I learned a long time ago that my expectations are rarely reality. And I’ve been okay with that. In fact, I prided myself in my adaptability and ability to stay positive in the midst of uncertainty. But this last year and a half has been a completely different story—one that has led to my belief in and desire to share “Live. Grow. Play. Create.”
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The Back Story—It Started Over Two Years Ago
Some of you—if you’ve been reading my blog for a while—may recall me starting KreatNou with my husband. It started out under the name The Comte Creative. Our goal with this endeavor was to encourage others to live creatively, to embrace their creative passions and create. Why? Because we believe that God made us to be creators, and by embracing whatever our creative passion is we are living up to our true potential.
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We started The Comte Creative while Scott was overseas in Afghanistan. It was a way for us to do something together—to stay connected. We began with a podcast, interviewing amazing creatives—artists, singers, song writers, makeup artists, martial artists, chefs, actors, etc. The podcast was something we looked forward to because we got to talk with people who truly loved what they were creating. It inspired us to keep working on our own creativity.
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When Scott got home in November of 2020, we found ourselves in a whirlwind of change. Not only was the pandemic still going strong, but we moved halfway across the country to Missouri, to a 10-acre lot with a pond and a house that needed a lot of work. We had so many dreams for this place. We were going to turn it into a homestead, a place where we could truly embrace creativity.
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When we first moved, Scott had a job lined up working in health insurance. But as he started his training, he quickly realized this was not the right path for him. After talking things out, we decided to take a crazy leap of faith and fully immerse ourselves in The Comte Creative and find a way to make money through our endeavors.
nn
We had so many ideas and soon decided we needed to create a sub company to handle the creative inspiration aspect of The Come Creative. That’s where KreatNou came in. We changed the podcast name to KreatNou. I started teaching yoga under KreatNou. And we started working on our first physical product.
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Expectation Meets Reality
In my mind, I saw everything working out. We had a clear and noble mission. We had so many people tell us they loved what we were doing.
nn
Over the previous summer I had offered free yoga practice online to friends. I learned I love teaching yoga, and I thought with the support I had, I could turn my practice into something that could help bring in income.
nn
I launched Kreat Your Move Yoga with high expectation that those who had joined me for free classes would support me in this new venture. But they had other plans and only one person joined me. I was so disappointed. I thought for sure this was something that would take off.
nn
I played with the pricing a bit and finally settled on what I felt was reasonable given the time and effort I put into planning, filming, editing, and maintaining live classes and videos. Eventually two more people joined. And that’s the way it stayed.
nn
Soon after Kreat Your Move Yoga launched, we started working on another product we hoped would really generate income. That’s where the KreatNou boxes came in. The vision behind these boxes was that they would eventually become subscription boxes delivered quarterly. But more importantly, they were all about celebrating and supporting small business creatives.
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For our first box, we had a vision for what we wanted to provide and a theme to go with it: “You are a strong creative.” We worked with a tea company, pattern designer, candle maker, and recipe creator and were very happy with the results: a tin candle that smelled amazing from the candle maker; a yummy tea from the tea company; a beautiful mug, bag, journal, and poster from the pattern designer; three yummy recipes from the recipe maker, and a tea strainer, poster holder, and pen to support the products from the artists. And let’s not forget a 6-week motivational, pre-recorded course to really drive home the message and affirmation “I am a strong creative.” The total value was over $300, but we were selling the box for around $150.
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Our total number of customers: 2
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We advertised through YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Google Ads. But the interest in our box was very low. I even reached out to some influencers who weren’t interested.
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It Begins with Failure
My expectations were way off on this one. We completely failed. Looking back on it now, I understand why. I know there are quite a few things we should have done differently. But hindsight is 20/20, right?
nn
We lost a lot of money on the boxes. And our savings that we had been living off, were dried up. We needed money, and KreatNou wasn’t the way to go about it.
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And so we shut everything down—the website, the podcast, anything that was losing us money. I kept yoga going under Yoga with Sara. My three students remained very loyal. And I Ioved teaching them.
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But the fact of the matter was that we failed. We lost money and had no more savings. We had to pivot, to adapt, to change what we were doing to support ourselves and our needs. And that, for some reason was very hard to do this time.
nn
What I hope to convey through this Evolution series is that “Live. Grow. Play. Create.” came from the ashes of failure, heartache, self-discovery, and so much more. Because of our failure with KreatNou and a bunch of other unforeseen life circumstances, this has been an incredibly hard year and a half financially, and, honestly, we’re still struggling through it. But “Live. Grow. Play. Create.” is what I have learned from all the frustrations, confusion, and heartache. And it’s what I hope to share with you.
nn
Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon.
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