🐦🔥 Luvvie's "The Crumbling," Part One
NYT–bestselling author Luvvie Ajayi Jones' on steering her business through near-bankruptcy, streamlining, and then rebuilding
“My CFO said, if we do not bring in one additional dollar—if we do not book one more piece of business—the company would be bankrupt by the end of June. This is March. Awe Luv Media would have zero in less than three months. Y’all, it was red alert time. I was officially the closest to panicking. I remember sitting at my desk with my face in my hands, just being like, how the hell did we get here? And here’s the thing: I was working harder than I ever have. I was working harder and longer hours than I had in a long time.”
—Luvvie Ajayi Jones, Professional Troublemaker podcast S5:E3, “Experience the Valley”
I don’t know powerhouse author-speaker-leader Luvvie Ajayi Jones personally, but I sure parasocially feel like I do after voraciously binging the fifth season of her Professional Troublemaker podcast (now paused, for similar reasons to mine).1
I first encountered Luvvie at the Massachusetts Conference for Women in 2016. We were both speakers (her on the main stage with a massive 10,000 attendees, me for a breakout of ~1,000) and we sat at adjacent tables during the book signing session. I marveled as her line wrapped around the entire perimeter of the space, thinking I’ve gotta learn more about this woman! and then continued cheering from afar at the incredible media and leadership business she built.
Luvvie’s divine assignment includes an unmistakable voice (blogging since 2003!2), a community that adores her, and a suite of four New York Times–bestselling books.
But her biggest gift—at least for fellow solo+preneurs like me—started with a single Instagram post exactly one year ago, sharing that 2023 had been her hardest year in business, too. The response was so overwhelmingly positive she later dedicated an entire podcast season to it:
In the caption, she wrote:
"2023 had hands, and boxed me like I stole something from its mama 😩. Last year was tough for me, in many ways and in business, it was brutal. At one point, I thought I was about to go bankrupt and it shook my confidence hard core.
I’m writing a piece right now where I’ll talk about it in detail, because truly, many of us were experiencing the same thing. 😵💫 We gotta start being more honest about the journey.
People plus-one’d in the comments, replying with things like, “2023 took it all and left no crumbs!!” and “It helps to hear that 2023 wasn’t just hard for me.”
That same urge toward honesty is what sparked starting Rolling in Doh the same summer Luvvie was experiencing what she now calls “The Crumbling.” No matter the (perceived) cost to my reputation as a business owner, I could not pretend any longer that things hadn’t become untenably difficult, at least at the intersection of juggling the pressure-filled roles of business owner and breadwinner.
If my husband worked at a hedge fund (or any equivalently stacked financial set-up), maybe I would have found a way to keep my story tucked safely behind the scenes, to continue hiding. But it’s a gift that he isn’t (for so many reasons!) and that I couldn’t.
In a previous post on Kevin Costner’s big creative bets, I suggested a new term to replace schadenfreude, joy at others’ misfortune, because that’s not what I feel listening to Luvvie’s story.
I proposed an amended concept (that’s admittedly impossible to remember or say out loud): mitgefühlversagenfreude, which translates to empathy-failure-joy. Let’s update it to an even more convoluted mitgefühlverbundenheitserleichterung (lol!):
Experiencing relief through empathetic connectedness, or
Feeling empathy and even a little relief when hearing about someone else’s challenges; not wishing any ill will, just grateful to know you are not alone.
In the podcast episode where Luvvie shares exactly what brought her seven-figure business (including a team of seven employees) to the brink of bankruptcy, she spoke about the toll it took, saying, “My stress was stressed. All of this while I’m also trying to be a good wife, a good friend, a good daughter, and a good sister, and drink water, stay hydrated, go to therapy. It was a lot.”
Like so many of us experiencing these humbling crumblings, her confidence tanked as her stress skyrocketed.
Towards the end of the episode, she gives a play-by-play of one of her lowest moments:
“Now I was down to one [employee] and it was the end of June, six months. Okay. So that began the need to rebuild my company and my team almost from scratch while generating enough revenue to pay myself and my Lone Ranger [business “gardener” Sally Thornton].
It was a crumbling. It was a crumbling. And honestly, I felt every single effect of it. My stress was at an all-time high. I was incredibly irritable. My anxiety was through the roof. I was sleeping like shit.
My confidence was lower than it had been. I felt like I had failed. I was confused. I was dejected and burned out, not even regular burnout. Like I was burnt to a crisp, just flailed. I had nothing left. You know, that empty battery emoji? Yes, that was me.
They talk about, “Don’t pour from a cup that’s empty.” I was scraping the bottom of my cup, all my years of working on building the company and the team. It was like two steps forward and four steps back. And on top of that, what really hurt was my ability to trust people. That took a great hit personally and professionally.
I knew I needed to rebuild. I knew it was the valley moment. Every hero’s journey has a valley moment. It was absolutely mine. And I knew it was happening in the moment. I just knew that I needed to get out of the valley. I wasn’t sure how it was going to happen. I knew I could not quit. Quitting was not an option at all. At no point. I knew I had to rebuild, that I would need to dig my way out.”
Listen to the full episode here, and continue reading part two, where I share what stood out most from her generous sharing around the next phase of rebuilding.3
❤️
🔗 All the links! If you, too, want to become Luvvie’s parasocial bestie:
Subscribe to the LuvvLetter (her gif game is epic — every newsletter has a rant, reflection, and a recommendation)
Join her Patreon community
Follow on Instagram @luvvie
Learn more about her Book Academy
Listen to her podcast, Professional Troublemaker
🤩 Fun fact via Wikipedia: Ajayi began her career in marketing and digital strategy. Her blog, AwesomelyLuvvie.com amassed an early following, particularly for her recaps of television shows like Scandal, drawing the attention of showrunner Shonda Rhimes.
👉 If you enjoyed this post, you might appreciate this Spotify podcast episode playlist and:
Yes, indeed, we could use a new word for the positive empathy-recognition-joy experience, but could we revert to English, or poetry, or heartfelt beautiful wordcrafting? Schadenfreude is bad enough. . . How about youtooImsohappy? Or the great Mayan greeting "I am another yourself"? Or????? ;-D