Welcome to Chase your Dreams

Summary

Maggie Lord, founder of Rustic Wedding Chic, shares her journey of starting, scaling and selling her online publication while balancing motherhood. In this episode, you will learn about how Maggie started with blog writing and eventually worked with vendors in the wedding industry, diversified her revenue streams, and adopted new digital platforms to grow her audience, up until she sold the company to David’s Bridal. Maggie also talks about her current role as a strategic advisor to female-founded brands and shares her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

About Maggie Lord

Maggie Lord was an early pioneer in the online digital wedding media space, establishing her media company Rustic Wedding Chic in 2008. As a founder and CEO of Rustic Wedding Chic, Maggie led the company for 12 years before it was acquired by David’s Bridal in 2020. Maggie is also the author of six books. Today, Maggie has become a sought after strategic advisor to female founded brands allowing her to focus on sharing her knowledge and expertise with other like-minded entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses. Maggie and her businesses have been featured in the New York Times, Fast Company, Forbes, Business Insider, Success Magazine, and much more.

Contact Info:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggielordandcompany/

Website: https://maggielord.com/

Takeaways

Balancing Motherhood and Entrepreneurship

Prioritizing and setting boundaries is key. When her children were younger, Maggie would tackle the most challenging business tasks during uninterrupted times, like during her children’s naps. Now that her children are all in school, she maximizes work productivity when they are out of the house so that she can fully engage with them when they are home—thus balancing professional commitments with quality family time.

Diversifying Revenue Streams

Having multiple revenue streams to buffer against market volatility is crucial for maintaining business sustainability and encouraging growth amid changing market conditions and consumer preferences. Rustic Wedding Chic initially relied on display ads. With the decline of ad effectiveness around 2013-2014, Maggie shifted towards branded content and affiliate marketing, then launched a vendor directory for rustic wedding services.

Starting a Business

Take the first step without overthinking the entire process. Start small, validate your idea, and gradually build from there. During her own wedding planning, Maggie identified a gap in the market which lacked digital resources for rustic weddings. She created Rustic Wedding Chic as a blog to fill this niche, gathering and sharing curated content and images from photographers to inspire and assist other brides. It quickly established a significant following due to the uniqueness and timeliness of her platform.

Scaling Sustainably

Focus on building a strong foundation before expansion, and master one area before adding new elements. Understanding the capacity for fulfilling increased demands is important to avoid overextension. Entrepreneurs should consider strategic timing and resource allocation to ensure that when opportunities for scaling arise, the business is prepared to handle them without compromising quality or operational stability.

Selling a Business

When preparing to sell, businesses can reach out to their ideal potential buyers. Maggie crafted a shortlist of potential buyers who could benefit from a direct relationship with her established audience. She contacted key decision-makers, sharing her intent to sell and explore possible synergies. These preparations allowed her to approach the sale thoughtfully, aligning with a buyer, David’s Bridal, that matched her business’s needs and future growth potential.

Chapters

00:00 Balancing Motherhood and Entrepreneurship

09:32 Building an Online Presence

16:09 Diversifying Revenue Streams

36:37 Challenges for Entrepreneurs and the Role of a Strategic Advisor

46:22 Balancing Business and Family

53:59 Future Projects and Writing a Book on Business and Motherhood

 

Transcript

Maggie Lord

You know, the reason why I shifted to this after leaving David’s was because I was so desperate as a, especially I was a young entrepreneur, right? I was like 27, 26, 27 when I launched Rustic Wedding Chic. You know, I was desperate over those years. If I could have had an advisor or, you know, quote unquote, business coach, someone who I met with a couple of times a month explained my challenges. I think I would have not woken up in the middle of the night so many times questioning, did I do this right? Is this the right direction for the company? You feel very isolated when you’re an entrepreneur.

Glynis Tao

Welcome to Chase Your Dreams, a podcast for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable clothing business so they can make a living doing what they love. I’m your host, Glynis Tao, an apparel business consultant and SEO specialist with 20 years apparel industry experience. I’m also a mom to a wonderfully energetic little boy named Chase.

Maggie Lord was an early pioneer in the online digital wedding media space, establishing her media company Rustic Wedding Chic in 2008. As a founder and CEO of Rustic Wedding Chic, Maggie led the company for 12 years before it was acquired by David’s Bridal in 2020. Maggie is also the author of six books. Today, Maggie has become a sought after strategic advisor to female founded brands allowing her to focus on sharing her knowledge and expertise with other like-minded entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses.

Maggie and her businesses have been featured in the New York Times, Fast Company, Forbes, Business Insider, Success Magazine, and much more. You can find full information on Maggie at maggielord.com.

Welcome, Maggie. It’s so nice to have you here today. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.

Maggie Lord

I’m so excited to be here.

Glynis Tao

So one of the reasons why I was interested in having you come on as a guest was because I wanted to learn about how you established yourself in the online digital wedding media space, sold your company to David’s Bridal and became successful in business simultaneously while raising kids. Because I’m actually going through that myself and I only have one child. You have three boys, is that right?

Maggie Lord

I do, I have three little boys and yeah, it’s certainly been an interesting wild ride to be an entrepreneur and have children. So I’m always open to sharing my thoughts about how people can do that the best because there’s really, there’s not a lot of playbooks that help you understand how you can do things successfully on both sides of that.

Glynis Tao

No, exactly. I mean, there’s business books and then there’s parenting books. Very rarely are they merge the two together. So I’m really glad that you’re speaking about it. How old are your boys?

Maggie Lord

Yeah, so I have three and they’re 13, nine and six. And so we’ve got a lot going on. And I think the most interesting thing is that because I was an entrepreneur before I had children, they’ve grown up only experiencing me as an entrepreneur, as a mom and watching me, you know, kind of dominate both sides of that, of being a mom and a business woman. But I think there’s a lot of women who I’ve spoken to over the years who had children and then went on to do an entrepreneurial sort of journey for themselves. And I think it’s sometimes harder to mesh those two things once you’ve kind of established being a mom first. So my kids have only known me as being, you know, my job has always been, some sort of entrepreneurial something.

Glynis Tao

Oh, that’s great. I mean, it’s sort of a role model to them, I guess.

Maggie Lord

Yeah, I love to share with them about, you know, entrepreneur ideas and things that they that you don’t have to set up a formal company if you just have an idea. Like, I think it’s important for kids to know that you can create a job that you have out of a dream or a passion or something. 

And, you know, I tell them all the time my first entrepreneurial journey was when I was six and it was called Maggie Shell Shop. And I would go to the beach on the weekend and collect shells and then sell them. And I figured out very quickly, like that was endless inventory and it was free because I was taking it from the beach. It only cost my time, but then I could sell them.

And, you know, by the time I was in third grade, I was like selling binders to the girls in my class with like puffy paint pictures. And so I always had that like part of who I was and so when my kids come to me with like a crazy idea, I’m like, yeah, you’re an entrepreneur. Of course you can do that. Why not?

Glynis Tao

Wow, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that about you that you had that entrepreneur spirit ever since you were a kid. Do you think your boys will have do the same or any of them showing that sort of that side of them?

Maggie Lord

I think they will. I think a little bit, they’re all very sports minded. Like if you ask them all today, they’re all gonna be some sort of pro athlete when they grow up. But, you know, I think what is interesting is to allow kids to have fun with the very simple things like they wanna have a lemonade stand. Like that’s fun. And yet there’s like really good lessons of like, well, how much are you gonna charge? Because how much did it cost for you to buy the ingredients?

And, you know, so I think when my kids have ideas like that and I have one who he’s nine and he has a little podcast and he just talks about sports. Like I was like, yeah, sure. We can buy some inexpensive equipment. Like, sure. So yeah, there’s signs from them that, you know, at least they feel like it’s a safe, fun thing that they can try.

Glynis Tao

Oh, that’s great. Yeah. So I’m always interested to talk to other mompreneurs about how they did it. And you’re living proof that it’s possible to create a successful business while embracing motherhood.

During my research, I found out that you used to be a middle school science teacher. And when you were planning your wedding, you were frustrated by how hard it was to find inspiration except for in physical magazines. So you decided to create your own blog called Rustic Wedding Chic. And you were able to grow that business fairly quickly within a year or so after starting the blog and you were able to leave your teaching job. That’s amazing.

Maggie Lord

Yeah, so, you know, as I walk people through what I did was that, you know, I was teaching at a middle school and, you know, enjoying it wasn’t my passion, but I was also finishing getting my master’s degree at the time. And so, you know, being a teacher and going, you know, going to school for a master’s degree, like the time that you need to do both those things kind of worked out well.

So I enjoyed it for sure, but I’m obviously very entrepreneurial. I’m a very creative person. And so, when I got engaged to my husband, this is 2008. So there’s no Pinterest, there’s no Instagram. And we live in Connecticut. We were planning to have a very rustic lakeside wedding where my family has a summer house in Northern Wisconsin. And there was no way to communicate to the vendors what I was looking for, right? This is even if you go back, like this is…and not everybody had a smartphone. I had a Blackberry that took really grainy pictures. So I couldn’t even email great ideas to my vendors. So I had to figure out a way to communicate what I was looking for. And I started finding really pretty pictures on photographers’ websites. So if you’re a wedding photographer, obviously you show off your work. So I would find those pictures and I was trying to email them to the vendors and I was like, there has to be a better way.

There was a handful of wedding blogs as we called them at the time, right? It was just more of like a personal blog. And I loved them and like Style Me Pretty was big at the time. But none of them kind of really filled the niche that I was going for. And so I started reaching out to wedding photographers and saying, I love this wedding that you have on your site. Could I, you know, I now have a, you know, a little blog called Rustic Wedding Chic just for, you know, rustic and barn sort of weddings. And they were very happy to share their photography because they want, you know, and I linked back to them. They wanted to be able to get their images out there. And, and so we quickly built a large collection or library of amazing images and weddings. And it really was almost, we had a readership like instantly. It was amazing.

So if you look at the wedding content world today, there’s hundreds and thousands of places you can go for content. There was probably five or six back then. And so talk about being like right place, right time. I was definitely fueled by this passion of what a bride was struggling with to try to plan. And so we I quickly created this whole idea that like I could be this 360 planning tool for her where she could find resources and inspiration and vendors. You know, and because we were so early in the game, if you typed in rustic wedding, anything to Google, we were the first, you know, six, seven, eight things that would come up in Google for years. And so establishing ourselves at that time, it really was important. I would have had no way of knowing how saturated the wedding market would become with content, but obviously we were in it in an earlier time, which clearly helped why the brand took off the way it did.

Glynis Tao

That’s amazing. And indirectly, you were doing SEO.

Maggie Lord

Yeah, no, it’s funny. I mean, I, you know, doing a lot of consulting work now, like, you know, SEO is a part of everything and there, I didn’t have a strategy for that particularly, you know, and I…

The clients that I work with now are at all different stages in their business journey, but like, I didn’t create a business plan. I didn’t sit down and say, how am I going to take over this niche? You know, like I just didn’t, I, I kind of built it on what I, I was the perfect consumer because I was going through the stage actively of trying to plan a wedding. And so I was like, would I use this? Yes. Is this something I need that I can’t find? Yes. So I didn’t spend a lot of time creating major business plans and things and it just really unfolded quickly for us.

Glynis Tao

You identified a problem, which you had and came up with a solution.

Maggie Lord

Right, which is, as we all know, that’s how the best companies and brands are built when they’re solving a problem for someone.

Glynis Tao

So how did you identify your target audience and what strategies did you use to reach them? I mean, you said that there are very few blogs out there anyways at that time. So like, as soon as you launched, like, did you already start having people like readers join or did you have to like, did you do any kind of marketing around that or?

Maggie Lord

Yeah, I mean, we didn’t do much marketing, to be honest, there was no like major launch, right? Like we set up a blog platform and had amazing pictures and it, you know, it was growing. But because we were so early to the game, like I said, if you typed in rustic wedding, anything to Google, we came up first. And so we were able to kind of get a very nice organic readership and didn’t have to pay for, you know, to get the consumer to see us or to engage with us. And we were able to, you know, really talk about things in an organic fashion because they were finding us in this way.

You know, I will say there was a big turning point when Pinterest became a thing, Rustic Wedding Sheet jumped onto it very early. Like there was no Pinterest business yet. It was just like this Pinterest platform, you know, and someone invited me to be on the platform. And because back then you had to like get an invite from someone, I think. And that was a game changer because people started to find us by the time we sold, I think we had over 10 million monthly impressions of content just on Pinterest alone. Yes, Pinterest became a huge thing for us as we jumped on Instagram early too, because we knew it was like the visual, what we were really doing was inspiring the bride with visual content, right? And then of course, tangible resources that she needed, but the imagery was important. So we had a ton of readership come in through Pinterest and then later through Instagram as well.

Glynis Tao

Ok, because I really answered sort of the next question that I had about like, what were some of your most effective marketing strategies that you employ to scale your business? And it sounds like Pinterest and Instagram were the two platforms that helped support you and build that audience.

Maggie Lord

They did. And then one thing that I was really passionate about was because we were obviously like a digital first company I wanted to find ways to connect with the bride offline as well. So just about maybe two, two and a half years after launching the company, I landed my first publishing deal to write a book. And that was great because what I wanted to do was connect with her offline and online. And so, and it established us like me really being an expert in this area. So by having a book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble, and also having an online platform, that really helped expand our readership. I mean, when I wrote the first one, I had no, I didn’t, I wrote six over the next couple of years, right?

I didn’t think that it would be that vast, but it was really great because we were able to diversify how we were inspiring her. You know, and we went through a lot of different ways of being able to license our name to product. We did stationary cards with the company, you know. We did a lot of different things so that we were tackling kind of a lot of ways that we could inspire her and talk to her and help her with her wedding journey. So we were digital first, of course, but it was really a big plan of mine to be able to go and expand outside the digital space.

Glynis Tao

Okay. And how many rustic wedding sheet books did you end up publishing?

Maggie Lord

Yeah, so between 2012 was when the first book was released. And the last one that I wrote on weddings came out in 2019. So yeah, there was six total in that time frame.

Glynis Tao

Okay. Can you share a particular challenging period for Rustic Wedding Chic and how you navigated through it?

Maggie Lord

Yeah. So, you know, we really relied in the beginning, the revenue model for the company was having brands advertise with us, right? That were related to the wedding industry so that, you know, the bride could get everything that she needed. She’d come to us for inspiration, but so it was all about the ads. And we did phenomenal in the early days with just the display ads from, you know, served up through Google.

We, you know, I remember somebody said to me, you’re sleeping at night and you’re making money because if someone’s on the site and they’re clicking on ads. And it was true, we were printing money from that ad strategy.

And in about 2013, 14, people in the industry, if we all lived through it, would call it the ad apocalypse. Everything changed. Display ads were not producing revenue like they were. Brands were shifting to branded content, content on the site that they would pay for that for you to write blog posts. The consumer…also got very smart and stopped clicking on the display ads, right? They’re like, it’s a lot of noise. It’s a lot of mess.

And so we had to pivot and change very quickly as we just watched every month, the revenue that we’d be making from the display ads would just go down, down, down, down. And at the same time, we had to shift to working with brands on branded content on the site. So we’d write a story about their wedding registry company or I mean, we worked with Macy’s and Ikea and a million other different companies and they wanted their stuff to stand out differently. So we had to shift to that model.

And affiliate was starting to happen where you could talk about a product or a company and get affiliate kickback from it. And what I learned kind of going through this mess of thinking, oh my gosh, I can run this company for the next 20 years on just this revenue model, right? It looked like it would never break. And I have multiple friends in the same space that we kind of came up through the digital ranks together and everybody suffered from it. Every company had to shift and change.

But I think my biggest suggestion to people is that one, diversifying your revenue stream is always a good thing, right? Because you can’t just rely on one always working forever. And so in 2013, we pivoted quickly and we did not have a vendor directory yet. I was fielding emails from bride saying, I’m looking for a barn wedding venue in Michigan. And I’m like, well, I live in Connecticut. I have no idea.

And there were some wedding directories out there, but they were very general. None of them focused just on this niche of the wedding industry, this rustic kind of barn country sort of feel. And I realized if I built it quickly, we would be able to, you know produce revenue from that stream as well. And we quickly, you know, onboarded like 2000 vendors signed up in like the first two weeks, right?

And so, you know, that we had to pivot and change over the years how our revenue was gonna be structured. So navigating through that and looking back, I would always tell companies or brands or entrepreneurs that I, you know, having a couple of different revenue streams is never a bad thing because if one isn’t performing the way you want it to, you have others to fall back on. And I think that’s something I keep in mind today and it’s something I talk to all my clients that I consult with.

Glynis Tao

Okay, I’m really glad that you brought that up and explained how your revenue model worked and how you’re able to generate income from the blog. So it was mainly in the beginning, display ads, right? Is that what you’re saying? Like those banners that we see on blogs, right? 

Maggie Lord

Yeah, so I mean, you could work with a couple of different networks and like, you know, there was a Google ad platform and there was one that was specific to just like the wedding industry at the time. And, you know, what we wanted to do was to really work with, to have great display ads that complimented why she was on our site, right? So it would be for wedding invitations or florals or wedding dresses or bridesmaids dresses, but she still came to us for kind of resources and inspiration and good content.

But when it shifted, we had to then work harder to sell those same placements from us, right? So brands wanted to have more control. And so, we had to go out to a brand and say, well, here’s six different ways that you can advertise on our site. And so it just, it got a little bit more challenging than when you would just work in these great networks where they would just feed you great ads to put up. And then, you know, you were issued a check every month. It was amazing.

Glynis Tao

Okay. So that worked for a while and then kind of started not to not work.

Maggie Lord

Yeah. Industry wide that on all digital platforms, it just, you had to diversify. You couldn’t just rely on display ads anymore. You know, there was so much that was changing, you know, with different, the way people search for things and how smart the consumer got. And brands wanted to have different ways of showcasing, you know, their product or their brand. So you had to just shift with the fact that that’s where digital communication and advertising was going to move in a different direction. And we had to move with that.

Glynis Tao

Okay. And then so you came up with the idea of creating a directory or guide. Is that right? 

Maggie Lord

Yeah, we started the rustic wedding sheet guide and it was vendors from across the country in different categories that could, you know, pay us a certain amount every month and you know, they could be showcased and have beautiful pictures and have all of their information listed. And they knew that they were getting a much more qualified bride looking at their content and looking at their site, as opposed to if they were listed on a general wedding, you know, information page where a bride might have zero interest in an outdoor barn sort of venue, but the brides who were coming and who were our reader, they were already interested. And so they were getting a much more qualified ride by spending their ad dollars with us.

Glynis Tao

Oh, okay. Yeah. So in a way, because you already established and you built this audience that’s, you know, you’re catering towards them. Right. And then so, okay, that really makes sense. And then so was the guide then mostly like your biggest like revenue?

Maggie Lord

It wasn’t our biggest revenue. It was definitely a piece of it. I would say still the ad side of things was definitely the largest revenue piece. It’s just, we had to switch from having some sort of network or communication group get feed us the display ads. And we worked individually with brands, right? So brands could come to us and say, what are the ways that we can advertise? And we could come up with a lot of different ways that we could work together.

So the advertising side of things, having the digital placements available for companies was definitely the number one revenue source for us.

Glynis Tao

Okay. And was influencer marketing around at that time?

Maggie Lord

I remember when it started, you know, and we, back in the day, we used to work with a company. Now it’s like to know, it’s like a whole different thing, but it was called reward style. And we could write an article about, you know, the 10 best bikinis for your honeymoon and link back out to these products. And we would get, you know, affiliate money that way. And it, it worked. The thing with affiliate that’s really hard is that, you know, you have to, you don’t make that much off of one affiliate link, right? So you’ve, you, you have to find other ways. Like it’s definitely can be a piece of someone’s revenue model, but it’s really hard for that to be the only thing.

So we did dabble in it, we did play with it, refined it over the years, but we found that brands really still just wanted to spend their ad dollars with us. So after more than a decade of growing your wedding website, in 2020 you decided you were ready to sell the business. So what led you to the decision to sell Rustic Wedding Chic to David’s Bridal?

Just an FYI for folks who are outside of North America, David’s Bridal is the largest American Bridal store chain with more than 300 stores located across the US, Canada and UK.

Maggie Lord

Yeah, it is a question I get asked often, obviously. It was a big decision because I started the company. We never took on investors. The company ran off its own profit. I didn’t have a large team. And so it had been successful for more than 10 years at that point. Over the years, I had a lot of interest would pop up every once in a while from competitors would reach out, lifestyle, digital groups would reach out asking if we were interested in selling. And for whatever reason, those just kind of like weren’t the right time for us or I didn’t feel like it was the right fit or was getting some sort of like crazy low ball offer. And I was very happy running rustic wedding sheet, because I was able to balance motherhood and I loved being an entrepreneur and I loved really owning my own kind of journey and being in charge of my own destiny a little bit.

But before 2020, in 2019, I kind of crafted this idea. I came to my husband and I was like, okay, I have done it all. I’ve written six books, we have millions of monthly readers, we’ve licensed our name, I’ve done so much and I’ve done it all now, having multiple kids over the time. And I was just like, this is the point that we’re at, that either we have to grow significantly and I need to bring in a lot more staff and we need to start really stretching the boundaries of where we’re going. Cause I don’t think it can just stay where it is. It was successful, but it wasn’t, it needed to grow.

And I always equate it, I’m like, it’s like the child who is ready to go to college, but instead stays in like their parents’ basement. Like it needed to go to college and it needed to go onto its next big thing. Like it was time. I was like, I’ve raised it, it’s gotta go, it’s gotta go to college. It’s gotta go onto its next big life. Or it’s just gonna kind of stay stifled a little bit. So my husband was like, okay, that sounds great, you know, whatever.

And I went down the path with a couple of companies that I thought was gonna be a great fit and we got really far down the line and acquisitions are tricky and hard and there’s a lot of people who have a lot of thoughts on both sides. And I got close to a deal with one company that I thought was gonna just be a dream. I loved the CEO and it just, the stars didn’t align at that time with their business. They wanted it to happen, I wanted it to happen and there was just a couple of bigger things that the pieces didn’t come together the way we wanted. And so that was a little bit of a heartbreak that was in the fall of 2019.

And after that, I was like, you know what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna put my short list together. Like who do I think would be a great person to purchase us? And for what reason? Like I don’t think it can be another content site. They probably have all the content they need. Like who else can benefit from the direct relationship we have with brides? And so I put a short list together and I emailed a handful of people in power at those companies that either some I knew some I had, you know, didn’t know at all.

And just said, look, I think we’re going to go on the market, but before we do, I’d love to see if there’s, if there’s a way that we can make an acquisition work between us. Because I probably I had given myself, I had no idea what was coming in 2020, right? But I had said by the spring of 2020, I’ll probably go on the open market. So if anyone wants to buy us, they can, but it would be ideal if it was done privately before that.

So in January of 2020, I kind of created, like I said, this short list, started emailing some people, had some interest. And I got an email back from the leadership at David’s Bridal. And we had a meeting in Manhattan on like March 6th, none of us knowing the world was gonna shut down. And just as heartbroken as I was that that other deal fell through, when I had this first meeting, the stars really did seem to align for what David’s bridal was looking for. You know, I had long thought David’s was a great resource for our brides. We talked about them a lot, but we didn’t have a pre-established relationship at that time. They had a lot of new leadership come on. Um, when I met with them and you know, it was like a year or so they had a lot of leadership changes, a lot of fresh ideas, a lot of smart, interesting people in the room and the stars really did kind of align.

COVID hit like two weeks later, like there was, my kids weren’t in school, like everything was kind of shut down and I didn’t know what was gonna happen but we were able to continue our discussions and we got it done.

Glynis Tao

Wow, just sounded like the perfect match. And I mean, was it something that they were looking for as well? Like, were they on the lookout for it, like, before you reached out to them? And then they just suddenly went, wow. Or was that something like you, you know, planted the seed and then got them thinking about it?

Maggie Lord

I think it was a little bit of both. I think they, you know, most companies, if they, if they establish a relationship with a customer at one kind of point in a journey, any way you can move up funnel is like really important and mostly in wedding dress shopping, they would interact with the bride around nine, 10 months before her wedding day. Whereas we at Rustic Wedding Chic, they would start reading us 12 to 14 months before her wedding day. So, you know, I think any brand would want to move up funnel of how they can start communicating with a bride.

You know, I think they certainly understood how digital content can help their company. So I think it was a little bit of like, I’m sure they had thought about it. I don’t think they were actively looking for an acquisition at the time, but I brought this idea to them and we kind of saw how all the pieces could go together.

Glynis Tao

And just a quick question, how big was your team at that time?

Maggie Lord

Yeah. So again, when I say that I sold in 2020, everyone assumes that it was like COVID related, but when the wheels were in motion, it was all before COVID. And so we were still kind of running at our regular capacity of I was the editor in chief and CEO. I had someone who oversaw our community and the vendor directory for us. And then from there, I had probably about six contract employees who handled different things, things from social media to some editorial, to advertising and other things like that. So I would say, including some contract and part-time employees, we were a team of about six.

Glynis Tao

Were you the one creating most of the content and writing all the blogs? I did. I wrote 99.9 % of all the content for 12 years, which is why, like, I was a little tired, not gonna lie. You know, creating, we pushed out two new features, two new published posts every day, Monday through Friday for 12 years. There was a couple of times that I brought in a slight little help to write some articles here and there. They never performed as well. They, their style, I would always, there was a reason it was like, it wasn’t up to my standards or, oh, I wouldn’t have, you know, pick this picture or whatever. And so that is why it gets hard to run a company when it’s, when our readership was in the millions monthly, because they’re constantly looking for new things. And so to keep pushing out the high level of content that we were doing, which is where I saw that it needed to have a larger team and kind of go on to its next.

Glynis Tao

Okay. And that’s sort of the reason why you decided that that was the next step that you needed to take in order for this business to grow. And be able to sustain itself because I guess you really took it as far as you could go with what you had and your resources that you had at the time, right? But you saw that it had more potential.

Maggie Lord

Exactly, and that’s kind of how I felt. And I was very proud of what we had accomplished for all those years. But, you know, I, people, it was interesting. People were like, is it going to be hard for you? It was your first baby. Like, how are you going to, like, are you going to be sad? And I was like, no, I am proud of what I created and I loved it. I like, you know, breathed rustic wedding chic for all those years. And it was very much, of course, like part of my identity, but I kind of felt like, you know, as opposed to feeling like, oh, it’s my first baby. I’m so sad that it’s going to like leave me. I felt like the proud mom who was like, yes, go fulfill your life. Go do those important things that you need to do.

So I was, I was very, very happy to hand it over to start a new journey. I went to work for David’s for a couple of years, which was a great, I had never worked in corporate America. I’ve always either been a teacher or owned my own company. And so I embraced kind of the whole different world that working for a large corporation like that is. And I learned a lot and had a lot of interesting conversations and a lot of different views on things and a peek into, you know, larger business world and, you know, was happy to spend that time there, but then also very, very happy to get back to doing something more entrepreneurial.

Glynis Tao

Okay. Like, how was it like for you when you were handing things off? Because you know how you were saying earlier about when you wrote 99 .9 % of the content and having to do, you know, give it to someone else to do it like, how were you involved in that process and just being able to get it right, you know, the way that you wanted it to continue?

Maggie Lord

Because it was COVID, it was such a weird time and weddings, right? Like there were no weddings at that time, everything was shut down. So it was like people weren’t craving as much content. So my transition with David’s was very seamless, as in like I transferred everything over. Like I you know, transfer of knowledge, explain why the bride uses us and how, you know, things should be written and all of that. And then I just started a whole different job at David’s completely, right?

And so it was kind of like one day I was like thinking everything about rustic wedding chic. And then I started a new job at David’s and I was on a completely different path. So, you know, it was, it was a good transfer of knowledge of like, this is why someone likes rustic wedding chic. And these are the reasons that someone would want to continue to read Rustic Wedding Chic. But because of the landscape that was happening, both in retail with the David’s Bride of retail stores, obviously during COVID was different. And then the way the bride was planning was all different. It was a little hectic. I kind of like handed things off. And like I said, I was often running as an executive at David’s in a completely different direction.

Glynis Tao

Yeah, interesting time as well. I guess nobody would have expected. So now you work as a strategic advisor to female founded brands. What are some of the common challenges that you see entrepreneurs facing? How do you advise them to overcome these obstacles?

Maggie Lord

Yeah, it’s a good question. I think, you know, the reason why I shifted to this after leaving David’s was because I was so desperate as a, especially I was a young entrepreneur, right? I was like 27, 26, 27 when I launched Rustic Wedding Chic. You know, I was desperate over those years if I could have had an advisor or, you know, quote unquote, business coach, someone who I met with a couple of times a month explained to my challenges. I think I would have not woken up in the middle of the night so many times questioning. Did I do this right? Is this the right direction for the company?

You feel very isolated when you’re an entrepreneur, especially even if you have a team. Most female entrepreneurs that I work with, their team, they’re great and filled with passion, but they’re very junior, right? You don’t often see, you know, especially if you’re a solo entrepreneur and you don’t have a full C-suite built out, you’re making decisions based on what you think. 

And like, I can’t tell you the amount of times at dinner I said to my husband, what do you think about this? And like he’d say, what do I know about the wedding industry? I don’t know. I think it’s a good idea. And so I think why it works so well for me to work with other female founders is that I was so desperate to figure out, you know, am I doing the right thing? You know, is this a good decision? Is this a good business decision? That I think the challenge I see the most from entrepreneurs is they just don’t have the infrastructure to support where they’re going and what they’re doing from someone who’s kind of lived through it and gotten to the level that I’m at, right?

So they can talk to their team, but they don’t have an external sort of person to speak to. So I think that’s the biggest challenge I see with most of the people I work with. And then it’s you know, very isolating and hard. And one of my clients the other day said, well, I was thinking of hiring a therapist, but I actually just hired you instead. You’ve become like my entrepreneurial therapist, right? Like a therapist for entrepreneurs because it’s someone to talk to about the full picture.

Because I’ve also lived through, I had a one week maternity leave with all of my children. Um, cause I had no one else to run the company. And I always said, if I’m not running it, it’s not making money. Right. So it can’t just sit there and be dormant. Like it. It very much had to continue. And so I’ve lived through the challenges of having, you know, one kid, two kids, three kids, um, you know, the overwhelming sense of think the biggest thing I hear is like, I’m just one person. So how can I be running my company, pushing out social media content, you know, like looking for new ideas.

Like there’s 150 things as a founder and CEO that you want to, you should be doing every day and you can’t, you’re at capacity, right? And so I work a lot with my clients about where is the areas you should be spending your time and energy on things. And I told a client the other day, she said, do you think this is a good idea? I said, if it takes less than 45 minutes of your time, sure, go explore that new idea, but give it 45 minutes and then transition back to, you know, your day to day core business.

Glynis Tao

So what advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are looking to start and scale a business? And would you also talk about like how is your experience as a founder influenced your approach as a strategic advisor and business coach?

Maggie Lord

So I think if somebody wants to start something, I think the first step is the hardest, but just do it, right? I think a lot of people get caught up in, well, I need to create an LLC and I have to have a business plan and I need investors. And that may all be true. You may need all of those things, but that shouldn’t hold you back from taking the first step.

I, you know, people tell me all the time, oh, I have this great idea for a thing, but I don’t even know how I would start. And I was like, do you have a name? And then there’s most of the time, like, oh, I do have a name. I had this great name that I came up with. Let’s just start there. So, you know, I think with entrepreneurs, I always say, if you have something you want to start, take some small steps forward. Don’t look at the big long road ahead of you of, oh, well, I’ve got to get a bank account and business taxes and an accountant and like, it’s scary, it’s too much. Just look at what you can do and start with to then take those next steps. So that’s my advice if you’re gonna start something.

If you wanna scale, I think it’s about focusing in on where you’re scaling and realistically how you can scale. Because as an entrepreneur, I’m very much I subscribe to the idea of like, let’s try a lot of things and let’s see what happens and let’s see what sticks. I would come up with an idea for something on rustic wedding chic and I could create a whole new page on the platform that day if I wanted to. But I think sometimes when you’re trying to scale a business, you’ll look at too many options. So someone might say, oh, I’m gonna start selling my product on TikTok shop and Instagram shop and I’m gonna start doing this and that.

And I’m like, that may all be the right way to go about it. But I would start with one and then build, right? So if you’re going to scale your brand, let’s pick one avenue that you’re going to start with, kind of do it well, and then add on those other pieces. Because if you are a founder and an entrepreneur and you’ve founded a brand and you’re, let’s just even say you’re doing okay, you know, that is very much like the foundation of a house.

You can’t build the other layers until, you have a really good base for what it is. And then just, you know, adding on gradually so that when you do start to scale one, you can do it in a way that you can handle that scale that you created because I have worked with companies and brands who they are lightning in a bottle, right? And it’s the most amazing thing and like, and it blows up and gets a ton of attention but they actually weren’t prepared. They don’t have enough inventory or something like that.

So when you scale, I always say you have to do it and create those levels of scaling in a way that you know you’re prepared for what the ideal outcome is. Cause if you say, Oh, I’m going to go start selling on TikTok shop and your stuff starts selling, but you end up, you know, you end up with 500 orders and you only have 12 products. That’s a problem.

Glynis Tao

Okay, so I like the metaphor that you use. It’s like building a business like building a house, right? First start with this foundation. Be good at one thing, really good at one thing, and then build from up from there. Build up the layers. And then, yeah, also having the right infrastructure as well, right? Because, I mean, being successful is great, but are you able to deliver?

Maggie Lord

Yeah. I think that happens a lot where, you know, especially if you’re going to be in an e-comm business or something where like you have to be prepared for, if you want to scale, you have to be prepared for what that scale looks like from, you know, a financial standpoint, but also from like a human resources standpoint, right? If you start selling 5,000 of something, but you make every single one by hand, like that’s not it’s not a great way to be able to, it’s not sustainable scale.

Glynis Tao

And what types of businesses do you work with currently? Are they, you know, sole partners? Are they service type businesses? Are they product based businesses?

Maggie Lord

It’s a little all over the map, which is nice. I like, I have a wide variety of clients right now. Some are, you know, in the product business, which is great. Um, CPG, I have other, um, amazing clients who are in like services or like their own sort of, um, consulting brands. Um, it’s, it’s really, it’s all over the place, which I love. And it’s been really nice that most of the work that I get is through word of mouth from someone who says, oh, I’ve been working with this amazing advisor. And you know, I’ve learned x, y, z, and then they say like, Oh, who’s that? And then that person just refers them to me. And that’s it’s really nice to know, because it means that like, I am really helping them on their their journey.

Glynis Tao

That’s amazing. So we have a few minutes left. But I want to make sure that we have enough time to go talk about balancing business and family.

So I was really intrigued when I read your story, especially about the part about how you were able to simultaneously create a successful business while raising kids. As a mompreneur myself, I’m always interested in knowing how do you manage to balance the demands of your business with your responsibilities as a parent?

Maggie Lord

Yeah, it’s, you know, I mean, it’s a huge question. And the thing that I think is most interesting is that it changes based on what sort of timeframe you’re in with your children. You know, I was an entrepreneur first and then, you know, and gotten married and then a little bit at a year, you know, two years, I guess, after getting married, like we had our first son and then four years later had our second and two years after that had our third. And so when they were infants, it was impossible, right? Like the demands of my business were so high and the demands of being a mom to a newborn were equally as crushing that, you know, a lot of tears a lot of how, what am I doing? I’m answering emails at two o’clock in the morning when I should be sleeping. 

You know, I nursed every single one of my children while typing crazy emails to people, you know, but I will say that it’s, you know, and they, you know, they would go as they got older, they went to preschool. And so then there was a couple of hours where I was like, I have uninterrupted time, you know, all of that is good.

I wrote years ago, I wrote an article, called The Naptime Entrepreneur. And it became a series in Entrepreneur Magazine about balancing motherhood and having children. And I said, when my kids were really young, what I focused on was during their nap times, I did whatever the hardest part of my job was gonna be, I focused that on that time. So when they were napping for two hours, I tackled the thing that I needed the most on, you know, uh, interrupted focus time for, um, you know, and that, that was probably would be like advertising or something with like bookkeeping, whereas like I could, I could kind of create some content while other chaos was happening.

But I think where, what I’ve learned now with the stage of life that I’m in, that they go to school, right? All day, they’re all in, you know, school all day is that maximizing the time that they’re not here so I can maximize my time with them when they are home. So my kids get out of school at four o ‘clock. I pick them up at four, I don’t work anymore. My computer’s closed. You probably won’t hear an email from me unless a client desperately needs something. I maximize the time when they’re someplace else, at school or if your kids are really young and they’re with a babysitter or daycare, things like that.

Um, you know, that, that is, I think kind of the healthiest thing. It’s like, when you have this attention with them, be with them, you know. I mean, I’ve certainly done multiple, like I said, I nursed them and answered emails. I’d be cooking and holding one and like, you know, trying to text something on my phone. And that never feels as good as focusing, you know, on that, but it’s, there’s no, the day to day is always different, right? And for most entrepreneurs, your day to day is not the same.

And it, so you kind of just accept the chaos of how crazy it is being an entrepreneur and being a mom. But I always said, I would rather accept that chaos and be in control of my time. Than the flip side of kind of like the years working in corporate where you’re not as much in control of your schedule and time. And I don’t wanna miss anything that happens at school. So if I have to be there at 10 o ‘clock on a Tuesday for a poetry something, I can go. That to me is worth it to the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. That to me is worth it. So, I think for my biggest advice is that talk and share with other entrepreneurs because a lot of people just feel like, oh, I’m the only entrepreneur in the world that can’t fix this, can’t make this work, can’t, you know, and it’s not true. And so by vocalizing it and talking about it with other entrepreneurs, I think it’s a good thing.

Glynis Tao

Great advice. I know I can imagine what the chaos looks like. You were nursing a newborn and trying to send an email out at the same time and just all the emotions too, because I remember after having my baby as well, I just couldn’t even think. You know, because body is just going through so many hormonal changes and everything as well. You would just be like feeling your mood changes were like, so, I mean, how are you able to even like stay focused?

Maggie Lord

I’m not saying like, when I have told clients or things that like, I took like a week maternity leave, like that was not good. Like I would not suggest that to my current clients. I would say, set up time so that with you, you know, having children is important, set that boundary, you know, have somebody else in the business step up for a little bit.

I’ve had clients who have said to me, Oh, well, if I want to go have a baby, will you come in and be our interim CEO? Because you know how to run a company and be, you know, and I just, I think there’s creative ways to step away and take a true maternity leave. That as an entrepreneur, it’s really, really, really hard. I was very jealous of a friend who was an entrepreneur and she had had children right before me. And she was like, she took some weeks off. And then after that, she’s like, I will only email between like, you know, 10 and two, like every day for the next six weeks. Like, do not expect to hear from me. Like she gave like three day, like return around time on an email. She was very conscious about those boundaries.

Mine was very, I guess more messy where I was trying to do it all at the same time. But I would, I am an advocate for you. I firmly believe you can be an entrepreneur and take some maternity time both for you and for your baby.

Glynis Tao

Okay, that’s great to hear that. Do you know if there’s any like groups out there that help, you know, like mompreneur type groups, I guess, or if you are a part of any of them, like moms, support moms who are going through this, who have businesses.

Maggie Lord

I think there’s probably some, I don’t know any off the top of my head, I know that there’s a lot of female founder groups, right, that you can join and pay money to be part of and stuff. I’m sure if you look around that there are some that are focused on kind of the mompreneur world and as it’s changed and shifted for sure over the time. But I think, you know, talking to anybody who’s lived through it helps current entrepreneurs know that like it can be done.

Glynis Tao

So before we wrap up here, can you provide a sneak peek into any exciting projects or plans that you have going for the future?

Maggie Lord

Yes, I do. I have some, you know, I’m a serial entrepreneur as I have been called. So I love working as an advisor to female founded brands. I love consulting with brands. It definitely, it’s kind of like fills my cup every day. I’m so happy for the trajectory of where I started with Rustic Wedding Chic to kind of end up at this point in my career.

But I was just asked the other day, like, would you ever write a book about business and motherhood? And I don’t know, I kind of have the itch to like write a book again. I just have to kind of think about what that would be. You know, so I’m excited about that. I have a fun kind of exciting, perhaps thought process for a company that would kind of relate to kind of this, the ages that my kids are in.

But again, it’s like, I’m very busy. And so the idea of starting a whole other company, you know, kind of seems daunting where, cause on a day to day, I love working with my clients so much, but I think probably if I could sneak away some time, I would love the idea of putting more of my thoughts around business and motherhood and entrepreneurial thoughts into some sort of back into the writing world.

Glynis Tao

I think that would be so amazing and so helpful to a lot of people going through this journey of entrepreneurship and motherhood. I’d love to be part of that. If you ever do decide to embark on that venture. So where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?

Maggie Lord

Yeah. So you can go to maggielord.com and you get to read a little bit about my history. You can see the current clients I’m working with. I’m really flexible with my clients. There’s no packages you can read about. I kind of meet with someone and I hear like where they are in their business and what their needs are. And then we kind of craft some sort of, you know, understanding of how working together would look. So, you know, you can go to maggielord.com and read more about me.

Glynis Tao

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Maggie, for being on the podcast and sharing your inspiring story of how you, were able to balance your business while embracing motherhood at the same time. Thank you so much for talking to me today.

Maggie Lord

My pleasure. It was great. I enjoyed it.