Welcome. Give us some background about yourself and your business.
We are Marichelle and Ez…two friends with a shared love for creative packaging.
Ez began Nice Package on her own Spring 2009. After moving to Maplewood this past Summer, Marichelle came on board and the partnership was finalized in October 2009. We specialize in gift packaging solutions and provide creative inspiration with a focus on simple design and projects with real world application.

The decision to take the self-employment route is not always an easy one. What gave you the confidence to take that leap?
Having both experienced running our own etsy shops as well as reviewing and looking at millions of products online for our personal blogs, we learned over time what we love, what works and what doesn’t. We are constantly reflecting and revisiting our line to be sure that it reflects what we and our customers love. In business flexibility is very important, and so we work at that every day. When we first launched the line, our focus was split into two product segments – creative “supplies” and handmade home decor items. We quickly learned that our customer base is more interested in our creative supplies, and because of this have been working on slowly phasing out our home decor category. While changes like this can be unsettling at first (especially when you are really jazzed about a product you’ve worked so hard on), we are learning to take it all in stride and that every step is part of the ultimate growth and success of a healthy business.

Self employment can mean long hours, irregular income and other unpredictable stresses. How you do you handle it?
We started out working insanely long hours but just recently had a meeting to reevaluated our schedule and have figured out hours and specific goals that are helping us to be much more efficient (most of the time – we are human after all). Having a well-balanced partnership is crucial. A lot of this has to do with open communication and honesty about where we are with things on personal and business levels. We try to focus on our strengths individually so as to to make the business as a whole function as smooth as possible. We are also both very lucky to have a supportive family network…this gives us the license to create and grow our business in ways that would not be possible without their help. We are so thankful.

What’s a typical day like for you? How did you keep yourself organized to avoid procrastination and other distractions?
A typical day starts at 8am. Ideally we have worked out our day’s agenda before-hand and know what tasks lay ahead of us each day. A common day might find us doing any number of tasks (or all of them) from product development, supply orders, inventory, accounting, photography/editing, site development, blog/web communications, etc.

Do your work from home? Or offsite?
We work from Marichelle’s home and have converted her office/crafting room into our stock/packaging area. Product development and online operations generally take place in her dining room area (now our main work room).

It can get lonely working for yourself, but luckily, you both have each other. How is that working?
We both really enjoy our quiet creative time but it is also so much fun to have a business partner to work with and bounce ideas off of. Thank goodness we also share a similar quirky sense of humor. Many times laughter really has saved the day and keeps us going.

Finding a work/life balance can be difficult with any job, perhaps more so with self-employment. Do you think you’ve found that balance?
Not yet, but we are working on it. For both of us there is always that temptation to keep going, working late hours and in our off times when we should be relaxing. It isn’t easy to balance work and day to day life but it is something continue to get better at over time. Having open dialog with one another is a great benefit.

What valuable lessons did you learn within your first year.
As an indie business it is easy to forget the importance of your own value, especially when you enjoy what you’re doing. The most valuable lesson we’ve learned so far (3 months in) is to make sure you run the numbers (definitely not our favorite thing to do, but very necessary)! We might have an awesome product idea but if the price that our customer is willing to pay does not add up to our production cost (including supplies/labor/overhead AND product packaging costs) then it’s simply a no go. We’ve made the mistake of producing items without first running the numbers, only to realize that there was no way that we could sell the product and make a fair profit from it. It makes us sad to see other indie businesses undercutting themselves…in the long run this only undermines the value of indie business as a whole.

Lastly, what advice would you give to others that are thinking about quitting their 9-5 job to pursue self-employment?

• Make sure you have a strong support system, we’ve found that working for ourselves is even more stressful (but infinitely more rewarding) than working for the man. After all, we are our biggest critics right?
• Make sure that it’s something that you absolutely love and are passionate about, self-employment is definitely not a 40 hour/5 days a week gig.
• Pay yourself (a fair wage)! Paying yourself should be part of the plan from the very beginning. If this is impossible, then at least have a set goal//deadline when you’ll start reaping the rewards of your hard work.
• If you’re not a numbers person, make sure you can hire someone who can help you with spreadsheets.
• If you’re thinking about going into business by yourself, make sure that you know where your time and efforts will be going. Do the legwork first. If you know that product photography is not your strong-suite for example, source out talent before you make the leap into self-employment. The last thing you want is to jump both feet in and realize that you’ve forgotten some major detail or two, or that you won’t be able to fill every shoe that needs to be filled in your business.
• Planning & Organization: Plan your year, months, weeks and days. Set a consistent working schedule and organize your work space (physically having a place for everything goes a very long way)!

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