Every time people ask me about my business, it’s usually accompanied
by a “So what do you do exactly?”
Answer: Everything.
Last year, before going into the winter/spring semester of
my third year in university, I decided the following three things:
“FUCK LAW, FUCK SCHOOL. I LOVE WEDDINGS!”
I switched my major to entrepreneurship and switched all my
courses for that semester from all those law courses, to entrepreneurial “sciences”
and marketing. In the meantime, I decided to make a couple extra bucks
designing pretty things and selling them over the Etsy platform. At first it
started off with an order every week, which turned into an order every other
day, which later turned into more orders than I could manage while still going
to school and I slowly phased out of going to certain classes just to finish
these orders and have them shipped by their deadlines.
During this semester, I had a crazy, eccentric, yet amazing
professor – Neil Wolff – go ahead, google him, he’s honestly one of my top
three favourite psychotically wonderful profs at Ted Rogers. Anyway, he taught one
of my entrepreneurship classes in a very weird and unconventional way of
teaching it, but it was one of the few classes I bothered to wake up at 5 am
for. Anyway, I told him about my dilemma with my little money making venture
and how it affected my time for school. He gave me the best advice:
“You know what, it took me seven years just to get my stupid
bachelor’s degree because I kept dropping out to work on business ventures. What
are you in this class for? To be an entrepreneur, I’m assuming. Basically what
you’re asking me is whether you should continue building your business versus
continuing to learn about continuing to build your business? Do you see how
stupid that sounds? You’re one step ahead of what we’re even trying to teach
you, and you’re what? Like 12? If you really want your degree, you can get your
degree. But if you’re in this program to start a business “one day” and that “one
day” is today, then you know what you have to do. Get the tools you need to
succeed and when you have those, forget the degree for now, you can get that
later. What you need are the stepping stones and if you’ve gotten this far then
you just need to secure them and don’t forget to tend to the maintenance on the
structure you build. Our education system has a lot of flaws in it, but
consider this for what it is: everything you learn here at school are just a
bunch of informational tools THAT YOU PAY FOR to help you succeed in life. When
you get to those points in life where you need to take out those tools and use
them to make your money back, go and get it. Fuck this degree shit, the only
reason why I’m working for my Ph.D is because they’d fire me if I didn’t.”
I ended up getting a 4.0 GP (A+) in his class. Juuuuust
sayiiing.
By that point, Chelsea and I decided that we would partner
up and start our own event planning company. At first it wasn’t something we
were serious about doing for at least another five years, but then I figured,
we could start off doing smaller projects now to generate the funds that we’ll
need (when we’re ready) to start the actual event planning part of the event
planning company – and that’s what we’re doing now; building our company with
smaller projects here and there so that we can generate the funds for our
capital expenses.
Since both of us were still in school, we lived a little
over an hour away from each other, which meant that business meetings were
generally spread out over evenings on skype and the once a month that Chelsea
could spare coming back to Brampton. We sort of just ran with it from there and
decided to go ahead and register our company name and apply for GST/HST. All
the while, still conflicted about what the heck I wanted to graduate with and I
guess this summer really did it for me because I decided to transfer to college
where I’ll be attending next year.
So what the F do I do? I run a company, what does it look
like I do?
For the time being we design and make event stationery,
design and arrange event florals, and design and set up event décor. For
whatever reason, we somehow got into the business of painting porcelain and
ceramic tableware and etching glass, which later turned into planting
succulents with terrarium environments in drainless glass and ceramics. So I literally take on any projects now.. which includes wood burning, sign making, calligraphy, labeling weird and magical things, custom clothing appliques and custom wall decals - honestly, do not ask me how this happened, it just did.
I also do my own taxes like a boss... because I am one. Speaking of which, taxes this year...... that is another blog post to be had, jayzus murphy.
It hasn’t even been a full year yet and our company has
turned into something we had no intention of creating this early on in the stages of development, but it’s
pretty much our love child so we're continuing to nourish it and let it grow. We are both so proud of this thing that we created
and despite the fact that the little administrative work here and there is a
bit of a pain in the ass, we know it’s already on it’s way to being everything
we dreamed of and more.
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