little thoughts
Chapter 1
So, a category of things you collect when you dive head first into a genre you’re unfamiliar with is soundbites of advice.
Perhaps that’s just what they feel like to me, or how my brain saves them - soundbites, rather than full blown advice (hi, fellow ADHDers!)...but that’s how I’ll explain them, little soundbites about topics I don’t yet understand. This blog post is me executing on one of those soundbites, which was a friend with a marketing background answering my question “how the heck does one do SEO?” She said, “honestly you need a blog on your website” which helps with Google analytics so… I’ll call it Chapter 1 because I’m an English major and I default to books.
I’ve always dreamed of opening up a children’s store. JK, never. I think I really enjoy solving problems, but only if they’re big and outside of my comfort zone. I learned that in a nonprofit I accidentally started in advocacy, something fully outside of my skillset and understanding at the time. I love thinking of ways things could be done better, more efficiently (sometimes) or just more logically for the audience it serves. I’ll caveat that there are also plenty of boring problems in my life I am content with not solving. Seeing a pile of laundry may be a problem with an easy solve but that’s not going to spark any excitement. Feeling the gaping hole in our community of a children’s clothing store was honestly just getting annoying after a few years. I grew up in Winnetka, we had Mirian Michael, Chocolate Soup, The Village Toy Shop, The Book Stall (still here!) and it was all the best. Suddenly it’s 2025 and we still didn’t have a single kid’s clothing store in Winnetka…given the influx of new families moving to the area after the pandemic, it didn’t make sense.
After COVID and basically living online for a couple years, I think people craved that in-store shopping experience. Touching a fabric, seeing a size in real life…hell, even interacting with a human being! It was all reminiscent of “before COVID” and as a mom I craved more and more as the years passed. Now as we launch into conversations with full blown robots, I’m really craving DUMBED DOWN EVERYTHING. I don’t want a robot in every decision I make, I don’t want a smart printer that senses when the ink is running low, and I don’t want a customer service “chat”...I’m the woman yelling “representative” at the 800#...just give me a real live person pleeeeease.
But I digress, which I guess in a blog post is fine because more keywords - that’s showbiz, baby.
Tarot Cards & Start-Ups.
Two things that just go together like PB&J, right? It was May 30th, and my best friend and I were hosting a “witch party” to kick-off summer. We hired a tarot card reader, had delicious watermelon margaritas and each invited a slew of girlfriends to make for a really fun evening. While I knew everyone’s name, there were a few girls I didn’t know super well. One of those such girls was sitting near me after our third/seventh/who’s counting margarita when I said “ugh you guys I think I wanna open a kid’s store in Winnetka! How hard can it be!?” and she looked over at me and said “wait! I’ll do it with you! I was a buyer for 15 years, I know this space, and seriously I’ll do it with you.” We giggled and brainstormed and eventually we all went home – only after the Tarot Card reader very directly said “you don’t have time for a new venture, you definitely shouldn’t open up a store I don’t see that for you”. Sorry, Barbara.
The next morning, I sent Kristi (girl from above) a text:
Editors note: armors refer to Alcohol Armour, a “before you drink” drink.
Soon we were brainstorming at a rapid pace, matching one another’s insane and silly energy as if we’d been best friends for years. I’ll save some of that for another blog post, but all of this rounds back nicely to the soundbites of advice. The other one I’ll mention is one I often give: just start.
If I had analyzed the climate of nonprofits in the specific advocacy space I was about to embark on, I probably never would've started March Fourth. I could’ve read up on all the peaks and valleys of the movement, the many organizations doing excellent work and hundreds of initiatives in the space - I know my conclusion, like any sane person, would have been: this doesn’t make sense on paper. The thing is, that wasn’t about paper. It was about instinct. There was a gap, there was a need, and rather than analyzing I just…started. I brought in smarter people quickly, we’ve built it together, we’ve improved it along the way and we still are – but you can’t improve something that doesn’t exist. So, just start. And that’s what we did with little elm. We’re just getting started.
So, that concludes chapter one – lmk if Google Analytics picks any of this up…kid’s clothing, women-owned brands, curated collections from baby to 10 years old, pajamas, outerwear, basics and occasionware. Those are my keywords. And this was my first blog post. Thanks for sticking with me 🙂
-Kitty
