Living on the Edge of Yikes
A business/life update: FlyBoy is on the move, and so am I.I’m in the middle of ramping up production on the brand while simultaneously packing up my apartment, planning my 3-day drive to California, and still very much in the thick of fundraising conversations. In the words of Bob Goff, I am living on the edge of yikes. Very little of my life right now is what I would describe as settled, and somehow I have made peace with that. Actually, I think I’m starting to love it a little.One of the things I keep coming back to in this season of perpetual motion, overlapping timelines, and decisions that feel like they have three-second countdowns is how much I need other people. By nature, I’m an incredibly independent person: I want to move quickly, not bother other people with my needs, or have their timelines slow down my to-do list. But I continue to learn that it is a joy to work with others, and I also really need outside opinions and physical help.
Consolidating my belongings into two suitcases
My bartender roommate has been one of my most valuable taste testers throughout this whole process, because she will shoot me completely straight without softening the blow, and there is nothing more useful than that when you are too deep inside your own creation to hear anything clearly anymore. I love FlyBoy the way you love something you made from scratch, which means I am not always the most objective person in the room. She is. And I need that.When I was planning for the California event, I asked friends to come help me pour drinks. Not because I couldn’t do it alone, but because I wanted people around me who care about this thing too, people who would show up, prep samples, and represent something (and someone) they actually believe in. That matters more than I can explain.
And then there’s Outline. Outline is a high-end CPG design studio in Charleston. They were actually my very first employer out of school, and have been a continued friendship ever since. I knew going into this that I needed outside help with design and strategy, which is a strange thing to admit when that is exactly what I do for other people every single day. But I knew myself well enough to know that I would tweak and rework and second-guess the FlyBoy creative forever if I were the only one in the room, because I am too close to it, because it is too important to me, because every decision feels weighted in a way that makes it hard to set something down and call it done. That old adage of artists saying that the work is never done, you just stop fixing it?… Yeah, I needed outside people telling me it was done.What I’ve been getting from Outline is almost like business therapy: I walk in with a brain full of overlapping thoughts and half-finished ideas and things I’ve been meaning to articulate for months, and they put it all on the table and help me make it mean something. They’re genuinely excited about building with me, and getting to be on the receiving end of that kind of creative partnership is a quiet revelation after years of being the person in the room who holds the vision for everyone else’s thing. I get to be the founder right now. That’s new for me, and I’m enjoying it.I think there is something really important in all of this about letting people help you care for the things you care about. There is a version of building that looks like going it completely alone, and I understand the appeal of that, the control, the clarity, the narrative of the solo founder who figured it all out. But I don’t want that version. I want the one where the people who love me and believe in this thing are actually in it with me, pouring drinks, telling me the truth, and sitting across a table from me, dreaming out loud.FlyBoy has always been about what happens when people gather. I might as well build it the same way.Wheels Up!
Margo, Founder of FlyBoy AperitifFlyBoy is a non-alcoholic aperitif in development. Follow along at your own pace. And sign up for our waitlist to be the first to hear about our flavor drops.
