Saying Farewell to Preserve Journals
All good things must come to an end. I wanted to take this opportunity to mark the official closing of Preserve Journals with a personal note and a permanent place for future reference on my blog.
Thank you
Let me start by saying thank you! I’ve had some of the kindest, most loyal customers over the past few years and I truly can’t thank you enough for that. Reading through old posts, emails, and messages while I’ve been shutting things down, I’ve been so touched by each of you who believed in this product. You believed in me! That meant so much to me, and still does. You supported me with your hard earned dollars, with your words of encouragement and your recommendations on social media and by word of mouth, and in so many more ways! The journals would not have been brought to life had it not been for you! I will always be deeply thankful for your support.
So, what happened?
This will probably be a bit disappointing if you’re expecting juicy details, because it was a lot of small everyday factors that led to the decision to close Preserve Journals. Ultimately it just became clear that continuing on wasn’t a good fit for me, or my family. Keeping up with the demands of owning a product based business was just not my speed — I longed for the simplicity of life without pressures of managing inventory, marketing, social media, and constantly shipping out physical products. Running a product based business is not for everyone, and I learned through the process of owning one myself that it wasn’t for me. I’m confident I could have pushed through. I could have solved the problems - that’s 90% of what being an entrepreneur is about, I’m convinced! But I struggled to find joy in the trenches and couldn’t envision longevity in pressing forward. It started to feel inauthentic to who I was as a person, my goals, and the life my family and I wanted to lead.
Success
After months of going back and forth about it, I asked myself this: did I do what I set out to do…was I successful? No one wants to be a quitter, least of all me, so I didn’t want to walk away from it if I felt that somehow I had failed, or given up. Here’s where it’s important to define success. Is it purely determined by the amount of money you make? The amount of products you sell? How much time freedom it gives you? How many lives you’ve impacted? Or something else? My goal for Preserve, and what I considered success was always simply this: to bring a Journal and it’s accompanying tradition to life, and to share it with others. And that’s exactly what I did. You may have a Journal in your home right now, and many of you have shared with me that it’s become a cherished tradition for your family. That’s all I wanted to accomplish, I did exactly that, and I feel great about that.
A secret
Now I’ll let you in on a little known entrepreneurial secret: not every business will be a homerun. It’s true. I’ve learned that from other entrepreneurs, time and time again. Some businesses work for a season, then it’s time to move on. Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything, and whether we like it or not, every good thing comes to an end eventually. The key to entrepreneurship is to keep going – to have the wisdom to move on if it’s not working, and the courage to start working towards the next idea. How many times have you observed famous entrepreneurs starting a new venture that doesn’t work out for one reason or another? The best entrepreneurs don’t let that slow them down, they dust themselves off and move on to the next thing. I plan to follow in the footsteps of every other successful entrepreneur and do the same.
Well, what’s next?
I’m leaning into writing more. Anyone who knows me well knows I’m all about aesthetics, so it might surprise you to learn that I actually really enjoy writing. I love to write and I have a lot of things I’d love to share in written form. I find it very satisfying and therapeutic. That said, here’s a little announcement I haven’t shared yet publicly — I’m currently working on my first book! Just typing that makes me giddy, because it’s a life goal of mine to write and publish a book, and this year I’m finally working towards that! The topic of the book may seem a little unexpected, and that’s all I’ll say for now (hint: it’s non-fiction). The release date is still TBD, but if you’d like to get book updates, click here to get on my book launch email list.
And because I am such a visual person, I know I can’t stay away from doing something visual for long. I haven’t pinned down exactly what that will look like yet, but if my many swirling ideas are any indication, it will be beautiful. Looking back over the past 10 years in my journey of entrepreneurship I’ve observed God working in me and using me to bring beauty to the world. Lord willing, through his power I’ll continue to share beauty with the world in many years to come.
will I still be able to purchase a Journal?
I often get messages asking to purchase a Journal so I wanted to address this here. The short answer is, probably not. We do have a limited amount of inventory (exact numbers yet to be confirmed) but for the reasons I detailed above, I won’t be shipping anything using the methods we have previously used. We’ve been brainstorming an easy way to sell our remaining inventory to those of you who have been asking to purchase more Journals, but haven’t found a solution that would work. If something changes and you’d like to be notified if we do decide to sell Journals again, be sure to put your name on this email list.
Let’s keep in touch
I’ve come to think of many of you in the Preserve community as friends, and I’d love to keep in touch. I’m leaving our Preserve Journals Instagram account (@preservejournals) live, but won’t be posting on there going forward. If you’d like to keep in touch on Instagram, you can find me @lucyselgas. You can also join my email list and visit this blog. I hope to be spending more time here, and I’d love for you to stop by. Feel free to leave a comment below, as well! See you soon!