Killing your darlings (but not your plants) while building a brand

Hey there,

This month, I wanted to bring you a little something different in terms of an interview.

Typically, I’m talking to folks building service-based businesses because I know a lot of you are building service-based businesses. But I also know many of you are multi-hyphenate, creative souls interested in so 👏 many 👏 things 👏 that identifying as one job title feels impossible. 

So this month, I brought my friend Krista Elvey into my virtual office to talk about what it’s like running two businesses—a brand and marketing design company and a houseplant hobby brand called Plantkyn.

Krista was the first designer I hired at my former job as a creative director. She was also the first person to know I QUIT! Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to have a front-row seat to everything she’s building, and I’m excited for y’all to meet her, too.

Enjoy!

Welcome, Krista! I start all of these interviews with one simple question: If your brand were an animal, what would it be?

Oh, that’s an easy one! My brand is definitely a plant, haha. Plantkyn’s logo is a simple houseplant icon, and it’s also the main mascot character.

And here I was, thinking you’d say a Corgi!

In addition to being a brand and marketing designer, you recently launched Plantkyn. It’s amazing to see how you’ve used your chops to create something for yourself. Tell me about how that came to be.

Aw, thanks! I started my full-time freelance design career in 2017 when I moved to Canada (I married a Canadian) after a few years working in the environmental non-profit world. My degree is in Environmental Policy, which is how I ended up in that space, but I quickly discovered my love for design. I took a bunch of one-off courses, found myself in marketing and in-house designer roles within those organizations, and eventually felt confident enough to go out on my own.

I’ve known you for so long, and I did not know this!

I was lucky to build a successful design career mostly through referrals. During COVID, I started focusing more on illustration and had an itch to get my own art into the world. For a few years, I dabbled in licensing, small-batch stationery, and surface pattern design.

I’ve also been Really Into Plants for a long time, so I have horticulturist-level knowledge from years of personal research (thanks, ADHD). My other COVID project was getting my Master Gardener certification, so plants were on my mind more than ever.

Your pandemic sounds similar to my pandemic—many interests came to the surface!

One day, I brought home a new houseplant (a regular occurrence), looked at the little plastic plant tag, and roasted it in my mind. They’re so unhelpful and often not even plant-specific, and I started thinking about what a better version could be.

I had already been illustrating houseplants for fun, so I took some of those drawings and made a little trifold brochure about a Rubber Tree just to experiment. It was the most fun I’d ever had with a personal project, and with years of being the go-to plant person in my community, I thought I might be onto something.

From there, I kept iterating: from a trifold to a 12-page booklet, to the 20-page booklet and accessories that the Plantkyn Care Kits are today.

So you built the entire Plantkyn brand yourself, which is a really hard role to play, because you know…Cobbler’s children have no shoes…

How did you balance your own preferences with meeting the needs of your ideal customer?

You need a big mindset shift when you go from Art for Fun to Educational Thing to Sell.

I’m still working on that balance, but the first thing I did when I had a version of the Care Kit I liked was beta test it with 25 colleagues, friends, and acquaintances. I did a small print run, mailed out the kits, and then did hour-long interviews with each person. It was the single best thing I could have done.

I was honored to be a beta tester and still have two thriving rubber trees to prove it!

I learned so much about how people approach plant care—their fears, pain points, joy, and confusion—and I learned how to break things down for beginners.

That first round of testing informed a pretty drastic redesign for the first Plantkyn Care Kits launch in Feb 2025. This year, I made it my mission to sell at as many local markets as I had energy for to get even more feedback for the kits I’ll be launching next year.

It sounds like a lot has changed since you started! Tell me about the things you had to let go of to get to where you are now with your brand.

I’m trying not to regurgitate too many quotes from Business People here, but “Killing Your Darlings” has been one of the hardest lessons in this whole process.

My ideal version of the Care Kits would have cost twice as much per unit as the fair market price I wanted to charge. The designer in me wanted the fanciest papers, the nicest packaging, the works. But when you sell physical products and want to build a business instead of an expensive hobby, you have to get more pragmatic than you might want to. That doesn’t mean compromising your values; it just means being willing to look at the numbers.

For instance, sustainability and fair wages are really important to me. Plantkyn doesn’t use plastic, and everything is printed or made within 100 km of my home in Hamilton, Ontario.

I cut costs by reducing the number of elements in the product and the amount of labor it takes to assemble them, not by compromising my values.

Killing your darlings is so hard—especially in the design world where you have portfolio-level expectations of everything you do! But because you’re a designer, you’ve been able to do a lot of the heavy lifting for Plantkyn yourself.

What advice would you give to people thinking about building their own brand themselves?

Oh man, I’ve learned a lot. Here are a few big takeaways.

Everything takes longer than you think. The 2023 me expected to be light-years ahead of where I am now. That’s not because I’m a failure, it’s because I was being incredibly unrealistic.

I’m one person running two businesses, and I have a partner, friends, family, and hobbies outside of work. Building a brand is a long game, and if you’re not enjoying the process, you probably need to slow down.

You will make lots of mistakes. I was so afraid of them that I became paralyzed when it came to making decisions. I’m finally embracing that mistakes are a necessary part of learning. I’m a recovering perfectionist, so this will always be hard for me, but I’m more aware now when I’m getting in my own way.

Connections are everything. My community is so much bigger now. For too long, I thought I had to sit at my computer and make Instagram reels to market my business. As someone who is begrudgingly online, it was miserable and didn’t move things forward. Everything changed when I started doing regular markets and getting involved in community events. I’m an introvert, so I’ve had to learn how to build in time to recharge, but I’ve made so many friends and feel more connected than ever. I genuinely love meeting new people and supporting them, so Plantkyn has given me a great outlet for that. It’s good for me, so it’s good for my business.

You mention being a perfectionist and having to kill your darlings…I’m sensing some themes here. How do you decide when to stop tinkering and when to just launch the dang thing?

I heard a quote recently that sums this up: “If it’s perfect, you launched too late.”

I’ve fallen into this trap many times, forever tinkering with a project until it’s “just right.” When I’m doing this, it’s usually because I’m procrastinating on the next step or because I’m not creatively fulfilled outside of this project. Sometimes it’s both.

When I catch myself tinkering, I ask if this change will make the product meaningfully clearer or better for the customer. If the answer is no, it’s time to move on.

I know you and I both share a love for Karaoke (one of the many reasons we’re friends)! If Plantkyn had a karaoke song, what would it be?

The Distance by Cake

Such 👏 a 👏 bop! 👏 And I can totally see how it ties into what you’ve built and how you’re building it at Plantkyn.

Before you go, where can people find you?

You can check out my design work at kristaelvey.com. To learn more about Plantkyn—and maybe buy a care kit or two!—head to Plantkyn.com or follow me on Instagram.

Thanks, Krista!

And thank you for following along!