An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Trading too much time for money. Scaling a brand at the level of time investment you’re at now isn’t likely sustainable without considerable team restructuring which you likely won’t have capital for initially. Establishing ways to make more passive income along your scaling journey will give you the margin of time you’ll desperately need.
Startups usually start with a small cohort of close colleagues. But what happens when you add a bunch of new people into this close cohort? How do you maintain the company culture? In addition, what is needed to successfully scale a business to increase market share or to increase offerings? How can a small startup grow successfully to a midsize and then large company? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experiences about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”. As a part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Kristy Rice.
Kristy Rice wears many hats: serial entrepreneur, adoptive mama, 11 time author, celebrity invitation designer, and stylist, but her first love is watercolor.
Thank you for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
My beginnings as an entrepreneur were quite meager — just me, a dining room table, a ton of drive and no money, In 2003, I launched Momental Designs where I literally hand drew and painted art on invitations. If there were 100 invites ordered, I’d sketch 100 tiny hydrangeas and fill with watercolor. I built our first website in Microsoft Front Page and quickly tamed the SEO beast, landing us on page 1 search results for some big player search terms. 3 years in our growth was massive but chaotic and I brought in Momental’s first employees. Over the next 15 years our growth continued. We launched a sister brand Paintcrush, continued to grow our team and build our service and product offerings across both brands.
You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?
In 2013 I was very much still in the day to day of my brands. Momental Designs had a strong team of full-time artists and designers, yet I felt all would crumble if I ever fully stepped away for a time. I was presented with an opportunity to travel for a month during that time. It was an opportunity I couldn’t easily turn down. At that moment I decided to finally pave a path to empowering my team to fully lead in my absence. We spent 3 months restructuring our workflow to eliminate the need for me to be omnipresent. As the brand leader, being tangled in the minutia of every decision was holding me back from my true power. I was a dreamer, and I was forced into relinquishing my builder role to a team much more qualified. By giving myself the space to be an empowered dreamer or visionary in my brands, my focus became clear, and it was only then that the true capacity of my brands’ growth was revealed.
What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?
Honestly building a team of passionate, empowered women has been the biggest joy of my career that at the same time has imposed the most impact on the brand’s trajectory. Learning that I work and build for these women to succeed has been a massive learning curve but the most worthwhile journey of my career.
Sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a mistake you’ve made and the lesson you took away from it?
Early days were exciting, But I took the idea of functioning as a solo entrepreneur entirely too literally. Looking back, I would have ventured out into my community quicker. I would have invested resources into learning and brand building sooner. The fear of spending unnecessarily stunted my brand growth more times than I care to admit.
Developing your leadership style takes time and practice. Who do you model your leadership style after? What are some key character traits you try to emulate?
I’m embarrassed to admit that it’s only been in the last year that I became fully aware of the entrepreneurial force that is Gary Vee. His kindness-driven leadership style with a focus on becoming serially grateful felt like a refreshing wakeup call to the cutthroat hustle culture I came up in.
Can you share a few of the mistakes that companies make when they try to scale a business? What would you suggest to address those errors?
1. Niching down not up. As entrepreneurs we’re often taught to niche down but to scale within our existing niche, I suggest niching up. Scaling a brand demands you reach a larger, somewhat less specialized audience. In my specific case scaling would have been nearly impossible within my established audience of marriers.
2. Trading too much time for money. Scaling a brand at the level of time investment you’re at now isn’t likely sustainable without considerable team restructuring which you likely won’t have capital for initially. Establishing ways to make more passive income along your scaling journey will give you the margin of time you’ll desperately need.
3. Too much risk aversion. Scaling a brand is not for the faint of heart. You will lose money first. Be ready and willing to lose before you win.
Scaling includes bringing new people into the organization. How can a company preserve its company culture and ethos when new people are brought in?
I’ll be brutally honest. So much of the culture shift that happens when new team members are brought in has to do with your existing team. If you’ve been ignoring team culture prior to your brand’s growth, you’ve set yourself up to struggle as new team members are onboarded.
Additionally in the early days of onboarding your new team members your own visibility as a brand leader is incredibly important. Taking time to personally model and communicate the brand’s ideals and passion will go far in locking in empowering new hires and reinvigorating your existing team.
Many times, a key aspect of scaling your business is scaling your team’s knowledge and internal procedures. What tools or techniques have helped your teams be successful at scaling internally?
As your existing team is asked to essentially split their focus (especially in early days) it becomes key to establish new workflows that support the transition.
1. As Momental Designs scaled with Paintcrush, we found Voxer to be powerful. The ability to communicate quickly and hear each other’s excitement or frustration was invaluable.
2. Leveraging social media in a heartfelt way has become integral to our marketing strategy. Since my team came up during the early years of vanity metrics in social media, we’ve invested in learning how to build an authentic community of engaged followers.
3. Further to our social media push, we’ve become well versed in the skills needed to produce powerful short form video content on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest.
Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.
#artforjoysake is the cornerstone of my niche-ed up brand, if you will. I believe in the joy inducing power that watercolor holds for anyone, literally ANYONE willing to carve out a few moments to give it a go. While I’m absolutely no doctor, I’ve heard from 100’s of souls who’ve found deep healing from the simple act of repeatedly putting brush to paper.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
www.momentaldesigns.com
www.kristyrice.com
YouTube @KristyRice
Insta: @momental @kristythepainter
Tiktok @themomentals @kristythepainter
This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!
Kristy Rice Of Momental Designs On 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
