Emily McDowell is a teacher, writer and illustrator best known as the founder of the stationery brand Em & Friends (now owned by Union Square & Co.) She is a recovering entrepreneur, CEO and author of the newsletter Subject to Change.
We discuss her rise to success with her greeting card business, going mega viral, achieving your big goals and dreams, and finding your way through the burnout that extreme achievement and productivity culture can create.
Hello dear readers and listeners!
I’ve been wanting to talk to
since I first discovered her newsletter and felt I’d found a super-achiever, burned out, kindred spirit. As usual, we jump right in. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.Be sure to listen as she shares some incredibly hard won wisdom. Here are some highlights:
On building a successful brand…
“This whole thing that has my name on it…doesn’t light me up anymore.” (uh-oh!)
“I’m good at this work…I can do it well. I feel very competent. But, I don’t know that’s what I actually even want.”
On walking away…
“Since I was 25, my entire professional life has been 80 hour weeks and put everything you have into work. I ended up with chronic health issues and I can’t actually work the way I used to.”
On burnout…
“I spent three and a half years in a place of really feeling alien to myself and not being motivated by any of the things that used to motivate me.”
On what’s next …
“I’m in the process of re-inventing, re-imagining what that’s going to look like for me.”
“I just started what I’m calling coach-sulting and it’s mostly for people who are entrepreneurs who are in product business. I did it all for myself, but I feel really excited about helping other people.” 1
On lessons learned…
“I had a really deep belief, that was a mis-belief, that success required suffering and sacrifice.”
“It’s less about goals and it’s more about committing to following what is interesting and what’s lighting me up and paying attention to that in a different way. Paying attention to my intuition and what my intuition is telling me, even if it’s not logical.”
What’s the biggest thing you’ve had to unlearn in life so far?
“That achievement is not what makes me happy. That being and doing impressive things, being impressive (in quotes) being extraordinary reaching goals and doing…this achievement based life is not actually what makes me a happy person or brings me joy or fulfillment.”
A special thank-you to Emily for taking the time to share her story with us. Being vulnerable and real about what it’s like when your normal way of being fails you, and taking the time to allow a truer version of yourself to emerge. This is the ultimate definition of success in life.
Keep (un)Learning. KVB. xo
What about you…
Have you had to career pivot, either by choice or circumstance in mid-life?
How do you define success? Has that changed?
What makes you happy?
If you are entrepreneur and want to work with Emily to help accelerate your product based business, I can’t think of a better mentor, coach, consultant. She is offering a six-month live mentoring workshop with her colleague Lisa Congdon.
On Productivity Culture, Burnout and Re-Invention