Sara Olsher turned personal chaos—divorce, cancer, and pandemic layoffs—into Mighty + Bright, a Shopify brand selling visual tools that help kids and neurodivergent adults navigate daily life.
Sara Olsher started Mighty + Bright as a handmade calendar to help her toddler cope with divorce. A decade (and one breast cancer diagnosis) later, it’s a full-time Shopify business helping kids, adults, and neurodivergent folks navigate tough life stuff with visual structure. In this episode, Sara shares how she bootstrapped the brand, embraced customer feedback, and scaled with purpose—not just ad spend.
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Today on the Unofficial Shopify podcast, we are joined by Shopify merchant Sarah Olsher from Mighty & Bright who has had quite the journey and it is interwoven into her life and when I talked to her and I heard the story and I heard her journey and the product she developed, I, well, I was fascinated and I said, "Okay, certainly we need to share this story." So Sarah, you launched your store Mighty & Bright back in 2013. Tell me what was going on in your life that led to that that store, that first product? It was a disaster. Everything was falling apart. I was going through a really bad divorce. I had an 18 month old daughter and she was dealing with a lot of anxiety and I was like totally clueless about how to help her. The stress was unreal and she was seeing her dad every other weekend and one story in the week and she was going to daycare when I had worked at home before and it was just like total chaos and so my solution at that point was to find a therapist for a toddler and my ex-husband was like, "How is this going to help?" and I was like, "Listen, I don't know but we got to try something." And so I took her to a therapist and the therapist helped me, really made me understand how fascinating kids are because my background is in psychology but I studied adults and if I had known how interesting kids are and how brain development works, I probably would have studied them because they were fascinating and so it helped me a lot to understand kind of like how kids brains work but it wasn't really helping my daughter so much until the therapist went on vacation and she brought out this like I don't know construction paper calendar she had used with like a ruler and she'd made it with like you know Crayola markers and Dora the Explorer stickers and she was like, "Usually you see me on this day with this sticker but we're not gonna see each other that day, we're gonna see each other this day instead." And I was like, "Is this really necessary? Like I don't understand what benefit this has. She does not understand the concept of time, she doesn't know what yesterday is, she doesn't know what today is, she doesn't know what tomorrow is and she certainly does not know what next Thursday is." And the therapist said, "You know it's actually really important to talk to kids about changes to their schedule because it can really erode trust between a therapist and a child if big changes are made and nobody talks about it." And I'm thinking the whole way home I'm like missing one appointment with a therapist she just met, erodes trust, what is it doing that our lives have completely changed and no one said anything about it. And she had explained you know how kids are visual learners and how you explain things to them and it goes in one ear and out the other and I was like, "Okay I need to make it make something that is gonna show her what to expect each day." And so I went home and made this like janky calendar out of electrical tape and like handmade magnets, little illustrations of our family in school and you know I showed her which day was today and I would talk to her about like how many sleeps it was until she'd see her dad. And when I tell you it her anxiety changed overnight I am not exaggerating it was like night and day and I was like holy crap this is bananas. Kids thrive on routine. Yes they do but also they thrive on visually seeing that routine. Yeah only recently to my eight year old I was like wait a second she asked me about you know when something was I said, "Do you even know what day it is?" She knew the exact date. I said, "You know what I'm sorry." She was like, "Yeah you know May 5th." Like what? That caught me off guard but certainly yeah they they thrive on routine and and you know being being involved. Yeah and they're so smart they're way smarter than anybody gives them credit for. Even even a year and a half they they understand things that I had no idea that they understood. You had this experience so that you went you created this own handmade calendar for your own home for your daughter. How does that how does that take you into e-commerce? Well I used to have a small business that was like wedding related. I would do wedding illustrations and I had created like a line of greeting cards that you know just was not going super far. So I was actually familiar with Shopify already and I was basically using it as like a creative outlet before and just trying to create products and see what happened. And so then I basically decided, "Hey what if I am able to take this you know calendar situation and turn it into something that other families could use as well?" Because if I'm using it then for sure other people are gonna need it. Where do you go from there? Like how do you develop the first one? It almost seems this is too simple or too obvious a product. I know but when I googled it no one else was doing it and I thought, "Okay there's got to be something here." So I basically went I had this like leftover for my business I had this like magnet machine where you could like hand make magnets. So I designed like I illustrated a little you know generic you know mom a generic dad and I started hand making magnets and then just made the had these like I guess you could it was like an MVP you know the minimum viable product and I it was like a piece of vinyl that stuck to the refrigerator and these magnets and I took pictures of it. I had a girlfriend who was also a single mom who was a photographer so she took some pictures and I just kind of slapped it up and wanted to see what was gonna happen and it turned out that SEO really took off for me because it turned out I wasn't the only one that was searching you know for help during a period like this which is unsurprising and all of my sales basically were organic and came from SEO and then eventually I ended up getting featured in like Reader's Digest and PopSugar Moms and that's when I would say it really took off from a like side hustle perspective. So what was this people were searching for this thing but no one had gone out and actually made this product mm-hmm what did you title it what was it called that you were coming up with these searches?
It was called divorce or co-parenting calendar but I think the thing that was coming up the most were the blog posts that I'd written you know so back in 2013 I wrote like a whole bunch of blog posts and I put stuff into my product description that basically was like you know things like how to help kids through divorce or how to help kids deal with divorce related anxiety or you know separation and how to put the kids first because that was the big thing for us was through this terrible divorce everyone kept saying put the kids first but then when asked you know what does that mean there was really not an actual answer that involved the kids it was mostly like stop fighting don't talk smack about each other it wasn't anything that actually related to how to actually help the kids and so I think that was what you know there were certain types of parents that were looking for ways to actually help their kids and that was what they were googling and then the product would pop up and it would just kind of like make sense or they were like oh I'll try it you know and then they would leave a review and the review is like oh can't believe what a difference this made and you know it just kind of snowballed from there and so you had a you know a previous business you were doing custom illustrations mm-hmm okay I was doing wedding illustrations so I would draw people in front of their wedding venue or you know someplace that was special to them my favorite was a couple that got married in San Francisco and I drew them in front of a famous theater and their cats were wearing 3d glasses it was fun it was really fun but going through divorce it was like I don't really want to talk to another bride about how this like shade of orange isn't perfectly matched to their you know bridesmaids dresses yeah having been involved in the wedding industry I could see where that gets old quickly yes for sure and so you had to from this idea you end up creating these magnetic magnetic calendars right and then mighty and bright calm was that always on Shopify yes it was and so who you were early on Shopify 23 I was yeah the about the time I started with it yeah and it is so different now right yeah and I feel but I feel like it's grown in a way that has made it you know easy to learn all of the updates you know like I taught myself basic coding and that stuff has you know it's been easy to learn through the updates I'd say so I've been happy about that and so that this calendar product what were you charging for it initially oh gosh that's a good question I think I was probably charging around $24 for it because it was these you know just it was just like a sticker basically that would stick on to a refrigerator and then these like handmade magnets so and I don't think I was putting a ton of thought into you know where this could go so much as I was just using it as a creative outlet so I wasn't really trying to make money or thinking that much about margins or you know any of that but you know it was out there it was successful it was working and you're getting noticed for it so at what point do you decide you could scale this is your full-time gig now right yes it is I would say it wasn't actually until 2020 that I tried to for sure like actually scale it but I did start to realize later like oh there are other products that kids could use that would be you know helpful to them like a routine chart I tried a reward chart for a while I went through a whole phase of trying to create an entire like kids mental health thing so I I definitely was trying to get creative and see what other products I could create so what's the thing in 2020 what's the thing that makes it take off my attention basically was I was playing it was we're back in March of 2020 and everything has been shut down my partner and I both got laid off from our jobs both within the same week and we thought lockdown was gonna last three weeks and we're out there you know in the living room playing Animal Crossing on the Nintendo switch and after about three weeks of negotiating with raccoons to try and build a fake house I realized you know I could look at my business like a game and instead of negotiating with raccoons maybe I could negotiate with real people and instead of making a like fake house maybe I could you know turn this into something that I could eventually you know make myself a real house out of and so I was like well I got nothing better to do and so I I put a lot of attention into taking classes and trying to figure out what it is that makes a business scale and number one was not using individually handmade magnets because at that point I had a whole bunch of different magnets for all different things and they were all individually made and so somebody would order holidays and I'd be hand making 36 magnets and there was no way that was scalable so it was it was definitely a period of trial and error for sure so you've got at this point is seven years have passed and people are shopping more online than ever your product catalog has expanded to like various themes of these planners these magnetic planners and you have figured out that maybe you should not be hand making them in huge variety how did you outsource it you start maybe getting someone else to manufacture it simply the product line what do we do so I thought about what would actually make them scalable and I I had initially tried packaging them into like little bags and then realized that also wasn't really that helping that much and so I did a lot of honestly like meditating on it like I went into my closet and like sat there and just like tried to clear my mind and come up with an idea and eventually realized that if I could make them into reusable stickers that I could print entire collections really easily and then just have magnets and people would be able to interchange them and that way you know I had a lot of customers just saying that they had a just so many magnets everywhere and so by doing that I was able to create like a sheet of holidays or a sheet of you know school related things or a sheet of co-parenting stickers and then people could use the ones that they wanted and then interchange them you know week to week and that was the real game changer I would say for me as a business and I did end up outsourcing that to China I could not find anyone in the United States that could produce them at a good quality and then at a price that was not gonna make them like $100 each and yeah that's the direction I took and I really never looked back at me it was incredible.
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I'm looking at the site now and an adult chore chart for managing your house and division of labor.
This is very clever. I get two charts one for each person it's assuming a couple and we've got style.
Steel and flex. What is the difference there?
So what I when I am obsessed with quality, I have like really hyper focused on trying to make like the highest quality and like, you know, I have a vision in my head of what I want these to look like and I tried a lot of different options and eventually I landed on a steel chart that is powder coated and then screen printed.
So they are frameless and very beautiful and will also just hold up.
So sticky fingers like you name it like these steel charts will literally last for decades.
We are still using art that I had first made 10 years ago.
And then I got some feedback from a bunch of different TikTok comments with people emailing us saying, "Hey, my refrigerator is not magnetic and I don't necessarily want to put these on my wall." Yeah, mine's not. That weird?
Right. Oh my God. I'm like, who does this?
You are seriously robbing people of the ability to get tacky magnets.
Why would you do that to them?
I don't know why refrigerator manufacturers didn't make that a priority, but they didn't.
And a lot of people don't have magnetic refrigerators.
And so the flex option is like a magic material and it is, it'll stick to a whole bunch of different surfaces, but it is still magnetic.
And so you could literally stick it on the mirror in your kid's bathroom and it would work with our magnet system.
So that's the difference between those two.
And it's starting to outsell our steel charts, which is kind of crazy.
Like we've had people buy both to test them out and then love the steel or love the flex and return the steel, which was like never something that I would have imagined happening.
But they're really cool.
And so you've got about, go through the store, it looks like you've got about 85 products.
And there are all these charts, these various charts, but we've expanded.
It's not just kids stuff anymore.
I see there's adult charts as well.
But once you realize the idea and the concept and just the power of a visual organizational tool, it feels like there's a million niche directions you could go in with it.
How do you decide?
Well, it was really driven by my own personal experience because in 2017, so I'd been running this for four or five years, just as a side hustle, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was 34.
And I immediately took a leave of absence from work.
And it was like my whole life had been turned upside down.
And I remember saying to my mom like the day after I was diagnosed, I was like, "I just don't want this to be any harder than my divorce." And my mom looks at me and I was like, "I know it's already way worse." I just had been through so much already.
And really it opened my eyes to the number of things that really...
I didn't realize just how sheltered I had been.
And it really opened my eyes to the number of things that can just come out of left field and traumatize a person.
And I, of course, was mostly worried about my daughter.
She was six at that point.
She already had a history of anxiety and I was like, "How is this going to impact her?
I just wish there was a way that I could make this easier on her." And I, again, reached out to a therapist and was like, "Hey, I'm worried about my daughter.
I don't know how to make this easier." And I had in my email signature a link to my website.
And she responded and said, "I'm not taking new patients right now, but I would really like to talk to you about your business and what you've created if you have the energy to do it." And I was like, "Okay." So I went and chatted with her and she was like, "I don't know why you haven't thought of this, but what if you took the chaos of cancer treatment and turned that into a calendar?
You have already invented the solution." And I was like, "Uh, good point."
[laughs]
I don't know why I didn't think of that.
I had already spent the majority of my cancer treatment at that point writing a children's book to explain the science of cancer to kids because when I went to find a book on Amazon, I ordered like six or seven and hated all of them.
Like nothing actually explained to kids what was going on.
And like with all of my research and everything, I realized, you know, kids can understand a lot more than we give them credit for.
And we should really just like explain to them what's happening.
So she loved the book, she told me to, you know, see about making a calendar.
And so I did that. I threw that up on the website because at this point, I'm just like, "Hey, let's throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks." And again, through Google, I had a mom of a pediatric cancer patient reach out to me via email and say, "Hey, you know, could you create one of these for kids with cancer?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah, of course." And so I asked her, you know, what kinds of magnets she would want, what would be helpful, and then I sent them one and it really helped.
And then I thought, you know, I don't know what to do with this.
So I put that on my website and then I put it on Facebook for all my friends.
And I was like, "I don't know what to do with this, but I made this.
Like, if you know anybody that might use this, let me know." And it turned out a friend of a friend had a child who had been through cancer.
She passed it along to UCSF, San Francisco, and said, "Hey, you know, a friend of a friend created this resource." And it kind of spread from there in the hospitals because it turns out they're looking for resources all the time.
And I had therapists and child life specialists, those are the people in hospitals who are, you know, helping the kids cope with things, whether it's their own diagnosis of something or, you know, a parent's diagnosis or grandparent.
They were all reaching out to me and saying, you know, "Hey, you know, can you create one for siblings?" And so at that point, I started creating a book to go with each of these calendars for kids.
And so I have like this whole product line for pediatric cancer patients, their siblings, kids who had a parent with cancer.
I had one book and a calendar for divorce.
And so it was just kind of expanding into like all of these like hard things and like how to help people help their kids cope with like really hard things.
It seems like that's the commonality here is like, "Hey, when life's throwing curveballs at you in the worst possible ways of just turning your life upside down, the thing we need is stability." And these organizational tools that address those things head on are powerful, aren't they?
And giving us a sense of normalcy and helping us take some control back.
Absolutely.
Out of all those products, essentially there are two overlapping audiences here.
You are selling to adults and you're not selling directly to kids, you're selling to their parents, but the end use is supposed to benefit kids.
And so which becomes the stronger seller here?
Is it, you know, adults or kids organizers or calendars?
Planners?
So, yeah.
So we kind of got into adult stuff accidentally.
I had been working on a line for autistic kids and kind of came across a influencer on accident on TikTok.
And a friend of mine runs a really cool podcast for parents called Failing Motherhood.
And she had interviewed this woman, her name is Casey Davis.
She is a therapist who helps people.
She had postpartum depression and her house just kind of fell apart.
And she got famous by basically coming up with ways to take care of her house, even though she felt like she was drowning.
And she had made this like DIY version of a task chart, which is one of my best sellers now.
And it looked very similar to the chart that I had designed for autistic kids.
And basically it's a line of, you know, of to-dos.
And when you move the magnet, it exposes a check mark.
And so it's basically like a to-do list, but it's really satisfying because when you move the magnet, it makes this clicking sound and you see that you've completed the task with this check mark.
And I thought, man, what she created looks really similar to what I created.
And I knew that she had ADHD and I knew that she wanted to create this product.
But it turns out that, you know, almost a decade of trying to make your own products, you realize how much is involved in making a product and selling it and managing inventory and how expensive it is to invest in that inventory and figure out who's going to pack the boxes.
And I thought, I wonder if I reach out to her if she would be interested in collaborating where I could make this product for her and then she could, like I would take a small portion of the proceeds and, you know, she would basically just sell it, but I would fulfill all the products.
So that was my initial thought.
And I reached out to her and I was like, "Hey, here's my idea. What do you think?" And I was kind of shocked because she had 1.4 million followers at that point, but she actually responded to me.
And she was like, "I would love to talk to you about this." And so we talked about it.
We created a whole line of products that were matching her book.
She wrote a book called How to Keep House While Drowning.
And so she had all these icons already done.
And so we launched three charts that were specific to her brand.
And they sold out and people in the comments were leaving all kinds of suggestions.
And I thought, this could actually be something really big.
And she had this theory or this method of cleaning called the room reset.
And I said to her, "Do you mind if we create a kid's version of this that's like color coded so it's easier for them to understand?" And it essentially turned into a list of how to clean your room.
Because it turns out we don't actually teach kids how to clean their rooms.
We just get frustrated then for not doing it.
And so I created that right afterward with my own illustrations and it was colorful.
And that went viral and people in the comments of that kept saying, "I wish that you had this for adults." And so I went back to Casey and I said, "Hey, I'm thinking maybe we change this up a little bit." Some of the feedback on hers was that the color scheme of her icons were all too much of one color.
And I was like, "Okay, the science of visuals shows that we really need to have these all look different and colorful.
Everybody wants the dopamine hit of looking at something pretty and fun." And so we redesigned her products and they became a Mighty & Bright product in collaboration with Casey Davis.
And then I started creating other things for adults, including that one that you talked about earlier, which is an adult chore chart that also works for Division of Labor, which was inspired by my own past relationship.
That basically you can be running a household and one person thinks that they're holding their weight, but in reality, they're not.
And there's a whole bunch that goes into running a household that's invisible and requires planning and thinking and coming up with ideas.
And there was a thing called the Fair Play Method, which was a documentary.
And then it turned into a card deck where people were talking about distributing things equitably.
But then they were saying in the comments of those posts about fair play was, "I don't know how to make this actually actionable." And I thought, "Okay, that's what this chart is.
It's an actionable way to have a conversation about running your household and then honestly divide the labor.
Now you can physically see on this chart in front of your face what things need to be done, whose responsibility they are, and whether they've been done." And so that was the huge game changer for us.
And now the adult line outsells the kids' products.
And all of it just kind of has been by testing things and, you know, throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing if it sticks.
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Because in this economy, the best defense, it's a higher AOV.
You know, it sounds like a lot of these things come from suggestions.
External suggestions.
You know, where people say, "Hey, I like this, but..." You know, "Could you do a version that's got X?" They see it and then they like it.
They understand the concept, but they're trying to adapt it.
You know, they need it to match their particular situation.
And so I would guess you'd probably get a lot of requests like this.
How do you determine, you know, what are the ones that are worth pursuing?
Because there's cost in pursuing these things.
You know, is that the case, and how do you determine what you're going to follow?
Yes, absolutely it is the case, and we welcome it.
Because some of our, you know, we've made changes to sticker sheets where it's like, "Oh, you know, this sticker sheet for kids says playdate, but my kid is older, so we, you know, we don't want to call it a playdate." And so, like, I've changed entire sticker sheets the next time they go to printing.
So now it says time with friends.
And so we have a public roadmap.
We use a, you know, piece of software where people can go in and look.
It's usually used for software companies, you know, where they're like, you know, "Hey, I want this feature in your software." And then they can, you know, use this thing to show people, you know, where their suggestion is, and we use it for a product-based company.
The community then upvotes.
-Exactly. -Like, well, they see a feature, like, "I like that." And then, you know, they upvote it.
"Okay, I like this approach." And so that's what we do, and we link to it on our sticker sheets page.
And then also people will reach out to us, you know, via Instagram or via customer service and just say, "Hey, you know, I wish that you had this sticker sheet." And we're like, "Please put it in this place." And then, you know, you can enter your email, and then if we, you know, decide to do it, you'll get an email notification and people can vote on it.
And our customers really love that, and we do too, because it makes it really clear to us.
Like, people wanted a monthly version of the calendar.
And so once I found the Flex Magnetic product, you know, material, I was like, "Okay, now we can do this thing that, like, 25 people have upvoted in the last, you know, 90 days that clearly people want." Because before, I was like, making a steel magnetic monthly calendar would have been an expensive nightmare.
So I was like, "There's certain things we just can't do." -This whole business, this whole time, it's been bootstrapped, right?
Why choose that path, and do you think that's made that harder, easier?
-I started that way out of necessity, and also because I think I was just kind of doing this as a side hustle and for, like, creativity and not necessarily because I thought this was going to be a whole business.
But then as time went on, I realized, you know, I could take on money and grow faster.
But I remembered something that Dolly Parton said, which was that she kept the copyrights to all of her songs so that she could own it.
And as a woman, I am the first woman in my entire line of, you know, all the generations who has been able to not only, you know, have her own credit card, you know, and own my own life.
And the idea of handing this over, any portion of it over, I thought, "I don't want to do that.
I'm going to be like badass Dolly Parton, and I'm going to own the whole thing." And so that's what I decided to do.
And I own all of everything from my books, and I get all of the royalties.
I created, like, a publishing, you know, company in order to do that and keep all the revenue from that.
I just feel really passionate about that.
And so, yeah, I mean, it definitely means that you have to be scrappy.
It means you have to think outside the box and be creative about how you're going to do things.
And as a result, I would say I have found the least expensive ways to create things and grow.
And it has resulted in a really healthy business.
Like, my accountant is like, "I can't believe that you, you know, have been able to make all of these things happen.
You're, like, growing really well with, you know, you're making a profit." And most companies that they're working with are not.
And they're spending it all on ads or, you know, whatever else.
So I think it's resulted in a really healthy business.
Do you...
Probably not great if your accountant's surprised by a profitable business.
I don't know what that says.
So do you, you mentioned paid ads. Do you do anything with paid ads?
I did not do anything with paid ads until last year.
Okay, what, why wait or what changed?
Well, I wanted to make sure that the business was profitable and, like, actually useful.
And I think that's the thing that my accountant was surprised by is that a lot of companies are, like, overly reliant on paid ads.
And I had some, like, real experience with paid ads in 2008 or maybe it was...
No, it's later than that. It was probably, like, 2011 or '12.
And my day job was working in a media company.
And some of our competitors were, you know, selling ads to big companies like Amazon, etc.
And then they were using Facebook ads in order to drive traffic to those articles in order to get the impressions on ads that they had sold.
And then when Facebook changed how expensive their ads were, the entire company tanked.
And I was like, "Okay, that is dangerous." If you are only relying on ads and you're focused on top-line revenue and not profitability, that is a dangerous place to be.
So I wanted to see how far can I get using organic marketing methods and not relying on paid ads and then just try and add, you know, fuel to an already burning fire rather than using ads to test and see if I can reach people and then become independent on them.
And when we say ads, are we talking meta TikTok, YouTube?
Meta. I haven't had a lot of good experience with TikTok ads.
And yeah, so it's meta and Google.
And I actually found Store Hero through the Unofficial Shopify podcast.
And again, they are like, "Wow, I can't believe you've grown this business to what you've grown it from." Because their whole thing is about profitability and helping the founders really understand, like, exactly understand your finances so that you don't end up in a position where you're entirely relying on ads.
So they're helping a lot of people do the opposite of what they're helping me with.
So they were like, "Okay, like we can help make sure that you start ads in a way that they are profitable for you.
And, you know, take the anxiety out of like starting this and worrying that you're just like be completely dependent on them versus a lot of the other companies that they were working with were like overly dependent on ads.
And then Store Hero was helping them kind of dial it back and focus on profitability.
Any other apps or services in your Shopify store that you're thrilled with?
We've been using Octane.ai for quizzes.
And that seems to be working really well.
I really enjoy, you know, recommending things to people because that was one of the things that we were hearing from people was, "Hey, you know, I don't know what product to buy." And so this started, you know, to help us grow our newsletters list, but it also was genuinely something that people were asking for.
So I really like that one.
And then we're also using one called Sensible Forecasting.
I just installed that a couple of weeks ago because I was really struggling with trying to figure out when to order things.
And so far that one has been working really well.
And then the third one that I absolutely love is Bundles.app for inventory syncing because most of our products look like they're like different kits, but they're actually bundles.
And so we have like three or four basic charts and as one kind of magnet and then like 70 different sticker sheets.
And people will order like, for example, that Division of Labor one, and they'll get two of a certain kind of chart.
They'll get two sets of magnets and then they'll get one pack of sticker sheets.
And that app is run by a guy named Harold, who is like so awesome.
He's super helpful and has gone through and helped me with a bunch of different like issues that I've had.
I love his customer service and it makes it so that we're fulfilling things correctly.
Oh, and oh my gosh, I can't believe I almost didn't say anything about iPaki.
We had a 3PL for a while and it was a nightmare.
And then we switched to another 3PL, also a nightmare.
And then finally decided to bring it in-house and get our own warehouse.
And iPaki is what we use with a scanner to make sure that when we're packing products in boxes, that they're actually getting what they ordered.
So I love all those apps.
Yeah, it was necessary.
Give me one moment that almost derailed you.
You've been around 13 years you've been doing this.
12 years, 13?
What's a moment that almost took you out?
There have been a lot of things that were mindset related, I would say.
Because I grew this so slowly and was bootstrapped, there were a few times where I would like invest in things that did not end up going well.
We do have a charitable mission as part of our business.
So for every order we get, we donate a book or a visual schedule to a child facing cancer or another difficult life experience.
And so there have been times where I've ordered too much of our product, but then we've just donated that product.
So it didn't end up being as terrible as it could have been.
But on a personal note, I had a partner during the pandemic when I was trying to grow this that didn't see my vision.
And it actually almost derailed me because it really eroded my confidence.
And then once I left that relationship, the whole thing exploded.
So I think I was really holding back on what this could be because I was listening to my partner, which is not good.
Yeah, having someone in your ear who's just questioning you and wearing down your confidence, it's not going to help your mindset.
And then certainly that's not going to be good for you as a business leader, as an entrepreneur.
Totally.
I want to know what's kept you going.
I want to know what your why is because you have faced a lot of challenges and you've done a lot.
At this point, launched dozens of products, written books.
You've got a non-for-profit where you're donating products.
What keeps you going?
Helping people.
I genuinely have a passion for the things that we are creating, but I mostly have a passion for the idea of making somebody's life even a little bit easier.
And we got a lot of people writing in and saying some of our products have saved marriages.
I get letters from children saying that they loved my books or that their dad has cancer or that they have cancer and they don't have any hair and that my book helped them.
Really that feedback from people that we've helped is enough motivation to keep me going probably for the rest of my life.
Yeah, I could see that would be inspirational.
Absolutely.
Have you been around a while and you listen to e-commerce podcasts, you've got to do the continuing education.
What's one piece of common advice that you think is overrated for e-commerce store owners?
There's a couple.
I would say the first is saying to outsource customer service first.
Our business has obviously grown in part because we are listening to the customers and while negative feedback can be hurtful because this is your baby that you're creating, it can also really help you grow something that is genuinely helpful for people.
I definitely think that advice is overrated.
I would also say that the advice of hiring help from overseas and creating remote teams is overrated because I tried that and it wasn't until I hired an actual in-person employee that I finally felt like I actually had a grip on what was going on.
I have basically a right-hand woman named Katie and she was 80 million times more helpful than anybody that I ever hired remotely.
So I think that can be overrated too.
Well shout out to Katie for helping out.
For sure.
What's one lesson you wish you knew in 2013?
That this could actually be something.
I don't think I believed it could be.
What you focus on grows and I think between 2020 and 2022, I made more revenue in that amount of time than I had in the entire previous time that I had been running this.
I think if I had known that back in 2013, I would have given it a go earlier for sure.
Yeah.
Well, survivorship bias, right?
It worked out and so now it's easy to go, "Yeah, absolutely.
100% we should have done this." But when you're starting it, you don't know.
There's no way of knowing.
And that slow and steady growth is how we got there.
So where can listeners connect with you and get their own charts and organizers?
You can find us at mightyandbright.com and we're on social media platforms @mightyandbrightco.
Sarah Alsher, Mighty and Bright, thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
I love the podcast.
I've listened to every episode.
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