|
This week marked eight years since I received an email I had been expecting for months. By then, it wasn't a surprise. Our company had been acquired, and one by one, departments were being eliminated. Every week seemed to bring more uncertainty. We'd hear another team had been let go, another round of layoffs had happened, another familiar face was gone. Each morning, I'd walk into the office wondering if that day would be my last. The hardest part wasn't losing my job. It was waiting to lose it. When the email finally arrived, it confirmed what many of us had been anticipating. My position, along with the majority of my department, was being eliminated. I remember feeling two emotions at the same time. Heartbroken, and oddly... relieved. The uncertainty was finally over. It was my first big-girl job. The job where I felt like I was building a career, not just collecting a paycheck. I had spent nearly ten years there, and the people I worked with had become so much more than coworkers. They became my Knoxville family, and eight years later, I still miss every single one of them.  Selfie with the only Scripps logo left after Discovery acquired the company. Outside of work, life felt just as uncertain.
I had a kindergartner depending on me. I was the breadwinner. At the same time, I was in the middle of my immigration process, waiting for my permanent residency after building a life in a country I had called home since 2003. It felt like every major piece of my life was hanging by a thread. Looking back, I don't think I was afraid of losing my job. I was afraid of everything I couldn't control. For years, I had quietly dreamed about working for myself. It was one of those ideas that would pop into my mind every now and then before I quickly talked myself out of it. I had a good job. A steady paycheck. Stability. Starting a business felt like something I'd do someday. Not today. So after the layoff, I did what felt responsible: I updated my résumé, and I started applying for jobs. Around that same time, my then-husband received an opportunity in Connecticut, so we decided that would be our next chapter. I focused my job search there, interviewed with several companies, and convinced myself that finding another job was the obvious next step. One interview, in particular, felt like it was going to change everything. When I didn't get the job, I was devastated. Looking back now, I smile because that "no" protected a future I couldn't yet see. Around that same time, I reached out to someone simply because I wanted to make a new connection. That conversation turned into a friendship, which eventually led to an opportunity at a design agency while I continued building my freelance business on the side. It felt like the perfect in-between. Then, a year later, everything changed again. COVID hit, and I was laid off for a second time. This time, though, it didn't feel devastating. It felt like life asking me the same question one more time: If not now, when? Not long after, I lost my dad. His passing changed how I defined success. Success stopped being about climbing the next step of the career ladder. It became about building a life that gave me choices. A life where I could be present for the people I love. A life where I didn't have to ask permission to take care of my family. So in January 2021, I stopped treating freelancing as my backup plan and started treating it like the business I believed it could become. That doesn't mean I never questioned the decision. I did. There were moments when going back to the familiarity of a steady paycheck sounded incredibly appealing. Then came another unexpected chapter. Later that year, my marriage ended, bringing a 20-year relationship with the father of my son to a close. It wasn't part of the plan either. But by then, I had learned something I didn't know I was capable of. I had learned that courage isn't the absence of uncertainty. It's choosing to keep moving anyway. After years of waiting for the next unknown, uncertainty no longer felt like something to fear. It had become something I knew I could navigate. I had stopped waiting for life to become predictable and started believing I could figure things out, no matter what came next. And with every challenge, my confidence grew that I could make this work. The years that followed brought more change than I could have imagined. I moved to San Antonio to be closer to my mom. I built a business that has connected me with incredible clients and lifelong friends. I've had opportunities I couldn't have imagined eight years ago. But if I'm honest, those aren't the things I'm most grateful for. I'm grateful for the freedom. The freedom to drive to Mexico and spend weeks helping my mom recover from surgery. The freedom to travel with Lennon and show him the world. The freedom to build a business around my life instead of trying to build my life around someone else's schedule. The business was never the dream. The life it made possible was. Eight years ago, uncertainty consumed me because my future depended on decisions I couldn't control. It turns out waiting wasn't the hardest part after all. Believing I could build something on the other side was. Today, uncertainty still exists. The difference is that now, it comes from building something that's mine. And I'd choose this kind of uncertainty every single time. Eight years ago, I thought that email marked the end of my career. Looking back, it was simply the first page of the chapter I'm still writing today.
0 Comments
As a brand designer, I'm probably harder to impress than most when it comes to design tools. If something promises to "make beautiful marketing in seconds," I'm usually the first person to raise an eyebrow. 🤨 But Flodesk recently gave Partners early access to Flodesk Studio, their new AI-powered design assistant, and I have to admit... I'm obsessed! Instead of staring at a blank screen wondering how I wanted to structure an email, I simply told Studio what I was promoting, and within seconds it generated multiple beautifully designed layouts complete with copy, sections, calls to action, and imagery placeholders. Flodesk has been expanding beyond email marketing into AI-assisted content creation while keeping its design-first approach, and Studio feels like a natural extension of that vision. My test project? Promoting my free masterclass.I wanted to create a promotional email for my upcoming free masterclass: Design Your Way to Freedom Instead of dragging blocks around, instead of rewriting the same promotional copy for the tenth time... I opened Studio.  I simply described what I wanted: "Create a promotional email for my free masterclass for aspiring brand designers: Design Your Way to Freedom." Within seconds, Studio generated multiple email layouts. Truly, I wasn't expecting them to be this good! It didn't replace my creativity—it accelerated it. This is probably my favorite part. As designers, we sometimes worry AI will replace our creativity. That wasn't my experience. Studio gave me an incredible starting point. I still swapped in my own branding, my own photography, tweaked the messaging, and made it feel like me. But instead of spending an hour building the structure, I spent that hour refining it. That's a huge difference.   Things I loved After playing with Studio, these were the biggest wins for me:
As someone who teaches branding, I appreciate that it still leaves room for strategy and personality—it simply removes a lot of the repetitive work. Why this matters for small business owners One thing I hear all the time is: "I know I should email my list... I just don't know what to send." Or... "Creating emails takes forever." Studio removes so much of that friction. Instead of spending hours building an email from scratch, you can start with something beautiful and customize it to fit your voice. That means more consistent marketing and a lot less procrastination. Final thoughts I've been a Flodesk fan for years because they've always understood that good marketing should also look beautiful. Studio feels like the next evolution of that philosophy. If you're already using Flodesk, I think you're going to have a lot of fun with it. And if you've been putting off building your email list because the creative process feels overwhelming, this might be the feature that finally gets you excited about email marketing. If you'd like to give Flodesk a try, you can use my partner link here: Disclosure: I'm a Flodesk Partner, which means if you decide to try Flodesk using my link, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I genuinely use and love. |
Let's be friends!
|
|
© Copyright Karla Pámanes, LLC ︱ You belong here ♡