Thinking About Teddy Eva Scents

Just thinking about growth and stuff I guess...

Hello people of the internet. Once again, I am Ross, and I am here to talk bollocks. And before I continue, yes we’re currently away on a family holiday, and yes, I am writing a newsletter in that time. And what? You gonna shoot me? What’s that? Oh… you wouldn’t sit at your laptop whilst on a family holiday?

Well this is my hobby to be fair. Speaking of hobbies! Wait… I wanna talk about something I now discovered that I LOVE.

Riding around in a golf buggy!

So much so that if this business ever goes tits up and I’m out of a job - cheers for that one - then I’m totally going to work at some hotel golf resort as a maintenance man who rocks up in his little buggy with a can of stella. Proper classy.

But nah, it’s just a proper chill fun way to drive around. And I did legit go and buy some Stella with the hopes of driving around while drinking but apparently that’s “unsafe and probably illegal”.

I’m on my holidays though, I thought it was more socially acceptable to drink unnecessarily? Like I have no idea if they still serve alcohol at the soft play part of Bluestone but they used to. And I always found that mental. Kid on a bouncy castle, parent stood there with a pint. Can’t do that at your regular local soft play.

Anyway…

The fuck did I come on here to talk about?

Oh yeah… I was just going to talk about Teddy Eva Scents; where we are and where we might be going.

It’s something that’s been on my mind a lot lately for reasons that I don’t want to go into. I guess the question that’s constantly on my mind is a very simple but complicated one word question:

Why?

Like why grow as a business?

I know that sounds like a stupid question, but is it? Why do people want to grow as a business? I dare say if asked, most of us would come to similar answers: money, having a big brand, legacy… or something along those lines. But what if your ambitions are simpler? What if you’re not that bothered by money outside the usual “we need this stuff to live” sort of levels. Like if we have enough to be comfortable then I’m all good.

Do I care about fame or having a big brand? Pfft. Hardly. I know the mere fact that I write the word “FUCK” in a business email means we’re limited to how we can grow. Some people will see that and run the other direction, and I have to be cool with that.

What about legacy? I mean you hardly need to grow and be massive to have a “legacy” left behind. I’d like to look back on Teddy Eva Scents and think “yeah, we did something good”. But you don’t need growth for that.

So why grow Teddy Eva Scents?

I guess it’s not something we’ve ever thought about. We’ve never sat down and gone “we want to be here” or “what if we hit this number” or anything like that. Everything we’ve ever done with Teddy Eva Scents has been purely organic. And the only reason we’ve grown - like take Jenny on, have a unit etc - is because we’ve felt it needed in order to keep the balance of work and family.

We didn’t take on the unit so we could take on more orders. We did it so the business wasn’t consuming the house and we had a better separation between business and family.

We didn’t hire Jenny so we could grow, we hired Jenny because I was bollocked working up the unit all the time and we needed help.

It’s one of the things I think is often missing out of the world of business. Why is it always about growing your business, increases revenue, increase this that and the other. Can we have more people who just go “fuck it, I’m happy with how it’s going”.

Where are we now?

As for now, the only reason we’re looking at hiring again is because we don’t like having to close the website and we don’t like having people get annoyed or disappointed at it being shut.

Truth be told, we just try and please people via the business. I just want to give people a laugh and hopefully make some people happy with the stuff we sell.

But… I like where we are at the moment.

I like the working relationship between myself, Rachel and Jenny.

Why compromise that for the sake of growth? Like we have the Kickstart thing coming up, and I’ll be honest with you, if we can’t find a good fit on the interviews then I probably won’t pick someone just for the sake of it. And we do have someone else called Caroline doing some hours with us - I worked with her at Royal Mail. So we don’t need the Kickstart position as such, but I do also like the idea of giving someone a relaxed first place of work.

And… fuck it…

I don’t wanna talk about any of this in any more detail if I’m honest.

Just know that I’m torn on lots of stuff. My head feels slightly fucked when I try to think about this sort of stuff. Like I’m not really in control. That the ebb and flow of the business kind of just happens, and I react to what’s happening rather than be proactive.

Yeah fuck it man… I’m just gonna enjoy the time away and not overthink any of the stuff that’s happened in the past. I know who I am as a person and I dare say 99% of you lot do too. So let’s call it a day and get to sodding bed is it?

Thank you for reading this random rambling bundle of bollocks.

Much love!

Ross & Rachel x