ago and then learn what they’re up to today. Our goal is to show you what “success” really looks like for makers. It means something different to each and every person and involves radically different paths – but always includes hard work, uncertainty, creativity, reflection, and failure.

About Jonnie

Jonnie Estes (pronounced “John-ny”) is the maker of Grey Theory Mill, a line of hand-crafted jewelry that is sassy, simple, edgy and timeless.

Based in San Diego, California, Jonnie began Grey Theory Mill in 2010, selling shirts and signs. Today, the brand has been refined into a sassy line of high quality hand-stamped jewelry. When she was a child, Jonnie dreamed of being a teacher and when we last spoke with her again recently, she was still dreaming and finding ways to learn and express her creativity. Jonnie runs her business with huge integrity, passionate creativity, and a big dash of independence and irreverence.

Image of Jonnie Estes via @GreyTheoryMill

In this article, we’ll share a recap and takeaways from our 2019 conversation and then delve into our more recent update interview. Jonnie is so honest, vulnerable, and generous in what she shares. So get ready for a deep dive – and likely to see yourself in much of her experiences.

Jonnie in 2019

When we spoke to Jonnie in 2019 on our Secret Podcast she spoke about how she had grown her business from zero to 200 stockists by diversifying her approach and prioritizing her relationships. She talked about the upsides of trade shows and how she ramps up for the holiday season.

Takeaways from my 2019 conversation with Jonnie:

Do things in batches.
Jonnie does everything in batches and stages. That includes not only her orders but her outreach efforts as well. When she receives orders, she prints them out and creates a checklist of items that she does not currently have in stock. She uses that checklist to know what to make on her production days. For her outreach she follows a method of outreaching quarterly to her existing stores with new items and she follows the Wholesale In a Box methods of reaching out to new customers.
Proactive communication is good communication.
When preparing for summer trade shows she reaches out to all the potential stockists that she has already attempted to make contact with, in addition to her existing stockists, to let them know that she will be attending each show. This allows them an opportunity to see her current product lineup in-person. She uses trade shows not only to connect with buyers face-to-face but to network with other makers as well. She then follows up in September with her stockists and communicates upcoming order deadlines so that stores who want their shipments for important dates like Small Business Saturday and Christmas have time to plan and prepare.
Prioritize sanity and happiness.
Jonnie gives herself one solid day off per week, typically on Saturdays. She is aware that most retail shows happen on Saturdays, and she chooses not to participate in retail shows for all but 2 weeks during the holiday season. This selective participation really maximizes profits in order to justify losing her designated day(s) off.
Additionally, she gives herself a holiday shutdown during which, she switches her Faire storefront off and halts her outreach efforts each November. During the shutdown she will fill retail orders until the Christmas shipping deadline. That results in a yearly full shutdown from mid-December to the first week of January, allowing her to enjoy the holiday season.
Diversify.
Jonnie combines Faire, Wholesale In a Box, trade shows, and retail to produce a steady income stream. She focuses on a different aspect of each during each season. For instance, in the summers she participates in trade shows; and in November, she places her wholesale outreach on pause.
Hire help.
It’s powerful to have someone supporting you in your business, even if they only do one thing, like shipments. It gives you more time, and allows you to focus on other things. Hiring makes the “juggle” of running a business less of a burden and can allow you to say ‘yes’ to more.
Prioritize relationships.
For every stockist, and every order, she includes a handwritten note to say thanks for carrying her line and to express how excited she is to work with them. Also included is contact information… and starbursts! Because according to Jonnie, ‘unpacking an order should be a sweet experience’.

Jonnie has other little unique ways to say thank you throughout the year. For instance, she has been known to include extra items when filling an order to her top stockists, allowing those stores to sell the extra items for pure profit. She sees it as a better investment than blanketing every stockist once a year with flowers that die or chocolates that could melt. By recognizing her top stockists, she continues to forge strong relationships with them.

To listen to the entire 2019 Interview with Jonnie, click play below.

Jonnie in 2022

We sat down to get an update from Jonnie, three full years after the last time we spoke. In this very candid conversation, Jonnie gets specific about how the pandemic and the recession were affecting her sales, the emotional roller coaster of running a business, the good, bad, and ugly of her experiments with ads – and the direction she was heading after 12 full years of running her business.

Takeaways from my UPDATE conversation with Jonnie:

Build connections.
Just because you’re on a wholesale marketplace, doesn’t mean you can’t make it personal. Continuing to send handwritten notes, and including information about you, your brand and your products is a nice way to add a personal touch to a new store order.
Choose quality over quantity.
Jonnie had to make a call in 2021. She no longer had the time to be authentic when reaching out to new stores. And approaching new stores in a way that was too salesy was not representative of her ideology. She chose to remain true to her personal values and stepped down her outreach efforts. Which enabled her to focus on quality outreach rather than quantity.
Maintain your foundation.
By maintaining her existing relationships, and pausing her outreach efforts, Jonnie was able to continue to pay the bills AND take the time she needed to reset and evaluate how best to proceed.
Don’t be afraid to experiment.
Every business owner wants to know that the investments they make are worth the cost and effort. Marketing can be a successful expenditure, but it can also be very costly. If you don’t have the wherewithal to learn how to do your own marketing, then be prepared to give marketing efforts a minimum of 6 months before making a judgment call. Think about what return on investment you’re looking for and don’t be afraid to pull the plug if you aren’t getting what you want/need.
Take time to evaluate.
Grey Theory may have been around for 12 years but the passion that helped her start her business in her 20’s has faltered. Jonnie took the time in 2020 and 2021 to really evaluate what she wanted. When faced with the reality of what it would take to grow, Jonnie knew that she was not ready to work for nothing and spend crazy money on advertising to grow her business. So she's pursuing things that allow her to be creative, and getting ready to transition into a different career path.

Our 2022 Conversation with Jonnie:

SO IT TURNS OUT WE LAST SPOKE 3 YEARS AGO. HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS EVOLVED, GROWN OR SHIFTED SINCE THEN 3 YEARS AGO?

2019 was a woozy of a year for me. I would say that my business has reached some sort of stability or baseline since then, while also simultaneously riding the pandemics' woes and waves. If I'm being honest, it's really only been this year that I’ve felt like I've gotten a good grip on my business. I had to put my business on cruise control in mid 2020 for my mental sanity. Thankfully, Grey Theory was established enough that I was able to do that without any severe ramifications. So, even on cruise control, it was able to make do and pay my life bills. In terms of evolution or solid growth, I would say it's just stable. Which is great. I would say the shift is just maintaining the foundation as opposed to focusing on growth.

WHAT DOES CRUISE CONTROL LOOK LIKE?

Honestly, it looks like filling orders when they do come in. Actually in 2021, I did dabble again in an retail ad experiment where I hired another ad company (That's what I did in 2019 as well). I tried a different ad company this time. There have been some iOS changes, so Facebook and Instagram ads aren’t really hitting the same way. I had tried that, but outside of those experiments, I was like, you know what? I’m just going to fill orders, maintain my connections with the stores I have, and that's just what we’re going to do. If I have energy to make a couple new items, cool. Which I'm sure I did. It slips me now what I did. I don't really have a hard or fast rule that I create every season, I kind of just create when the mood strikes. I am a production monster and churn out what I already have.

THAT MAKES SENSE. ARE YOU STILL WORKING PART TIME AT TRADER JOE’S?

I am, yeah. My routine didn’t change that much. I was considered an essential employee with Trader Joe’s, so my routine was unscathed in terms of work. My personal life was definitely a little more altered. I am still balancing those two and having the benefits for my family through Trader Joe’s.

OKAY. GOOD. WHAT ABOUT WHOLESALE IN PARTICULAR? WHAT ARE YOU SEEING, AS WE EMERGE FROM THE PANDEMIC AND FACE FEARS OF RECESSION?

I feel like shops are much more interested in wholesale marketplaces now. I would say in 2019, there was still this healthy pinch of skepticism but now even some of my die-hards that were like “I hate that platform, I will never use them, here’s an article about how horrible they are” have now come over to the ‘dark side.’ I don’t blame them or judge them. I love these platforms because the perks are fantastic for them specifically. So, wholesale looks the same to me because I have been on some of these platforms since 2017.

TELL ME MORE.

Yeah. I was on Faire. I started on Etsy Wholesale originally. I applied for Faire really early, in 2017. So, I have been on that platform for a while and I also have my website. I’ve always had this trifecta of being available on these platforms but also selling through my website. I have been able to cater to the old schoolers who like to order by phone or via email and send a check too. I’ve always been pretty flexible about that.

I tanked in terms of my email outreach. Usually, I am really good with outreach. I was outreaching to like 15-20 stores a month, but in 2020 and 2021, I just stopped. I didn’t do new outreach at all. I couldn’t be authentic and try to connect with the stores I was reaching out to, so I just didn’t bother. I wasn’t going to do a salesy like “ hey buy my stuff” when I also had no idea if they were flourishing or barely hanging on. I have seen so many shops close that I used to work with or worked with once upon a time or they just started a new chapter. It looks different. You see people throwing in the towel a little bit more often because it's the best option for them.

WOULD YOU SAY A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF STORES YOU HAD BEEN SELLING TO HAD CLOSED?

It’s hard to say because I’ve worked with so many different stores over the years. I would say that I've worked with over 400 - 500 stores. I've been doing this for a while. I would say during the last 3 years, at least 5 or 6 that I'm aware of closed. For some of them, I would say “oh yeah I’m not surprised. I’m so sorry.” While others I would think “Oh wow. I was not expecting that. You seemed all in, you had a huge follower account and glitzy social media accounts. So that’s out of left field.”

I’M CURIOUS ABOUT THE MARKETPLACES FOR YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE SUCH A RELATIONSHIP PERSON. HOW DO THE MARKETPLACES HELP YOU DEVELOP RELATIONSHIPS? WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT?

Don’t get me wrong, I like cultivating relationships but I’m also happy when things just fall in my lap. You know, it’s a little bit emotional, getting involved with someone and getting invested in their vision. I totally love doing that but it definitely takes a lot out of me.

When it comes to wholesale platforms, if they fall in my lap, and they truly find me through the marketplace, then I am still really good about writing a note. I include a handwritten note to thank them for the order and let them know that I'm excited to be working with them and if they have any questions, how to get in touch with me. I also have a postcard printout that has a little bit about me and a little bit about my business. On the other side, I have jewelry care instructions and then of course, the Starbursts are in every box. Regardless of what (size) order it is. I think that carries me a little bit farther than most. I don't know what everyone else does.

I find that it can be like when I’m working the cash register at Trader Joes. Some people come up and they want to talk, they want to tell you about things, or they want your opinion. Some people, you can tell immediately are “please don’t even say hi to me.” That’s why, I feel on the wholesale platforms, I can kind of get a good feel if someone wants the relationship or if they just want a transactional relationship. Now, I’ve transitioned a little bit, I let them tell me. I’ll be me and if they want me in full force, they can have it and if they want the 10% version, that's fine too.

DO YOU SHOW UP ON THE PLATFORMS THE SAME WAY YOU SHOW UP EVERYWHERE ELSE? OR HAVE YOU FOUND ANY HACKS OR APPROACHES THAT YOU USE FOR FAIRE THAT’S DIFFERENT FROM EVERYWHERE ELSE?

You know, it’s on my list to take a look at Faire’s SEO. I originally started on Faire so early that they set up my storefront. I don’t think they do that anymore, unless you have a certain amount of products. When they did that, they barely copied and pasted any information. So I had to go through and I did that relatively recently too, and I added all the details. Originally their description boxes were about 500 characters, which is nothing. So I was getting stores saying “Oh, I didn’t know this necklace was 14 inches” and I would reply, “it says it in the description.” Then I would go look and see, wait no it doesn’t.

So, I haven't really done anything and I don’t have any hacks. I know they have an algorithm thing and there are some articles posted that I have recently become aware of that I’m going to tackle in the next few weeks. It's basic SEO. For example, if someone was searching for your crystal necklace, how are they going to be searching for that? As opposed to searching for the name of the necklace “lunasphere” because no one knows that's what it's called. You have to re-unpack it and think about how someone is going to find this if they don’t know it exists.

THAT MAKES SENSE. HAVE YOU SEEN YOUR SALES STAY PRETTY STEADY WITH WHOLESALE OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS?

I have data from 2018 that I have kept. It is on a month to month basis. I feel like 2019 was the power year. 2020 was fine. 2021 was more of a dip, still fine, but definitely not amazing. 2022 has been the worst so far.

HOW MUCH LOWER ARE YOUR SALES IN 2022? IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE SHARING.

Gosh, I don’t look at it that often. I don’t like to depress myself. Let me pull up my numbers and I can give you a better answer. I don’t mind talking about numbers. Let’s look at Faire… My March 2019 Faire sales were $3,300. In March 2020, I did about the same: $3,000. In March 2021, I did about $4,000. While in March 2022, I did about $2,700. March isn’t usually a good month for me, though. For instance, in February 2021, I did about $7,000 and in February 2022 I did about $4,000. It depends on the month, it can be a wild swing. It’s like the wild west.

HAVE YOUR SALES, IN GENERAL, IN 2022 BEEN LOWER THAN PREVIOUS YEARS?

They definitely have been. Thankfully, I have some consignment accounts that bring all my numbers up. Then, I have my Shopify sales and Etsy sales that bolster my take-home. When I look at my chart of what is coming in on a month-to-month basis, it’s definitely different. I think it's just with wholesale in general, such a wild swing. Some are only busy in Q4, for the holidays, some are only busy for the summer, some do really great business because their tourist season starts in February. You just never know what it's going to be.

WHAT’S YOUR TAKE ON WHY THINGS ARE SLOWER? DO YOU THINK IT’S RELATED TO A POTENTIAL RECESSION?

I personally feel like we’ve been in a recession for a while. I’ve been in a recession since 2020 because I just don’t know where anything is going to go. I work at Trader Joe’s and the supply issues just at that store alone are insane.

A recession definitely weighs on everyone's subconscious if not their conscious mind. I don’t know if a recession mindset has really felt that real until this year. With the price of food going up, I’m in California and gas is $6.21 per gallon. There has been so much turmoil. As much as I’m happy to exist, it feels like 2020 was not the hardest year. It just feels like 2020 was “I’m the worst,” and then 2021 was “No. I’m the worst,” and then 2022 is like “Hold my beer…”

So yeah, I think that people are being very cautious when making purchases for their stores. You don’t NEED jewelry! I’ll be the first to say, don’t buy me! Pay for your gas and a piece of pizza. You don’t need jewelry, we can pause and pick up later when things are better. A Lot of shops stock gifts. I’m a big proponent of making gifts affordable so everyone can afford gifts. Sometimes, people just can’t. So, I definitely think we’re seeing that.

LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR VISION. BECAUSE IT TIES INTO ALL THESE PIECES. YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU HAD A NEW VISION FOR WHERE YOU’RE HEADING WITH THINGS. TELL ME HOW YOU ENVISION THE NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS FOR YOUR WORK AND BUSINESS.

To be completely honest, 2019 WRECKED me. I had that ad experiment that I did. That, in the end, did very well but during the process gave me a panic attack. My first panic attack ever and it was just this really eye opening experience. On the backend of business, that adage that it “takes money to make money” was so apparent to me. It was just this revelation that my cohorts were spending X amount of dollars for these ads. They might BARELY break even but they LOOK amazingly successful. Or maybe they might be wildly successful with their ads. Spending $13,000 a month on ad spend and their take home is $100,000. I don’t think that’s industry standard, unless you’re a really really big brand that’s owned by Nestle or something. It was this wild experience where I thought that they might be a million dollar business but they may only be taking home $80k as a salary, what’s the point of that?

So I caught my breath in January of 2020 and a few weeks later, the whole world shut down. It felt great, it was very scary at the same time, because my worst fears had come to revelation. There was a deadly pandemic, but also, it was like summer vacation. I had barely anything coming in, so it was really the break that I needed. I started doing a lot of reflecting. I did that over the course of 2020 and 2021, it took me a while to process everything. I just don’t have the same fire I did when I set out on this journey. I have been at it for about 12 years. I’m 33, and I started in my 20’s. I had a lot of umph, and was ready for anything. I thought I was invincible and that was so great. I’m so glad I was able to do that when I was so young.

Now, I’m SO tired. I don’t want Grey Theory to disappear, but I’m just really tired of the hustle and trying to figure out what I have to do to keep up with social content. So, my tentative goal for the next 3 - 6 years is to transition Grey Theory back into a side hustle that’s as passive as possible. Then re-tool and transition into tech. Whether that’s UX Design, coding, or something creative. I’ve thought about Salesforce, since that would be more in line with my current skill set with outreach to clients. I even think back to when I was in school, K-12, at the end of every year I said “I’m going to teach this grade.” So maybe I’ll be a teacher, that would be nice and fulfilling. So I’m just looking for something. Even though Grey Theory Mill is fulfilling and it is wonderful and I do love it. I just don’t like selling my art that much. I don’t like selling my art HARD. Like, if you come and meet me at a show, I’m the person who goes “Hi, how are ya? Let me know if you have any questions.” Then, I immediately turn my back. Well, not turn my back but I definitely don’t want any pressure. I don’t want someone to feel they have to look at anything. If it's not their thing, it's not their thing. That’s kind of my M.O. in general. It doesn’t necessarily pair the best with being an entrepreneur and I realize that.

INTERESTING. ALTHOUGH, YOU’VE HAD SO MUCH SUCCESS WITH IT AT THE SAME TIME, USING THE APPROACH THAT COMES NATURALLY TO YOU. YOU EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT THINGS. ARE YOU ABLE TO TALK ABOUT WHY THE AD EXPERIMENT WAS SO DIFFICULT?

Sure. It was expensive and I was paying for a consultant. It was kind of a tiered system. It came as a good faith recommendation from another jeweler. How the process worked is, you talk to a consultant, who’s kind of like a business coach, and then they also had this ad agency that they work for. I’ll give you the prices. So, you paid $375 an hour to be business coached and it was $150 an hour for the ad person, who ran the ads. I had retainers for both parties. At first, I was like “this is really cool,” but finally, I was getting really frustrated because my husband is a CPA by trade and I was talking to this consultant who was SO hung up on a cashflow statement. Finally, we had to tell them, “LOOK we understand the cashflow statement.” I paused the consultant because I could not sit there for another hour and talk about a cashflow statement! I was not learning anything. And his goal was very much “you’re going to be able to sell your business.” That’s NOT the goal! So I had the thought “Wait. Who am I talking to? What did I get myself into?”

The ad people were fine, but I was just really uncomfortable with the invoicing process because it would say “retainer 10 hours at $1,800” and there was no “this is what I’m doing and what I’m billing for.” So, I was like “I don’t know you that well. Are you actually spending 10 hours?” I had a high ad spend. I think it was the week of cyber week 2019 when I reached the point where I broke even. I broke even on the consulting fees. I broke even on the retainer. I broke even on the ad spend. This was an obscene amount of money to me. Obscene. I was so excited that now everything I sold, I would be making a profit. I was over the moon and it was great.

I think 5 hours later, I got the bill for the next retainer. That's when the panic attack happened and I was thinking “this is an obscene amount of money and I don’t work for free anymore! I’m in my 30’s!” I told them “No no no no no, I didn’t just send out all this jewelry for literally NOTHING.” They said “well it's the exposure, it's the this and that.” I thought “NO, I don’t do that. I KNOW better. I’m not a newbie!” I was so upset with myself for getting myself into a situation like that. So, I emailed immediately and told them to freeze everything, and they did.

I did end up making a good amount of money, in addition to breaking even on that obscene amount of money. Eventually, the funnels died out and it went back to normal. I was SO relieved because I was so busy and for a hot second there, it was all for nothing in my head. I had a bunch of people use me for the Christmas season with these really fun earrings. I was like, “I’m nice, but I’m not that nice! I have bills to pay!” So that was the experience that just completely burnt me to a crisp. Like both sides of the toast, done. Not even salvageable, could not scrape off the black toast, there was more black underneath. That's what happened in 2019.

I FEEL LIKE AS A BUSINESS OWNER THERE IS THAT UNDERLYING QUESTION OF “WHAT AM I DOING THIS FOR? IS THIS ADDING UP? AM I GETTING WHAT I’M TRYING TO get OUT OF THIS? LIKE, WHAT IS HAPPENING?” THAT EXPERIENCE JUST PUT IT RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE IN THE MOST EXTREME POSSIBLE WAY.

Yeah. It was like I regressed too. I started listening to my high school emo. I was listening to hard metal and I was thinking “Why am I feeling teenage angst? This is horrible!” But it was fine. You know, sometimes you just need to step into the fire and feel how hot it is and be like “woah, no, that is not for me.”

WAIT? DIDN’T YOU SAY YOU DID AN ADDITIONAL AD EXPERIMENT IN 2020?

I did in 2021. That was a wonderful experiment. I would even highly recommend them as well. They’re a San Diego ad agency.

WHO ARE THEY?

It’s called Crystal Media Co. and they’re in Carlsbad (California). All women run, I think they might have a couple men that work for them, but overall it's a female thing. I’m all for it. I thought “it’s just an experiment.” You know? I thought “you have to do this for a while to get the traction that you want. You have to be all in.” I did it for 6 months and it was just not lucrative for me, unfortunately.

I think that’s because in 2019, Apple had a different relationship with meta or facebook whatever social media god it is currently. I had done some of my own ads in 2020 but as soon as that new iOS change happened in 2021, there was a definite and strong decline. It was a nosedive. I think it's a lot harder now. I think ads are not for the faint of heart. When you find something that works though, roll with it.

The gals at Crystal Media Co are amazing. So transparent and so great to work with. I got the experience of working with them and got the itemized invoice. Perfect! That’s my love language. Tell me how you’re spending my money. Because, I’m happy to spend the money, if I know what you’re doing. Then, every month you get this awesome PDF slideshow of your numbers increasing.

One of the takeaways I had from that ad experience is my engagement and my follower count. I had a much better run with Facebook over Instagram, weirdly enough. So my Facebook page grew like crazy and in 2019 my followers on Instagram grew like crazy. I had a different experience with both. If someone is ready to take a leap with ads, I do recommend trying to learn it yourself. That's really hard and if you don't have any acumen for that, then you’re out.

SO was the 2021 EXPERIMENT PROFITABLE IN THE END?

It was not, actually. It wasn’t profitable financially, but in terms of gaining more warm leads on the retail side of my business, and engagement on Facebook, it was profitable. It was a different kind of profitable.

OKAY. THAT'S WORTHWHILE. IN TERMS OF YOUR TEAM. THE LAST TIME WE TALKED YOU HAD HIRED SOMEONE THAT WAS WORKING OUT REALLY GREAT FOR MARKETS BUT THE MARKETS CHANGED. SO IS IT JUST YOU RIGHT NOW?

It is just me right now. My girl Monica, she’s one of my best friends. I had trained her in the Wholesale In a Box ways. So she was getting my new leads. In 2020 and 2021 she was the one doing the outreach for my new wholesale accounts. I was cutting her a commission when she landed them. She helped me with the markets too. She knows how to make 25% of my line, she can’t do any of the stamping, which is predominately my line, but she could do all the other stuff. She was fantastic. We parted ways as co-workers because she leveled up and got a cool remote job. Because she's looking at a screen all day, she really could not look at a screen anymore. So it is just me again.

AND THAT MAY SHIFT AS YOU TURN IT MORE INTO A SIDE HUSTLE RIGHT?

Yeah. My husband is always on me to train people to stamp jewelry. That's the thing I have the most resistance to, because it’s expensive to mess up on the stamping. Each of my little tiny pieces vary from between 15 cents to 35 cents just for one piece. When you’re making 2 things, like earrings, if you mess up on both then it's 75 cents. And how many times are you going to mess up? I could just see myself being a monster and not the best trainer for stamping. I have to find someone who is already as good as me or better. They exist. I just haven’t had the time to find them. Or they’re doing their own thing and don’t want to make my stuff.

OH THAT’S TRICKY. IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE AS WE FINISH UP THAT YOU WANT TO SHARE? YOU’RE 12 YEARS IN. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING FOR THE PEOPLE OUT THERE IN THE EARLIER STAGE OF STARTING THEIR HANDMADE BUSINESS?

Yeah. Especially if you set out on your journey and it's really creative and it’s super fulfilling. Don’t be disheartened by this interview. If you get to the point I'm at, if you’re 12 years in, it no longer feels creative. I feel like sometimes when you do it for so long it can be creative but sometimes it just feels like work. That’s okay. At that point you just need to start pursuing some things on the side that are creative to you.

In my case, I’ve been pursuing swim lessons. I can swim, but I wanted to learn how to swim properly. I also started ballet because I never got to do that as a kid. So those are both creative. Well, swimming isn’t THAT creative, but it’s challenging and I like to learn. Ballet is to me very beautiful and super fun. So I would say: don’t get disheartened if it starts to change on you. People who love their work for all of their lives, they’re unicorns. They have some amazing genetics or great wiring in their brains. So don’t be hard on yourself.

A huge thanks and even bigger hug to Jonnie for being such a powerhouse, inspiration, and authentic presence in our community.

You can find our other Made to Last interviews here:

Doing The Next Right Thing With Sarah Omura
Finding Flow with Lori Roberts
And more coming soon!

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Emily Kerr-Finell https://www.wholesaleinabox.com