Introduction
Ah-Ha!
I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.
—FLANNERY O’CONNOR
Eight years ago, if you had told me I’d be the CEO of a national women and children’s clothing brand that revolutionized the retail business model through Facebook and end up on the cover of a magazine, I’d have looked at you sideways. Who, me? An entrepreneur? You must be crazy! I had no aspirations to run a business. Heck, I didn’t even know what social media was. I was just another stressed-out mom trying to make ends meet.
Like a lot of jobs hit by the recession, my husband’s job selling heavy equipment for the construction industry was in jeopardy, so I figured I’d contribute what I could by sewing and selling children’s clothes. It wouldn’t be much, just a few extra dollars, but at the very least it might earn me some manicure money. After all, no matter how bad times get, a Southern girl has to keep up appearances.
Little did I know what was in store for us. A path opened up that I never even realized existed. This isn’t the story of a dream come true. This is what happens when life exceeds your wildest imagination. And it can happen to anyone, anytime, with the right mixture of common sense, endurance, doggedness, and faith.
Above all, you have to be open to what God is telling you. Whatever your belief system, there’s a higher wisdom at work, and it can come in the form of your inner voice, intuition, a sudden and seemingly random intervention.… I call it God, you may choose to call it something else, but either way it’s real, and you have to find those moments to tune out the noise, be still, pay attention, and listen. Whether it’s a complete sense of peace about a decision you’ve made or a truth that hits you like a lightning bolt, God has a funny way of letting you know when you are on the right road. I call these subtle signposts my “ah-ha” moments, and they’ve occurred at every major turning point in my life.
They happen when things come full circle. Think back to those times when something happened that made no sense, and weeks, months, even years later, it all becomes clear. I used to get so stuck in the past, wondering, “Why me? Why did I have to go through that? Why was I there?” Life seemed so random and unfair at times. But as my story unfolded, I realized that everything happens for a reason. Nothing is wasted, and each experience has been stitched together to create a beautiful whole. Life is a big university, and there are lessons to be learned in every situation, good, bad, even silly.
My big brother Donnie used to torture me, using every opportunity he could to bust my beauty-queen bubble. He used to drive me to the movies, where I would meet my friends, the “in” crowd in school, and crank the heat right up to make sure I stepped onto the curb dripping in sweat. I would scream in frustration, then laugh so hard I couldn’t breathe. Donnie made sure I never took myself too seriously. He also taught me to keep my cool, no matter what. This particular truth has come full circle many, many times. In so many situations where I might have been freaking out inside, I took a deep breath and stayed calm on the surface. No way was I going to let them see me flustered. Oh! That’s why I had a big brother who picked at me so much. He was giving me grit. Ah-ha!
Meeting my first investor, Shana Fisher, was another ah-ha moment. So many unlikely events lined up perfectly to make that connection for me, and even when I resisted because I was so focused on the here and now, taking care of my kids and shipping out orders as fast as I could produce them, Shana pursued me. God was giving me chance after chance to finally get it. He wasn’t going to give up until I got the message that it was time to be mentored and grow, both as a business owner and as a human being. He wasn’t going to allow me to stay down in survival mode. Ah-ha!
More recently, when I was mandated to hire outside executives who I came to believe were wasting millions of dollars and killing revenue streams at Lolly Wolly Doodle, I couldn’t comprehend why it was happening. I wanted to walk away and go back to selling things from my garage. But, when I fought back for control of the company, I finally understood. God was teaching me that I needed to stand up for what I believe in. He wanted to test me, so that I would finally get the fact that I was meant to be here. Until then, I thought I was in this position through some kind of fluke. Going through that challenge taught me to trust myself as a business leader. It also taught me that this was no longer just about me. I was just a part of something much, much bigger. I had 150 workers with families whose livelihoods depended on Lolly Wolly Doodle’s survival. Beyond that, the culture of giving back that we created within our company affects our customers, our community, even villages halfway across the world. Ah-ha!
Ah-ha moments can be miracles, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time. No experience is ever wasted. Our biggest failures and tragedies teach us something. When I lost my beloved fiancé, Frannie, it seemed so random and unfair. Lord knows, if you had told me back then that it was a blessing, I’d have bitten your head off. But years later I feel nothing but pure gratitude that he was in my life, even if that time was cut short. Loss was the gift. It taught me resilience, humility, compassion, and opened me up to a relationship with God I never had before. It made me better in countless ways.
Ah-ha moments are life’s big and little takeaways that lift you from one level to the next, if you let them. You can’t make the ah-ha moment happen, but you can learn to pay more attention and tune in to what is going on within and around you to reap the benefits. Start by looking back on those turning points to connect the dots of those life lessons, and I promise you’ll start seeing them all the time, and just when you need them the most.
The ah-ha moment comes when it’s supposed to. Allow yourself to question it, but be okay when you don’t have an immediate answer. There are some things I may never understand, and I am completely fine with that. They are just blessings that haven’t ripened yet. When I walk through the pearly gates, I know I am going to have a lot of questions, but I trust that I’ll find out, eventually. God has a sense of humor, that’s for sure. The worst things will happen at the worst possible moment, and when I look back at those times with enough distance and perspective, it can be hysterical. But God is teaching me something, and it’s up to me to make the most of every single experience He has in store for me.
Trusting in this higher wisdom is key. It opens you up to the flow of life. It frees you to let go of the resentments and disappointments of the past to make the most of the blessings and knowledge that can come your way every day if only you are present enough to notice. Too many people get so stuck in a notion of how things are supposed to be that they miss out on the miracle of possibilities and never move forward. They cling to their checklists and assume that circumstances have to be just so before they can take a step. As a result, they get in their own way.
This is especially true in business. So many executives and managers allow their methods and protocols to overrule common sense and kill creative thinking. They rely on the experts and tell themselves there is just one way to build a company. If Lolly Wolly Doodle did that, we wouldn’t exist.
The ah-ha moment is when you are humble enough to acknowledge that you don’t have all the answers.
The ah-ha moment is when you listen, I mean truly listen, to others and allow ideas to come through from some of the unlikeliest of places.
The ah-ha moment is when you stop looking in the rearview mirror at all those past wrongs and disappointments.
The ah-ha moment is when you find a problem and persist until you solve it.
The ah-ha moment is when you permit yourself to experiment.
The ah-ha moment is when you allow yourself to fail. Especially when you fail.
The ah-ha moment is when you take a leap and find out that you have wings.
That’s right. You can’t just sit on your behind and wait for it to happen. You have to do something. So many people sit back and think God is going to do it all for them. I love blonde jokes. One of my favorites is about a blonde who found herself floating on the ocean in a raft after her ship sank. She prayed and prayed, “Lord, please save me!” The coast guard came by and offered to help, but she said no thank you. A helicopter hovered over and threw down a rope. “No, no, God’s going to save me,” she said. Eventually she drowned. When she got to heaven, she said, “God, I kept waiting on you!” He said, “Well, I sent the coast guard, I sent a helicopter. There is only so much I can do if you won’t even help yourself!”
Most of all, the ah-ha moment is when you realize that you can take action and help yourself again, and again and again. You never have to be a victim of circumstances when you can hit that reset button. We get stuck in the mind-set that we only have one shot at success or happiness and the moment it goes wrong we are done. But my life is proof positive that there is no limit to the number of do-overs you get. That is God’s greatest gift to all of us. AH-HA!
But you have to take action. You can’t be passive. You have to reach forward and hit that thing! Let God help you by helping yourself. We have to trust that He is going to make a way, but we have to be ready and awake for it. We have to be willing to put in the work. Hitting the reset button is like saying, Okay, I’m ready for whatever it is you have in store for me, and I’m gonna keep on trying.
Listen, I know it’s hard. If you’re like most of us, you’ve probably had a belly full of failures, disappointments, and loss. I hear from moms who are going through unimaginable hardships every day. But you have to believe that what seems incomprehensible now will ultimately make perfect sense. Hang in there. It’s going to come full circle. That messy divorce happened because you were meant to be with someone else. That job you lost was because you were supposed to move to a different city and build a life and career that you find truly fulfilling. That child with special needs was born to you because you were supposed to learn unconditional love and set an example for everyone around you.
It’s my hope that, if you get just one ah-ha moment from this book, it’s that you realize your potential is limitless. Those do-overs just keep coming. Being a victim, blaming the circumstances instead accepting them as unripened blessings, is the one sure way to close yourself off from something miraculous. So knock it off! Have the humility to acknowledge that you don’t know all the answers. When you accept this fact, life gets a whole lot easier. And hang in there. If there’s a silver lining to the hard, hard chapters of my earlier life, it’s that all of it led me here, to the incredibly privileged position of being able to tell my story—every last detail of it—and by doing so, reach out a hand to you and say, “Hey, sister. It’s Brandi here.”
On these next pages I’m going to share with you my whole story: the successes, the failures, the embarrassments, and all the raw emotions of love, anger, gut-wrenching grief, heart-in-throat joy, and side-splitting laughter. No filters here. You’ll learn about the birth of my business, its many growing pains, the role of my beloved yet eccentric family, and the people and relationships at the Doodle that make it so special. I’ll describe the moment it was nearly all taken away, and the David and Goliath battle we fought to take it all back. I’ll share with you all the challenges of this ongoing journey, and why I continue do it despite the heartache I experience as a mother juggling to make precious time for my kids while running a business that so often requires my 24/7 attention. Drawing lessons from these struggles and experiences, I’ll flash back to the ordinary and extraordinary moments of my past that influenced me most and made me the woman I am today.
My story isn’t linear and neither is life. It’s been a roller coaster of ups, downs, gravity-force starts, and screeching halts. There are times when I need to take a moment and press pause before I hit reset. I need to stop and reflect on how I got here before I take that next big loop the loop. So buckle up for the ride and prepare to be entertained!
We’re the same, you and I. You are a mom who stays at home with your kids or a woman who works two jobs to make ends meet but has ideas in her mind that she can’t imagine ever pursuing. You might be young and just starting out, or maybe you are older and facing the fact that your kids no longer need as much from you. Whether out of need or desire, the question looms: What now? You are filled with shoulds, musts, and what-ifs. You think that if you want to start a business, you need to read a dozen how-to business books or maybe go back to school. To you I want to say what one of my angel investors said to me during a meeting: “Thank God you never read a business book, Brandi. Otherwise you never would have done this.”
I broke the rules without knowing I was breaking them. In fact, in these years that Lolly Wolly Doodle has grown so enormously, some of my biggest mistakes have been made by listening to the experts. I’ve come to understand that the reason my business turned out to be so successful is because it wasn’t a business—not in its conception. I wasn’t strategizing, marketing, planning. It was plain old-fashioned common sense combined with a genuine connection to the customer. I was solving a problem. A very simple problem. My kids needed clothes. We needed extra cash. I used whatever was available to me. Every single scrap.
I’ve been scrappy ever since I can remember. In the South, when people hear that word, they think of someone who’s always getting into fights. That’s not me. Well, not unless I have to. But there’s another definition: someone who uses everything they’ve got, every available resource, even something most people would overlook. Scrappy is the mom who has run out of grocery money and finds whatever she’s got left in the fridge to make a delicious casserole to feed her family. Or the entrepreneur running her jewelry business on a shoestring and sourcing items from thrift shops and flea markets. You know, the person who sees possibility where others see the impossible and manages to create something out of nothing.
You don’t have to wait for all the conditions to be perfect. You don’t need an investor from Shark Tank. You don’t need to live in a big city or have a fancy business degree. If you have an idea, just roll up your sleeves and act upon it. Even if you don’t have an idea yet, listen closely to what your heart is telling you, hear the ah-ha’s, then use your God-given common sense to make it happen. You’ll make plenty of mistakes and suffer all kinds of setbacks, but that’s okay. Failure is always an option if it teaches you how to do better next time, when you hit reset again.
I’m just like you, and I’m going to tell it to you straight. Let go of your lists. Stop thinking you can’t or shouldn’t. Or that it’s impossible. Or that life doesn’t work that way. Find a problem or a need—and there are plenty around—then figure out how to solve it. Whether it’s building a business, finding a job you love, or creating a family, you were meant for something great. Now let me help you get there.
Love, Brandi
Copyright © 2017 by Brandi Temple
