This week I published my / RecCreate’s first sponsored IG reel— and I swear to god I almost puked. Not because I had any problem with the brand, because I didn’t make something I could be proud of or because I felt like I wasn’t being compensated enough. None of those things were true.

The truth was, my body was screaming against the very essence of what the post entailed. At that moment my sweet sweet audience of creative humans looking to live communal lives, many of whom I know personally— was functioning as a platform for corporate promotion. That I was the one monetizing their attention.

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I’m not here to say that it’s inherently wrong, that there’s no nuance or benefits for small creators or businesses’— just to think out loud about what it looks like to build something in public that continues day in and out to align with my own personal value system.

And while I do in fact sell to that same audience every single day, and regularly partner with brands on private events and pop-ups, I could not help but feel like for me, personally, that specific partnership crossed a line.

I think of that episode in the final season of Hacks, where the woman on stage at the Who’s Making Dinner anniversary thanks the event’s sponsors, and notes that “The arts would be nothing without you.” Building a small business centered around creativity, community and accessibility sometimes feels like an inherent oxymoron — like you can’t have sustainability and heart, at least not without the presence of a bigger brand.

The farther along I get in this industry, the deeper the notion hits that “art doesn’t scale” — at least not in the way and timeframe we are told it should. But what if that is okay?

I want to build and make and breathe life into so many things— my list of ideas is long, and sometimes it feels like the only ticket out to ever starting something new depends on my ability to make RecCreate entirely self-sustaining. It’s so very tempting to take the ‘easy’ path, to take any money we’re offered, to fill our events with sponsors, our feed with branded posts and to standardize it all as much as possible.

It’s SO! much more difficult to build something that is value aligned, has integrity, refuses to conform to what a capitalist society expects it to be and become.

I wish I had a cute little polka dot bow to tie on this, a how-to guide to inspire you to stay true to yourself and your community on the days when your bank account is empty, a few journaling prompts that would give you clarity on exactly where your lines are.

What I’ll offer us instead is a quote pulled from Danny Myer’s ‘Setting the Table.’ He brings up this idea (but in the context of management) of constant, gentle, pressure. If you’re in this, like me, for the long haul— there is likely not going to be one big moment where you decide who you’re going to be and what your business is going to stand by. There are going to be hundreds and thousands of them over time. My job, your job— is to keep the constant, gentle pressure towards what is good and right an true, and then to bravely course correct when you inevitably feel gross about a decision you made.

What a gift after all, to build something slowly, beautifully, that you can be deeply proud of. That version of your dream will alwayssssss be something worth fighting for.

xx Liz

In August, my team ran our highest paid + highest profile brand event while I was on the first leg of my honeymoon with no cell service in Yellowstone National Park. RecCreate was in Vogue this year, our social following doubled, events more seamless and guest reviews higher than ever— but as I sit here reminiscing on it all, no KPI holds a flame to the accomplishment of everything that I didn’t do.

For much of this year, I had a mantra of ‘nothing new’— a systemized bid to patience. While new things, alas, came anyway, I was able to dedicate much of my energy towards operationalizing and properly passing off what already existed. Talking points for demos, practice projects for new hosts, lead trackers, an email welcome sequence. I dedicated an hour each morning before touching anything else to documenting it all.

In many ways, this was the year of the system. This was the year when through them, I got to more thoroughly support my team, set clear expectations, and hand off things I couldn’t have previously fathomed. On the outside, it may have looked as if everything was the same, on the inside, everything was *professionalizing*.

The beauty of it was— when I stopped trying to do everything, I found room to breathe. Room to think, to strategize— my head finally above water for the first time in eons. I have more clarity on where we are going, how we are going to get there, and in what order we will tackle all of it. As a bootstrapped entrepreneur used to doing everything on my own with very little resources, it is no joke to start running an actual company. It takes so much more work to enable people to do things rather than do them on my own, to take a freaking step back and actually live out my values of rest, play, balance.

2025 was marked by slow, steady implementation: by shedding, by travel, getting married, giving up a little more control week by week as I surrender into everything my role and RecCreate are becoming.

With my new found time as things slowly shifted off my plate, there were many things that I let my attention be drawn to briefly: a book, craft kits,  merch, the endless possibilities of a cake printer, sponsored community events, everything that could be.

I even toured a cafe space— delusionally adamant that maybe, just maybe I was already ready to move on to the next big thing.

I’ve grown to admire the putting down of the very tempting projects, the discipline of not yet, the simmering & bubbling until things are boiling. I try to only then give them my attention— a repository of thoughts, notes and imagery surfacing when I finally, properly, cave.

Take Craft Employed for example, the first iteration  happened two years ago, the second, last fall— each rashly but confidently shut down. I had notebooks full of course ideas, resources. The systems I have used to build + launch I learned in a course almost four years ago. By this Fall when I began, the pot was boiling over. I was ready this time, and it showed.

I believe my ideas and enthusiasm and bias towards action are gifts— but am learning that’s only true when the timing is right. Discerning when and what and how can be maddening, and while there is never a “right” time, I’ve found there is a more thoughtful one. There will almost certainly be a day when I sign a lease on that cafe idea that is genuinely haunting me, but by god I pray it will not be at the expense of the thing right in front of me.

When I was 21, my parents made their liberal pilgrimage from Tampa, Florida to Dever, Colorado. The move introduced a new phenomena to our family: the mountains. The first Christmas my sibling and I visited we were gifted used snowboards and (PTL) helmets— my cool-girl-snowboard-era was off to a great start. I binged beginner snowboard youtube videos before bed and ogled the view all the way to the bunny hill. I will stop my story here because you are highly intelligent and know exactly where this is going— I spent the entire day, and many more to come, on my ass.

As someone who identifies as an “ideas” person, the reality that can set in when it comes time to actually get started is slightly devastating. (Feeling all of that viscerally as I chunkily write this first post). It can be wayyyy more fun to fantasize about becoming Felicity Jones in Chalet Girl than to actually be out there vulnerably giving it all a go, realizing how incredibly far I was from where I wanted to be.

People often ask me how RecCreate started, and I usually say something along the lines of ‘it happened on accident’ which is both true and reductive. To me, RecCreate is a small testament to what can come to be when you give an idea a real go and let yourself pummel down the bunny hill of “what ifs….” again and again until finally you swing the board under yourself, come to a stop and somehow stay standing. Your mom cheers! You try to figure out what the hell you did and then you try to do it again. You repeat the process for eternity, it likely involves help from many more people if it becomes anything worthwhile.

RecCreate was born out of a mind numbing job in a windowless office that led me to absolute creative desperation, enter: me hand making hundreds of naturally dyed beeswax wraps. In the movie version of the beginning of this tale, we would see me pulling yards of fabric out of a massive pot of pink avocado dye on my kitchen stove, waxing an absurd number of said fabrics with an iron over parchment paper, incessantly refreshing the (very few) likes on my first ever pop-up flier, then me hauling my bed out of my bedroom and turning into a beeswax wrap gallery. Cut to a few freakouts, a small dryer fire, and then alas, my apartment packed with people from all corners of my life buying them all up before lingering for a long time and drinking mulled wine and squeezing in together on the couch. This last scene is especially important, you can see me in the corner a little wound up but also clearly over the moon. Unbeknownst to me, I will spend the next 5 years (and likely many, many more) gathering friends and strangers to linger over art in many forms.

Though everything has come so far from that first apartment pop-up, it’s still very much just the beginning. This Substack exists as a way for me to reflect on and share all of the inbetweens of how RecCreate came to be, what I’ve learned thus far, and to let you in as I navigate the many challenges and joys that are inevitably hurling their way through the galaxy at me and this little baby business as we speak. I hope the insight into my process and story can be of service to you in whatever journey you’re on, even if just to be a reminder that you are not alone, and that your trying is a very beautiful act. Please feel free to send any questions or topics you’d be curious to hear about to liz@reccreatecollective.com and I look forward to hanging out in your inbox.

Oh, and in case you need the bow tied on the snowboard metaphor, I am still very intermediate but can usually keep up, and most importantly, I love the ride.