I Never Expected to Find So Much Peace in So Much Uncertainty

I turned 50 last October. Two months later, I quit my full-time job.

Not because I had another job lined up, our new business was already replacing my salary, or I had some perfect entrepreneurial plan. I quit because I wanted to build something with my daughter—and because I realized I didn't want to keep waiting for the “right time” to spend my days doing work I actually cared about.

So in December, I left a stable income and started working full-time on Mei Lee Productions, the creative studio my daughter and I are building together.

Almost a year later, I absolutely love what I'm doing. I also had no idea how much I didn't know.

This year has basically been a crash course in Etsy, Shopify, print-on-demand, e-commerce, product development, personalization, fulfillment, shipping, SEO, advertising, analytics, accounting and marketing. I've learned how to take my daughter's artwork and turn it into actual products and how to use AI—not to create our art, which remains original and hand-drawn—but behind the scenes to make research, operations, organization and other parts of running the business more efficient.

If I had to describe the learning process, it would probably be:

Trial. Error. Error. Error. Trial. Error. Error...

You try something. It doesn't work. You troubleshoot it. You think you fixed it. Then you discover you fixed one problem and somehow created another.

There is almost always something. Shopify isn't talking to Etsy. Etsy isn't talking to the fulfillment system. A product isn't syncing. An order isn't updating. And just when you think you understand a platform, it changes.

Then there are all the decisions that don't have an instruction manual: What should we sell? What will people actually buy? What should it cost? How should we photograph it? How do we get anyone to find it?

And why did the algorithm suddenly decide no one needs to see the thing we spent three days creating?

Giving up a stable income has also been one of the harder realities of this decision. We've used savings. I work longer hours than I did before and, at least right now, for considerably less money.

There have been rejected grant applications, festivals and competitions. Products and marketing ideas that didn't work. Accounting, SEO, social media, algorithms, Meta pixels and analytics dashboards. Some days are creative and exciting. Others are spent trying to figure out why a personalization field won't transfer from one piece of software to another.

But there have also been things I didn't expect.

We've met and connected with artists, artisans and other small-business owners, and I've found online communities of creative and e-commerce businesses where everyone seems to be figuring things out as they go. There's something reassuring about knowing we're not the only ones occasionally yelling at our computers.

More importantly, I've gotten to watch my daughter grow—not only as an artist, but as a businessperson. I've gotten to know her in a completely different way, as my daughter and now as my business partner.

I've also learned just how supportive my husband and family are. My husband works from home too, so we get to spend more of our days together. I'm home with our pets. My commute is basically a walk through the house. I spend a questionable portion of the workday in pajamas.

And I genuinely look forward to working.

That's probably the biggest thing I've learned this year.

Success right now isn't necessarily replacing my old salary or having everything figured out. It's having ownership of my day and deciding what I want to build and who I want to build it with. It's watching my daughter's artwork become something tangible that someone else can bring into their home.

At 50, I gave myself permission to change my life instead of assuming it was too late to start something new.

A year later, I work harder for less money, troubleshoot things I didn't even know existed a year ago, and still have a lot to learn.

But I get to do work I love, with my daughter, from my own home, surrounded by my family and our animals.

I own my time. I own my decisions. And, for better or worse, I own the results.

Turns out, that's worth quite a lot.