We were lucky to catch up with Megan Van Sipe recently and have shared our conversation below.

Megan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

The whole decision to chase after a big audacious goal is a risk. The idea felt impossible, with little resources and no insider knowledge, I had to just take one baby step forward at a time. For four years I was comfortable with the passive way I was running my business, designing notebooks and planners to be printed on demand and shipped by Amazon.

But over the course of a year, I went from working out of my home on the computer a few hours a day to renting a small studio space and running a printer, binding machines, sourcing paper types, learning about lamination, and sourcing materials. Without any investors or experts by my side, I took the classic “leap and the net will appear” risk. I leapt into this rented space without even knowing where to buy a printer or what kind would be appropriate for our needs, not knowing if what we wanted to create was even physically possible for us. But I always try to have the mentality that everything is figure-out-able.

We are still figuring it out, and it still feels like a risk, but replacing outsourced production by a mega-corporation to in-house handmade small batch production has been the risk that is also such a reward. It is incredibly rewarding to live a life creating with our hands in a world that insists on running headfirst into artificial intelligence and cheap production. It is a risk to bet on others seeing value in that mission, but I believe there will always be a group of people who will long for the human connection of things made in their community with love.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a mother of two living in a small town in Michigan. I began my creative working life by working as a print and pattern designer for Hollister, an Abercrombie & Fitch brand. The fashion industry wasn’t the right lifestyle fit for me long-term, but from that job I cultivated a love of color and pattern and during this time I planted seeds of a dream of creating my own brand… I just didn’t know what it could be, yet.

I started a small handmade brand called Lilac Saloon after leaving Hollister, which was my experimental playground for playing with color and texture through making wool felt flower wall hangings and hand embroideries. Once I had children, I took a break from the labor-intensive world of handmade and moved into digital work where I designed graphics for social media and blogs, and websites for Anchorlight Creative. I loved this work, but entrepreneurship still brewed within me.

I homeschooled our children for the first years of their education, and during this time, I began to design notebooks to support their different school subjects. Bright rainbow-colored notebooks began to fill our shelves for math, science, history, spelling, and I even dove into designing my own planner to fit my perspective that planning should be reflective as well as future-focused. The schoolnest brand was born – a brand that supports creative and intentional learning, whether at home or elsewhere, and promotes reflective planning so we can be intentional with our goals and hold gratitude for how far we have come.

I don’t know of another brand that offers the variety of notebooks that I have built up over the years in our collection, and I am proud of the community that I have cultivated. We trust each other, and they know that I’m listening in order to fine-tune the products over time to give them the best learning experiences possible. Whether adding historical events into a history timeline book as a classroom or a family, tracking and reviewing yearly reads, or creating an interactive science notebook, I want schoolnest to feel like a go-to for feeling supported in a lifelong journey of intentional education.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

My audience was built slow and steady over the past 8 years. The most beneficial way is to focus on true connections and being authentic. You can grow fast from following repeatable trends, but if the goal is to build a strong trust so that they know *you* then make sure to not only share from the heart but also to connect with others’ posts and support others who you find valuable. I began by sharing our homeschool journey, sharing what I learned, my favorite resources, deeper thoughts on the why and how, sharing the wins and struggles, and supporting others work as well as sharing the things I was creating to support our learning. Being a resource for others can be hard, but most people come to social media wanting to either be helped or entertained. If you can do both of those, then you’ve really done it well!

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I really enjoy the book Essentialism, and I keep coming back to it to apply to different areas of my life but definitely in business. The premise is that although there are many good things we can choose from, maybe even a huge list of all good things, they are not all THE most essential thing worth spending our valuable time and energy on. In business, creativity, and art, there is so much we could possibly do and sometimes it can seem like everything is on equal priority levels. Essentialism prompts us to look closely at the things on our list, and be honest about choosing the vital few from the many good. Maybe that means we post less on social media in order to focus on creating a few high-quality videos. Maybe we make sure to curate our product offering to a tight collection of best sellers to streamline and reduce decision fatigue for customers and managing too many products on the back end. There are many ways we can apply this concept, and it is always a valuable thought exercise!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theschoolnest.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/schoolnest

Image Credits
Family photo is by Taylor Sumner

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