From the Archives: It’s Been A While; Notes on Entrepreneurship and Returning Home
NOTE: THIS SUBSTACK ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 11/16/2022
I’m not entirely sure where we left off months ago so i’m going into this with a relatively fresh pallet and a bit of a stiff neck (perhaps that’s just the weight of abandoning a newsletter for give or take 365 days mixed with the anxiety of spontaneously relaunching it on a random Tuesday night- who knows).
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SIDENOTE: Before getting into my thoughts on entrepreneurship, it’s probably fair to address the overwhelm/responsibility I feel to share/explain what exactly has been going on in my personal life. For the last four years I’ve tussled with the ongoing, vain struggle that emerges when you coherently express yourself online. During the majority of this time I’ve been extremely transparent, sharing intimate details of my personal life with millions of people. A couple months ago without explanation - I essentially went MIA.
Here’s the thing - there’s a lot to unpack there and at the moment, the suitcase is open and I’ve put the clothes in the wash but I’m still getting comfortable returning home. You know how it goes, the place is the same but maybe the furniture is a little different or the closet needs to be cleaned out.
Aren’t you glad the metaphors are back and cryptic as ever?
At the moment I am trying to navigate my re-entrance into social media // sharing my life with strangers carefully without dismissing my newfound discovery of how malleable life is. Summarizing the past ten months into words or even just one newsletter feels intensely finite and disparaging - there’s so much to be said. I anticipate breaking it up into separate posts in the near future.
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Thank you for flying MG Air, enjoy the ride.
This morning, (via Spanx founder Sara Blakely) I discovered it was National Entrepreneurs Day and perhaps this is just a rare instagram holiday that for some odd, god forsaken reason (read: the ego boosting, dopamine rush of digital validation) I felt compelled to participate.
I started Outfluencer in 2019 as a bi-product of my masters capstone research. I stayed up for 48 hours on Vyvanse (note to the FBI: It was a very legal situation I was prescribed). I filed the business in NYS, built the website, all the assets, the entire roshambo.
As a business model, there really wasn’t much purpose mapped out - I was intrigued by and continue to be intrigued by fashion as a form of self-expression but my naive “to define is to limit” approach inevitably brought a lot of confusion amongst myself and probably the majority of people who came in contact with the various forms the brand took to. Was Outfluencer a blog? A styling service? A person? A brand? Nobody knew - myself included.
When I picked up traction on social media, Outfluencer quickly became more often associated with me (as an individual) as opposed to it’s attributes as a brand. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to understand that many of the repercussions and challenges I was facing when it came to evolving the business and finding it’s purpose were based in that unexpected but also self inflicted convergence.
After quitting my job in late April I took a few months to reflect on the trajectory of my life. I was primarily angry but also really existentially confused. I knew I had strayed pretty far from who I was or at least who I thought I was (Identity changes continuously and is multiplied by time, it’s a vector - more on this at a later date) the thought that I had “lost” a more desirable version of myself though was painstakingly all consuming. I couldn’t let it go, I became insufferable and started having “Maybe i’m not supposed to be here” types of conversations with strangers I’d meet out on weekends. If I hadn’t forfeited COBRA coverage - from the corporate hellscape I escaped in the form of mild tantrum 2 days before my 26th birthday - there’s a fair chance I would’ve institutionalized myself. Actually who am I kidding, grippy socks in the summer sounds pretty brutal so the likelihood of that happening was far from fair.
That dramatic context is important because eventually those months of questioning if I should jump in front of the Q train (again, drama - sorry mom) led me to the realization that I had abandoned Outfluencer as a brand, it had dissolved into my online persona - the complete antithesis of why I started the project in the first place.
What I know now and how this all comes together in the name of an instagram holiday, is the fact that the only thing capable of setting my soul on fire more than packing up a cubicle, overstuffing lululemon reusable totes and flipping the bird goodbye to everyone in my wrath is working full time on Outfluencer.
In September I decided that if I was going to fully commit myself to the development of Outfluencer it made the most sense to untangle my personal endeavors from the business model. I switched all of my personal social handles to @marygracegraves and expanded the original ideologies of Outfluencer into a digital media agency known as Outfluencer Creative Factory. Silently I’ve been working out the intricacies that come with launching an agency - or any business for that matter. There is still so much to be done before formally launching (in 2023) but restoring my belief in the potential of this project has in many ways restored belief in myself and while nobody is certain of what the future holds, I wholeheartedly believe that without Outfluencer I am unrecognizable to myself.
I am immeasurably thankful you’re here.
As always, we’re in this together and we’ll be alright.
X
MG