Running a company (especially when it’s your first!) is full of Learning Experiences. And in the first year especially, there is a lot of trial and error. While what I present on our social pages is usually (and obviously) focusing on the positive, there’s actually way more frustrations that go into running Pinkly Perfect than you could ever imagine. For this post I decided to get super real and give you the inside scoop into my “biggest mistakes” of 2016 and how I’ll be turning them into the best learning experiences for going into 2017.

Eating for the Insta

Pinkly Perfect’s Instagram is full of shore favorites and summer reminders. This includes PP fashion and accessories, pictures of the ocean, and quintessential boardwalk sweets like ice cream, caramel corn, salt water taffy, and pancakes. In summer 2015 while I was sneakily working behind the scenes to make PP a reality, I had an easier time not eating all the sweets in my pics but this year I was super stressed and found comfort in it all. Nothing wrong with that but a daily indulgence doesn’t exactly help the bikini bod.

Goal for 2017: Learn to say no.

Not understanding Twitter

I just don’t get it. Please follow me.

Goal for 2017: Remember to post every day.

Impatience

I am the worst at keeping secrets when I’m super excited about something. And this past year was full of A LOT of excitement! Combine that with the fact that I work alone and often get desperate to talk to people or share something with someone, and you have one of my biggest mistakes. As soon as something wonderful happened, I frantically texted my mom and best friends and posted on our social pages. This may not seem like that big of a deal but when you’re in the middle of a big project, getting so easily thrown off is actually pretty dangerous to accomplishing the tasks at hand.

Goal for 2017: Calm down.

Waking up too early

Notice there’s a lot of coffee pics on PP’s Instagram? Well, they’re needed. Somehow after launching Pinkly Perfect, my body’s alarm clock started going off early. Like, way early. Most days, I jumped out of bed by 4:30 AM while some days it was as early as 2:30 AM. I would fit in half a workday before 9 AM and then was too stressed to nap so it made for a very unhealthy (although efficient) work atmosphere.

Goal for 2017: Never wake up before 5:30 AM unless absolutely necessary.

Thinking I couldn’t do it

We launched PP on April 1^st. Since then, we’ve been picked up by 9 boutiques (with more on the way for next summer!), had 13+ press features including NJ Monthly Magazine, Creator, and Glamour.com, and received such positive feedback from industry leaders and fellow entrepreneurs. Yet somehow I spent so much time stress-crying alone in my office (thank god I face a wall) focusing on the mistakes or setbacks. This behavior is pretty typical of solo entrepreneurs (I’ve heard) but still it was pretty distracting and maybe even delusional.

Goal for 2017: Embrace my inner #girlboss and stop focusing on the negative.

The post Let’s Get Real: Top Five “Mistakes” of 2016 appeared first on Pinkly Perfect.