We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elizabeth Eddy Scully a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Elizabeth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How do you think about spending on things like coffee when times are tough?

I have been in the “day one” start up seat a number of times. Some of the companies went on to raise millions and help even more, others never saw the light of day. On our first day working on Lantern (end of life and death planning company acquired by Wellthy in 2023) we spent it talking about our values as a business and building our employee handbook. It seems silly for a company with no employees but it became the foundation of the people-first business we set out to build during the following five years.

It is tempting as a founder or early employee to believe you need to be great at everything. There are so many jobs to cover with a lean team and only so many hours in a day. We relied heavily on consultants in the early days. The smartest money we spent was on consulting support in clearly defined areas of expertise that our founding team couldn’t focus on. After we sold Lantern, it felt completely natural to become those consultants. We love being the earliest team members for start ups and scaling businesses.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My work has always been focused on tackling taboo topics. I founded my first social venture at age 15 focused on dating abuse and domestic violence education in schools. I started my career running Special Projects for DoSomething.org, one of the largest global orgs for teens and social change and then joined the founding team of Crisis Text Line as the Director of Communications. I oversaw brand, PR, marketing, strategic partnerships and business development— growing the org to 12,000 volunteers, 76 million messages, in 3 countries. After experiencing a number of losses of friends and family, I went on to co-found Lantern, a venture backed Public Benefit Corporation on a mission to change the way we talk about and manage end of life and death. Lantern was acquired by Wellthy in 2023.

Today, I am the co-founder and Communications Lead for Kite and String, a consulting agency. We’ve helped dozens of startups and growing businesses across industries shape winning strategies, fine-tune their communications, and find their place in the market. What sets us a part is we are entrepreneurs for hire. Entrepreneurs bring unique capabilities and an innovative mindset to a business- and they’re notoriously hard to employ full time. We’d love to join your team!

Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?

We sold Lantern, step-by-step guidance for life before and after a death, to Wellthy in 2023. Oddly enough, our last day with the company just happened to be the day my daughter was born (two weeks early!). It was truly a “when one door closes…” moment.

There were many lessons from the process of this sale but one of the biggest was acknowledging Lantern was no longer “ours” to build. My partner and I agreed to an additional six months working on Lantern under Wellthy which felt far too short at the time. In hindsight, it was the best thing for everyone. No one will love your business the way you do, as the founder. However, that doesn’t mean the new owners don’t love the business… they just love it differently. It can be an incredibly difficult thing to let go of something you built from scratch, but it might just be what your business needs to grow and reach the people who need it most. We were told by so many founders that once we sell we shouldn’t look back. While this is incredibly hard to do, it is solid advice.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

One of my favorite parts of running Lantern, and now what we help clients do, is building a great reputation within the community you serve and work alongside. The latter is often a forgotten component of building a business. We often see competitors as just that: the competition. We’ve always seen other businesses in the space as partners, mentors and friends. With Lantern, it wasn’t just about building a brand people loved, it was about improving all aspects of the space. For example, we built “Death + Co”, a Slack group now with 600+ members, to bring together entrepreneurs and builders in the end-of-life space. Then, we built www.reportingondeath.com to bring the expertise of our community to the media, helping them better report on death and grief. The New York Times even wrote a front page story about the power of this community that continues today.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kiteandstring.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiteandstringco
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-eddy/