Let me just be upfront with you: this is not a "I woke up one day with a vision and executed flawlessly" story.
This is a I-started-working-on-EI·YO-at-the-top-of-2024, found-out-I-was-pregnant-in-April, threw-up-for-an-entire-trimester-and-was-on-and-off-IVs-for-four-months, and-kept-going-anyway story. Which is a much longer title but a much more accurate one.
I'm a content producer and strategist by day. I have a fiancé who runs two businesses. I have a baby. I have a four-year-old schnauzer named Winston who has opinions about everything. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I am also building EI·YO into something real — a candle brand that started as an idea and is slowly, intentionally becoming a life's work.
I'm telling you this not because I want credit for being busy. Everybody's busy. I'm telling you this because I spent a long time thinking that the chaos meant I wasn't ready. And I want someone else sitting in their own version of this chaos to know that ready is kind of a myth.
---
What 2024 Actually Looked Like
I started working on EI·YO in January 2024. Samples, scents, research, all of it. I was moving. Excited. Feeling like things were clicking into place.
April comes and I find out I'm pregnant. And then I spent the next four months throwing up and on and off IVs and trying to figure out which candles were even pregnancy safe, because it turns out I had to learn way more about what's actually in most candles than I ever planned to.
You know, everyone is on the "healthy wax" wave but it all just feels a little too almond-y for your liking and not enough strong smell. Sometimes, you want your house to smell like Pine-Sol and Tropical Waters — I get that. But pregnancy has a way of making you pay attention to what you're actually putting in your air, and I started taking that seriously in a way I hadn't before.
And in the middle of all of that, I was still going. Still going back and forth on samples. Still figuring out scents. I did a photoshoot in Virginia with my photographer that year because I knew what I wanted this brand to look and feel like and I wasn't going to wait until I felt better to start building it.
I wanted to launch that year. So that's what I worked toward.
---
The Competing Priorities Are Real
I want to be honest about what this actually looks like day to day because I think we do each other a disservice when we only show the highlight reel.
I work a full time job that I take seriously. My fiancé is building two businesses simultaneously, which means our household runs on a carefully maintained chaos that only we fully understand. We have a baby in daycare. We have Winston, who requires walks and attention and vet visits for things I won't get into right now. We have meals to figure out and a home to maintain and sleep that neither of us is getting enough of.
And then there's money. Because nobody talks about that part honestly enough. Building a product brand from scratch means samples and materials and photoshoots and packaging and website costs and market fees, all coming out of pocket, all before you've made a single dollar back. You're essentially paying to figure it out, and figuring out how to keep funding the dream without losing your mind about it is its own full time job.
And then there's EI·YO itself, which lives in the margins. The early mornings. The late nights when I should have gone to bed an hour ago. The voice memos I leave myself in the car. The notes app ideas I'll either come back to or won't.
There are days when it feels like I'm moving fast. There are days when I look at everything I want to build and feel the distance between where I am and where I'm trying to go, and I just have to sit with that for a minute.
I haven't figured it out. But I've figured out why I keep going, and that's made all the difference.
---
The Thing That Made It Stick
I've started things before. Side projects, creative ideas, businesses that made sense on paper. And I've let things go when life got hard enough. Not because I'm not a finisher, but because I hadn't found the thing worth finishing through the hard parts yet.
Here's what I know about myself: I have great ideas. Constantly. It's almost automatic at this point. But not every idea is meant for me to execute. Some ideas are meant for someone else, or for a different season, or just to exist in a notes app forever. I had to find the one that was actually mine to build. The one that wasn't going anywhere no matter how many times life interrupted it.
EI·YO is that one.
My grandfather passed in 2021, and his death very loudly rearranged everything. The way he moved through the world, the way he made people feel seen and valued, the care he put into everything he did — that became the blueprint for what I wanted this brand to be. I dedicated EI·YO to him because he deserved something dedicated to him. And the moment I did that, giving up stopped being an option. You just can't quit something you've given to someone you loved that much.
EI·YO is my lifelong art piece. I have so many ideas for where this goes, and I hold onto those ideas on the days when I'm running on four hours of sleep and everyone needs something and I still have a brand to build. It gives me something to look forward to. Something that's mine. And that push is what keeps me going when everything else is loud.
---
Find Your Thing
I don't know what your thing is. I genuinely don't. But I need you to hear me when I say you have to find something. Not a mood board. Not a business plan. Not a vague idea that sounds good at brunch.
Not every great idea is yours to carry. You have to find the one that you'd be betraying something real to walk away from. The one that's connected to a person, a promise, a version of yourself you're not willing to abandon. Because motivation comes and goes. The excitement of something new comes and goes. The season of life where everything feels manageable absolutely comes and goes.
What stays is the thing you tied to something that actually matters to you.
Find that. Hold onto it. Build from there.
---
The Slower You Go, The More It Shows
My grandfather never rushed anything he made. Every garden, every decision — he took his time with it. Not because he was slow, but because he understood that the care shows up in the thing itself. You can feel when something was made in a hurry. You can feel when someone was just trying to get it done.
I'm not trying to just get it done. I'm trying to make something that lasts. Some days I'm better at that than others. But I keep coming back to it.
That's the whole truth of it.
---
*If you're building something too, I'd love to have you in our corner. Join the email list in the footer and I'll keep it simple, I promise.*