Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sarah Kukie. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Sarah , thanks for joining us today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

The idea for LyfLyn came from my own personal struggle with overwhelm and how that was affecting my mental health. As a creative who was then working in an architectural practice, I always had so many ideas. I always thought they were brilliant, as one does of their own ideas, and that they needed to be executed. However, on looking at things in more detail I realized that everything needed a lot of time, effort, energy and capital. And let us not forget the fact that I wanted to do all of that whilst I kept pursuing my architecture career.

Long story short, my ambition led to constant panic attacks that in turn led to therapy. From my very first therapy session, I learned the most valuable lesson: WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN, GET IT OUT OF YOUR HEAD. After my therapist tried to get as much as possible out of me, he communicated that I had so many ideas but they were all jumbled, a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. They had no order, and no real legs. So encouraged me to write a list of not only the things I wanted to achieve, but everything else on my mind; my feelings towards work, family, my outlook on life.

I had a notebook that I used for this exercise. I started to do it almost daily, write everything down and then go ahead and group things or thoroughly think them through. After a few weeks into this exercise, I figured I also need to incorporate my daily to-dos and tasks into this routine, so I created a layout with a to-do list, follow up list, delegate list and more in Adobe InDesign. I printed this out and started using it for a couple of months. It was really helpful. That is when the idea struck!!! Why not turn this into a book, a planner… and why nit share it with people out there who might also need it or find it useful. That was the beginning of LyfLyn and that product is what we call the LyfLyn Daily Planner.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

LyfLyn Designs is a Ugandan-founded wellness and lifestyle brand. We design and make stylish and functional planners, journals, decks and more that are perfect for organization and mindfulness. Our goal is to encourage self-care and individuality. We have various products that are suitable for each individual because we understand that everyone’s uniqueness is actually their strength. You can make each product your own.
We also believe that whilst building wellness habits is important, it should be an organic journey and for that reason, all our products are dateless; start whenever, pause whenever and resume whenever you are ready.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

From the moment I started LyfLyn, I knew I wanted it to be an online business. I registered and paid for a website and designed it myself. I did this despite knowing I am operating in a country where a lot of people operate under the notion of “seeing is believing” which ultimately means that we do not believe in online stores. One is expected to have a physical shop at least.

I quickly learned that one of the things I had to do was educate people on how to do online shopping and more importantly to bring about trust. We have all been conned once or twice from online purchases, and I understood the hesitation so I had to ensure that we delivered even more than we promised. This looked like recording videos showing the shopping and checkout processes, videos and several photographs of each product and encouraging those that had shopped with us to share their testimonies.
At this point only about 15% of small businesses were operating online and only about 2% of those had websites. We soon had a tipping point where customers were grateful for how swift our process was and how they loved the fact that they could shop 24/7.

In a way, we became the guinea pig for many small businesses and did the hard work of educating, sometimes with little to no sales. However, once it kicked off and the trust was built, the orders started coming in swiftly and before we knew it, very many other small businesses had also started building websites and using them to sell their products.

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

We want LyfLyn to be a memorable brand. A lifeline for people in all senses. We started off strong with branding, a very unique logo, great packaging and a unique product that is actually functional. Once our products were in people’s hands, they did all the talking for us. This led to various organic social media reviews on Instagram and Facebook. People loved and trusted our products, enjoyed using them and saw the difference or changes in their day-to-day lives as a result of incorporating our planners and journals into their lives.

A lot of our initial customers reached us through these reviews from people they know and trust, their sister, mother, the occasional influencer.

Once we paired that with good customer service and a consistently good product, that led to trust which in turn built our reputation nit only in Uganda, but across the point to countries like USA, Germany, Italy, Australia and the UK where we have been featured in British Vogue as well as Glamour Magazine.

We also started running a monthly goal setting session event, The Plan-Tea Event. This helped us get in touch with some of our customers, and answer their questions on how best to use or pair our products as well as share effective tips for planning and achieving one’s goals. The sessions as run online with the exception of one physical event every quarter.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lyflyndesigns.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/lyflyndesigns
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/lyflyndesigns
• Linkedin: https://ug.linkedin.com/company/lyflyn-designs
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/lyflyndesigns

Image Credits
Photographs by Eric Okurut and Sarah Kukie