New Year, New H&H (Ha, J/K, we still have the same ol' problems)

We've been a bit quiet over here lately. Frankly, we just needed a break. A break from social media. A break from reality. A break from the shop. A break from our to-do lists. And definitely a break from this weird transition from 2020 into 2021. 

We took this pic the last week of December and patted ourselves on the back for being already focused on our goals for H&H when typically we wait until the first week/weekend of the new year to even talk about our goals. 

Here's what happened: We crashed and burned. 

Those pats on the back we gave ourselves for goal setting early? A bit premature. In retrospect, I guess we jumped the gun. We went from working our tails off, to Christmas break (maybe two days of not working), and then straight back into work mode. So this meant we didn't finish half of what we intended to do – let alone setting our small business goals for the year. 

So here we are, 10 days later and about to jump back into our agenda and figure out what the heck we're doing this year.

I'm only coming clean about this so no one mistakenly thinks we have it all together. Here's the deal: We have 23K followers and only a very small fraction see our work. We get (on average lately) about 80 likes on a single post. Listen, I'm not telling y'all this so you can feel sorry for us. I'm saying this, because this is our only source of income and we are faced with either playing politely in the same sandbox as IG/Facebook or saying, "so long sucka!" and finding a new playmate.

So what does this mean for our small business? 

It means I have to put more work into playing nicely with these f*#!%&$ if we want to get our work in front of our current followers and gain even more. This means more Posts, more Stories, and even adding in Instagram Reels, Instagram Live and IG TV. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I don't wanna! I already spend too much time on this stupid thing and actually asked if we could break up with IG in the new year. I'm bitter about it y'all. I wanted to walk away, legit, delete our social media account that we've built organically and slowly over the past 8 years from nothing all the way up to those 20,000+ followers. None of them were bought, and none of them are bots. All are people who signed up to see our work, who are no longer seeing it. 

To say that I HATE the ever changing Insta algorithm would be a huge understatement. 

But what I DON'T hate is working for Hemlock & Heather full time. I definitely don't hate what we do, I don't hate that this business has carried us through so many ups and downs and has even survived, hell, thrived in 2020. I don't hate that H&H allowed me to walk away from my full-time fundraising career to follow my dreams of being a full-time business owner & stay at home mom and raise our daughter the past year and a half. 

I'll never regret that. 

I'll never give up on H&H. I'll never quit. Which means, I can't quit Instagram or Facebook. But what I can do is try to find a way that works for me, for us, for our family. So that's what I'll do. This means you guys are about to see A LOT more of me and a little bit more of Kris. Man, if you think I hate social media, meet my husband, hahaha.

Here's what we need to know:

What the heck do y'all want to see more of in 2021?

More products? More one-of-a-kinds? More behind the scenes? More small business behind the scenes? More realness and less highlight reel (you’re probably gonna get this regardless)? More of our personal journeys? More inspirational posts? You tell us – I promise we are all ears. ;) 

Thank y'all for sticking with us all of these years. Especially during the times we go dark on here. It's not intentional, it's more about self-preservation than anything else. We love what we do, we love what we've built, and we want to keep doing more of that in 2021 and beyond...God willing. 

Thanks, y'all - Kelley