Opening mail that has collected in our business mailbox is always an exercise in total anxiety. Anthony dropped off a stack of unopened, official looking envelopes as I was editing a video. Several of them came from a taxing authority of one variety or another. One of them contained a letter purporting to suspend our business license if our quarterly tax returns were not promptly filed with the State.
I had no idea you were supposed to file quarterly tax returns with the State.
This is one of about a million things I did not know until it was nearly too late as a founder of a K-beauty brand.
I thus canceled the rest of my evening and stayed up until my eyeballs were so dry I could barely blink, pulling together the ridiculous minutia required by the State of California when filing one's quarterly tax returns. I'd spent about an hour researching whether there was a more efficient way to handle district tax allocations, but apparently, there is not. I thus opened a spreadsheet and began entering the data manually.
For hours.
Anthony and Lulu were in bed by the time I hit the "submit" button. The recipe video I'd planned on filming would have to wait until later in the week. The newsletter I'd planned on proofreading, I'd do after brushing my teeth. The kitchen I'd made a mess of would have to be organized the following morning.
This is the part about being a "beauty brand founder" that no one ever talks about.
I was annoyed. Frustrated. Shouldn't we have an accountant handling this stuff? But a part of me was also proud that I'd stayed up all night long to get this handled. Who else was going to do it? Who else would care enough to do it? As I switched off the lights to my office and then the kitchen and then the living room before trudging upstairs to bed, I thought (uncharitably), I'll bet so-and-so mega-influencer beauty brand 'founder' isn't staying up all night long entering every single sale in every single city of the largest state in the United States.
Maybe because "so-and-so mega influencer" is a lot smarter than me.
Perhaps I shouldn't say this here, but I have no idea where Korean Vegan Beauty will end up. A part of me hopes and dreams that it'll become a household name, sold in Sephoras and Ultas and Walmarts across the world. I think the vegan community deserves Korean beauty. I also think that vegan K-beauty is the best beauty. And I think I am uniquely positioned to introduce K-beauty in a way that is inclusive, compassionate, and effective.
But the realistic part of me understands that it's far likelier that one day, I'll conclude, Well, that was a nice run y'all and I'm glad I did it, but it's time to end this chapter in my life.
Regardless of where this goes, I know I'd regret it if I wasn't part of every aspect of it. Not just the fun stuff, like photo shoots, social media content, public appearances, and product launches. But also the boring stuff. The vexing stuff. The mundane stuff. Tomorrow, I get to hop on a call with our ad agency to discuss things like target audience, response times, and a bunch of technical gobbledy-gook I can barely say out loud, much less understand.
While I understand that part of the "brand" is about effortless beauty, poise, confidence, and elegance, for me, everything I ever do in life has to be about authenticity. The truth is, there is nothing "effortless" about launching your own beauty brand. I hardly felt poised while sitting hunched over my keyboard, calculator in hand, like a freaking troll under a bridge, as I entered over a hundred line items into the wonky government website. And I certainly felt far from confident as I tried to figure out what the heck the fine State of California wanted from me, a noobie business owner who spent most of the day filming how to make Korean side dishes.
But, as I scrolled through every single sale made to every single customer living in the State of California... seeing that our products were being delivered to San Francisco, Pomona, Fullerton, San Diego, Monterey Bay, Ione, Calabasas, Thousand Oaks, West Hollywood, Santa Clara, and so many more cities across the state... the numbers took on a life of their own. These numbers reflected all the many people who took a chance on me, Joanne, the noobie K-beauty brand founder, the girl who told herself she'd never be good at selling anything and therefore, she should just be a lawyer.
So yeah. It was annoying as f%$# to do that stuff last night. But, in the end, I'm so glad I did. Because it's the unglamorous annoying stuff that proves that wherever this path takes me...
I'm on the right one.
