What if you made it smaller?

On lowering the stakes, starting anyway, and why tiny beginnings might be the whole darn thing.

I have this wild little habit of making things a really big deal before they should be. Like I take one great walk on a sunny day and all of a sudden I’m buying a weighted vest and mapping out a 6-month training program. I think I want to have someone over for dinner, and quickly I am planning the most over-the-top dinner party you’ve ever heard of. You get the idea. 

But funny enough, when I finally decided to build NEON PALM. I intentionally didn’t start big. I focused on something small: the brand guidelines. Which you may be thinking…is a pretty strange thing to do when you don’t even have a product. I mean I hadn’t even talked to one potential production partner, there were no samples, no factory lined up, and absolutely no plan for what I was really bringing to market or how. 

But I paid a designer I worked with many years ago to make the brand real on paper. I needed to see what was in my head and my heart with my own two eyes. And that one small thing made the rest not just feel possible, but dare I say, inevitable. 

And then I did the next small thing. I shared the idea with a woman I trusted, then another, and another. Each of them nodding along, being like “YES, I need this.” And those small, early, simple votes of confidence genuinely carried me through my hardest days this past year.

And maybe that’s the real truth of it all. The small things build up not just to be big things, but to make you believe that even bigger things are possible. 

I don’t think a lot of people have the courage to start a company at the beginning. Hell, I didn’t. For the last ten years I thought about building this, but it was always the really big version of “this,” and I’d panic, shut down, and stop dreaming. I’d take another in-house job. I’d bury that dream again, and again. Something I’m still trying to apologize to younger Joanna for, if I’m being really honest. And maybe I always will be apologizing to her for it.

But I do think a lot of people have the courage to do one small thing and to show it to someone. So this month, when something feels too heavy to start, I’m asking one question: what’s the smallest version of this I can actually do? Not the version I’d post about. The one I’d do on a Tuesday at 3 PM because a meeting was cancelled and I have had an extra shot (or two) of espresso? 

For me, it might be to start outlining that book I keep dreaming of writing. Or maybe I just write the dedication page. Or hell, maybe I just brainstorm some titles. Something small, but still wildly beautiful. 

Because really big, brilliant things always, always, always start as small, wildly beautiful ones. 

What I'm making room for this month: small starts, unfinished things, and saying "good enough for now" out loud.

What I'm not: the perfect plan, the right moment, and waiting until I have more time. (I won't, and let’s be real, neither will you.)

Start smaller than you think you should, then keep going.
-Joanna