About (Emily’s Version)

In 2012, I founded Em & Friends —as Emily McDowell Studio—with seven grand in savings, tenth-grade math skills, an abundance of ideas, and just enough ignorance to believe in my vision completely: greeting cards for the messy, imperfect relationships we really have, not the ones we wish we had. Most cards at the time were the latter: gushing poems, “best-dad-ever,” and I couldn’t find much in stores that reflected my reality.

The first card I ever put in my Etsy shop was a Valentine that went viral; it was Etsy’s most-shared post of the year, and spent several months on and off the front page of Reddit. I took it as proof of concept, got to work, and launched a complete wholesale collection three months later. Within a year, my work was in a thousand-plus retailers. 

The brand’s growth trajectory accelerated from there: national retail, global distribution, over 120 sales reps, a 7-figure e-commerce business– and all this was before the viral launch of Empathy Cards in 2015, when our revenue doubled overnight. These cards, a more supportive approach to “get well soon,” became an international news story, with organic coverage in hundreds of major outlets in 22 countries, and they’ve been cited many times as the catalyst for a sea change to the greeting card industry.

Throughout this period, I also did all our PR and marketing; as a former ad agency copywriter and creative director, I had the skills to sell my story more effectively than anyone else, and our official marketing budget was $0. We were profitable and growing, and our products were everywhere. I was living a life everybody seemed to want— and it was also destroying me.

In 2018, Em & Friends was acquired by fellow indie brand Knock Knock, and I became a partner in the joint venture, co-leading two brands under one roof. With this shift, I happily let go of my CEO role (and several others), focusing on creative direction, product development, and training a team to write and illustrate our products. In 2022, Em & Friends and Knock Knock were acquired by Union Square & Co., the publishing division of Barnes & Noble, and I exited the company.

For about seven years, some element of my work was in a near-constant state of “viral,” which sounds like a dream, and in many ways it was. But without the inner and outer resources to support that kind of visibility and “success,” it also often felt like a nightmare.

I learned an infinite number of lessons in the last decade, but this is one of the biggest: If your growth trajectory isn’t sustainable for you, it’s ultimately destructive. If your business model requires you to ignore and override your human needs for any significant length of time, it can only be so profitable before it murders you—and itself. The hierarchy has to go like this: Your needs -> the needs of your business -> the needs and wants of your customers. 

Since 2019, I’ve been engaged in the process of healing from burnout and autoimmune disease, learning to work with my nervous system and expand my capacity, and studying the cycle of change. By “studying,” I mean spending multiple years flailing around in the dark confusion of liminal space, a formless blob with an email account, so what I’m saying is this part wasn’t a choice. But it was ultimately the best thing that could have happened to me.

Right now, I’m using my business expertise to consult, coach, and teach, but I’m also looking forward to getting a little less business-focused with my work. I’ll be graduating from Martha Beck’s Wayfinder coach training in July 2024, I’m a certified breathwork teacher, and I’m proud to possess 75% of a master’s degree in spiritual psychology (I dropped out of the program when Em & Friends took off). The older I get, and the more chaotic our world becomes, the more interested I am in supporting people in shedding old identities and toxic cultural conditioning, and finding their way home to the joy of who they really are— because the more I practice this myself, the better my life feels.

People keep asking if I’m going to start another brand, and like, never say never, but also no.

I live in Portland, Oregon with my partner Daniel, my teenage stepsons Otto and Oli, our cats Aquarius and Action Sports Bryan, and an ever-growing collection of low-maintenance house plants.