LIGHT IN NEW YORK

Last week, I was in the Garment District walking on Seventh Avenue. Something about my run-of-the-mill errand day felt different. I started to pray over the streets and buildings in my view. I looked up at vacant office spaces and desired for one of them to be ours.

I am based in the fashion wholesale capital of the world. This is what drew me here 19 years ago. The young women who come here to pursue fashion are the reason I feel planted to stay here. I remember what it was like for me being so young in this big city. I felt inadequate and desperate to get into this industry. It made me vulnerable to certain things, and it shaped me to have a soft heart for victims of human trafficking.

Lately, I've been a mentor to a handful of fashion college students. They've been learning, and I've been enjoying getting to walk alongside them. Like I did at their age, they need a solid mentor.

So many of our meetings are in coffee shops or texts, and I don't delegate as much because we don't have a home for our samples. With an office, I can bring in more Gen Z fashion students and recent grads to take on so much.

EXPANSION GOAL

We have a team of 15 overcomers in Nepal. This is amazing, but I know we can do better. Why not 50? Why not 500?

The key will be increasing our revenue. The amount of sales needed for each seamstress will go down as we increase more and more that multiplication is very reachable. I'm motivated to get more volume out of our fixed costs to increase our margins. To move the needle, I have to lead more, and do less.

I have been in the process of trying to handover 80% of the stuff I'm doing, and forcing myself to focus on the real gold - the crucial 20% that actually moves the needle. My leadership skills are the gold.  Seeing it happen in real time, and the goal to have an office space and in-person team here, has me on my knees in absolute awe of God for assigning me this role.

I wanted to share this vision because it has me more excited than ever.  I'm confident that with an office space, I can fill it with interns and a team here to get a lot of creative content and sales strategies running for us. This should ultimately pay for the rent of the office space, but I definitely need to think that over way more. 

Maybe once we start running digital ads, we'll double our revenue and get to the next stage where an office rent wouldn't be a stressful thought. It may also be the needed next step to multiply our impact in Nepal. Haha, oh a girl can dream!