The Ostrich Entrepreneur

Or, why it’s wise to bury your head in the sand sometimes.

I started a side business last June. I design and sell a wirefree bra called SimpleBra. This is in addition to my full time job as a product designer at Wanelo, a social shopping app.

I’ve learned a lot in these past few months — about my customers, the product, and how hard it is to sell. Lots of mistakes made and some valuable lessons learned. And I have received a lot of good and not-so-good advice from advisors, friends, customers and well-wishers.

Do ostriches really bury their heads in the sand? No, not really. They bury their eggs underground and poke around from time to time to turn them around. It’s not escapism — no offense to ostriches but I don’t think they’re advanced enough to experience such complex emotions— rather they do it to check on eggs that they have buried there.

This makes a lot of sense to me. The hardest thing I’ve had to teach myself these past few months is to do exactly that. Check out from the world and tune out people’s opinions to focus on the important stuff.

Advice I’ve received so far:

• Don’t do a clothing product, it’s vey complicated to find a good manufacturer
• Don’t expand the line — it adds complexity
• You need to expand the line, no one will be willing to showcase a brand with just one product
• You can’t do this part-time, the only way it will succeed is if you do it full time
• You need to spend a lot of money in order to be successful
• Growing a community is hard, and won’t really pay off
• The design is too unconventional for a mass audience
• Don’t give away the product for free, people won’t value it
• Don’t manufacture in China, people have a negative perception of it

Some of this advice was confusing and contradictory. And the fact that the person offering it wasn’t in my position, and couldn’t possibly experience the emotions I was experiencing made it even more difficult.

There have been some pieces of advice I’ve received that I do find helpful. The most important one being from my mom: every business needs a 1000 days to grow. If you give up before that, you’re giving up too soon.

So I have decided to occasionally start burying my head in the sand to focus on the important things and separate the valuable (and actionable) words from the noise. Then emerge to put those words into action decisively and unwaveringly.