I realise, as I hit publish for this post that we’re almost at the end of February 2022. So whilst this post may be later than most of its nature, I’m giving myself grace as in 2021 we became parents for the very first time. And, as fellow parents know, time has a funny way of bending once you become responsible for another human being. It has a strange way of slowing down, standing still, and escaping you completely all at the same time. So, just like the growing pile of miniature clothes that might not have been attended to yesterday, better late than never.

If you’ve been with us for a while, you may have known that our journey to parenthood, as it is for so many, had encountered some rough times. We started 2021 truly blessed with a growing bump, whilst in the midst of a bleak UK winter and the start of a long lockdown too. The days were dark and cold, and with few daylight hours we spent those winter days hunkered down waiting for our babe to arrive, we spent the beginning of the year trying to prepare as best as we could for the unknown that lay ahead.

For serial workaholics, and with Moyo at that point just us two, this was truly new and unknown territory for us. Since launching our very first business over 8 years ago, the idea of preparing for ‘time off’, for stepping away seemed daunting and seemingly impossible, especially given the 24/7 nature of an online business. Folks on the other side of the world don’t stop needing product support, after all!

Not only was it scary from a technical and logistics perspective (guilty for never ever having created an ‘out of office' auto-responder before), but we were also afraid of losing all of the momentum that we’d built for Moyo over the past few years. In many ways, it was our identity, and the idea of not being able to grow it at the pace that we’d been doing so faced us with anxiety and fears. If we take our feet off the gas, what’ll happen? Will we and our products be forgotten about, will our business and identities fall apart…will we have to start over again? It was all unknown.

So, we set to work. The stars aligned when the wonderful Emily answered a FB group request of a 8 month pregnant business owner (that was me!) who suddenly realised that we couldn’t do this all alone. We’d welcomed someone into the Moyo family and it was the start of handing over the reins of our first baby, our business.

With our newsletters and social media I planned 3-4 months worth of content in advance, the most organised I had ever been. Of course, I thought that it would give me plenty of space before I was ‘back in the office’ working at my previous pace again. 

Those months came and went.

I think in my original newsletter and IG post I gave myself two months off. Nearly a year later, I’m still not ‘back in the office’. Well, not in a way that I expected anyway. But that’s OK.

Usually, for an annual round up post I might have categorised my words into ‘highs’ and ‘lows’. But for 2021, depending on which way you look at things these two could be one and the same so instead I’ve categorised them as ‘lessons’ instead. Here it goes!

Last year our production slowed right down. Like really down. Previously, when we were a membership we released two products per month. That’s 24 per year. 2021? We released just three. 

We couldn’t create or produce at the same pace that we used to. Plus, limited time at a computer and 12 months of sleep deprivation meant that we just didn’t feel creative. However, these challenges actually became a blessing, as it meant that we had to think creatively instead. We adapted.

Instead, we released some new offers. We used what we already had, products we were proud of and instead re-marketed them and brought them back to life that year.

Inbox zero? How about inbox bursting at the seams? In the past, I’ve been known to answer emails at any given hour. Just about to board a plane? It’s OK, I have a couple of minutes before I’ve got to switch on airplane mode - I can resolve this query. A Sunday and someone in another timezone is having a panic with the Monday morning deadline looming? It’s OK. We can create this custom mockup for them. (It’s true, I had boundary issues and my people pleasing nature to blame for this.) 

Well, post baby Mark and Molly have had to let this good/bad habit go. I’m sure it meant that there were many casualties along the way (we’re so sorry if you got in touch and never heard back!), but it wasn’t personal.

2021 was the year we had to dig deep and get humble. When it comes to our business, we always prided on being able to ‘do it all’. Mark and I have been Moyo’s only ‘team’ members up until now, spinning every plate, often affectionately thinking of ourselves as a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. 

Well last year, we relied on a collection of amazing women to help us hold the fort. They say it takes a village to raise a child. Whilst we didn’t have that village necessarily for our babe (thank you pandemic), we did for Moyo.

We’d like to say a big thank you to the following ladies who helped us keep the wheels turning in 2021.

Emily from Vibras Studio who stepped in and helped to manage our social media. From day one we knew we were so blessed to have digitally crossed paths with Emily, who went above and beyond in more ways than we could have imagined.

Alicia and Sandra of our beloved Bacon Studio who created two beautiful collections for us (Paloma and Kalina). Sandra even welcomed baby Vega in 2021, too!

Miranda and team for Wildroot Marketing who took charge of our Pinterest account. This was a leap we’d been wanting to make for a while and there was no better time to do it than when entering into parenthood!

So what’s next? We cannot wait to get back to creating again. We’ve honestly missed creating products, the entire process from the giddy conception phase all the way to launching and seeing how our creative community use these products out in the wild.

In some ways, we’ve definitely been guilty of FOMO. 

Our creative peers seemed to have moved forward, launching products that we would loved to have created ourselves. 

But, whilst we’d definitely had those ‘why should we even bother’ days, we should also cut ourselves some slack, too. A year out is not make or break in business. Whilst it certainly seems like a vast and scary amount of time to have taken out of Moyo, we know deep down that it isn’t and that everything will work itself out somehow.

Besides, when we originally launched Moyo (nearly 5 years ago!) we dreamt of creating a business that allowed us to invest our energies into other parts of our lives. So in many ways, this year was the very year that this dream came to fruition. We could raise our new family. This was a true blessing and so for all those of you who supported us in 2021, we want to say a warm, heartfelt thank you for letting this be possible.

Usually, posts like these would take me weeks to compose. I’d tweak draft after draft, pour over every considered detail. But today, written whilst I have a rare spare hour, nursing yet another tea that had gone cold, in it’s raw, unfiltered and unpolished state it’ll have to do.

The phrase ‘done is better than perfect’ is one that gets circulated in the creative business space and as a perfectionist in my previous life I always found it hard to adopt. Well, this has a whole new meaning now.

My old self would never have allowed this, but I guess that’s parenting all over. Leaning into the real, sometimes messy truth that is the day to day. 

Do we think we’re ‘on top of things’? Absolutely not. I have no idea what that even means any more. It’s still a huge achievement for us to get changed out of our pyjamas before midday. 

But slowly but surely we’re finding our way back to our path as business owners. We don’t know what the road ahead looks like, but we can’t wait to explore this new territory as parents with a tiny human in tow.

With love and light,
Molly & Mark