Emily Ley (Founder of Simplified)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Foreign. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Every week, I host a conversation with a Christian who's pursuing world class mastery of their vocation. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how their faith influences their work. Today's guest is none other than Emily Lay. If that name sounds familiar to you, it's because I've written about her quite a bit in my last book, Master of One. Emily, of course, is the founder of Simplified, a booming business that produces organizational tools for busy women. She's an exceptional entrepreneur that I've respected for a really long time. So we recently sat down. We talked about why she volunteered to cut 40% of her revenue. We talked about one of my favorite topics, the magic of batching, and specifically batch planning with her team twice a year. And we talked about why Christ followers should be the boldest people on the planet. I think you're going to love this conversation with Emily Lynn. Hey, Emily, thank you so much for being here.

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, this would be fun. I've been looking forward to this for a while. So hey, for our listeners who don't know what is Simplified.

So I started a company called Simplified 12 years ago, and we make planners and organizational tools for busy women who are trying to manage all the things.

All the things.

All the things.

Tell us a little more of the founding story of the company, because I love. I think it's a pretty typical founding story, which is why I love it so much.

So I have a master's degree in nonprofit management and I was climbing the corporate ladder. I had some really awesome jobs early on, working in a couple different areas. But what I found was that I had this desire to be a mom, and my own mom had been a schoolteacher forever, and I wanted to have a schedule like hers. And so I couldn't find a job that allowed me to flex my creative muscles and be excited about what I was doing. And so I just thought, you know what? I'm going to start something on the side. Etsy was new back in 2008, there was no Instagram. It was Twitter was the thing and Facebook. And so I just kind of started it small. It really, really had very humble beginnings. My husband and I decided to kick it off debt free and, and stay that way. And over the years, it just grew and grew. And when my son was born, my 10 year old, my oldest, I found myself just totally overwhelmed, like trying to do work and business, being totally obsessed with this baby and this family, but really unable to be as perfect as everyone else was or that's what or seemed to be. Right. The Internet was telling me every other woman had it all together. So as one does, I went to Target looking for a solution and kind of left there frustrated. I couldn't find a planner or something that was simple enough that it did. Didn't make me feel like more of a failure than I already felt. So I went home and this graphic design company that I had, I kind of started to teach myself graphic design and that kind of thing. And so I made a planner and the simplified planner was born. It's very, very simple on purpose, so women in all seasons of life can use it. And then from there we ended up being carried in 800 stores around the world. I've been able to write books about the content that we teach, have a team of nine women who are just amazing. And we have licensed collections in Target, Walmart, Office Depot and Staples. Literally a dream come true.

But it was a side hustle for you for a while, right? You and I have similar stories. We had these great jobs, but just not the very best expression of our gifts. Right. And not ultimately where we wanted to land. I'm curious. I'm sure we have a lot of people listening who are in that spot right now. What advice would you give them?

So, honestly, the best advice I have for somebody who is either starting out or kind of in the middle of their journey is to run a company debt free. We are big Dave Ramsey fans and I can tell you at least once a week, I am grateful that that is what we decided early on. We even had the opportunity to go on Shark Tank. We got pretty deep into auditions and finally we were like, why? Why would we give away equity in the company? Like, we've built this thing from scratch. And I say we. It was just me at the time, but my husband has been kind of the finance br things. So I would say if you have a gut feeling about something, be it, you know, the kind of life you want to build or the way you want to run a company, stick to it even when things are hard, you'll be glad you did in the long run.

That was a very interesting, surprising answer to that question. Like on a week to week basis, what happens in the business where you're like, man, I'm glad we're not settled with, you know, Salwood debt or investors or whatever.

I think that number one, we own 100% of the company and so we get to make 100% of the decisions. And the debt free thing, I mean, you just think about how much being in debt or, you know, having a debt can really affect your decisions and the way that you run a company or even your life being personally in debt. And so for us to really just have stuck to that, I mean, the company had to grow slower because of that. But when I made mistakes along the way, it didn't put me under. We had strategically made decisions so that we could survive those kinds of things knowing they would happen.

You know, I told part of your story in my last book, Master of One and I quoted this line from you that I love. I come back to it a lot. I'm going to read it verbatim, quote. I think this is in one of your books. You said, quote. Do you remember what it was like to be on the cusp of adulthood when anything could happen? When we stood at the starting lines of our grown up lives and with seemingly hundreds of roads to choose from. I wouldn't go back there if you paid me. And I love this, I love this so much. So why did you say that?

Because I had an existential crisis when I had to choose a major in college. It sounds ridiculous, but like my whole life I, I've kind of always been an overachiever. I always knew like if I worked hard enough at something I could kind of dominate it. But here I was, you know, having to choose what I wanted my life to be. And I think specifically as women like, knowing I was going to be hopefully a mom one day, like that played into it. I can just remember looking at all the choices, being a junior or almost a junior in college and being like, you know, I'm 20 years old and I have to decide who I'm going to be for the rest of my life. This is terrible. Terrible. I mean, I just turned 38 this weekend and I feel like I'm still figuring it out. So no, I would not go back there.

It's a paradox of choice, right? Like, I speak to a lot of college students and one of the things I tell them is, hey, contrary to what your parents told you. You can't be anything you want to be. And you know, it's funny, like when I first started saying that, I was like scared. I was like, oh, man, I'm going to devastate these kids. Every time I say that I have kids come to me like, thank you. That's so freeing. I don't want everything to be a choice. Right. There's a lot, a lot of freedom in that. So. All right. You already gave us an idea of simplified is at today. What do you think you and your team have really gotten right? Like, what are you disproportionately good at?

You know what? We've had to make some really strong pivots over the years. And we've done this. I mentioned we were in 800 stores around the world. That was awesome. That was in 2017. And I was a mom to like infant twins and a four year old. It was wild. And we actually decided to cut our wholesale program. That's 40% of our revenue. And the next year we doubled our revenue. And we did that by always sticking to why in the world we started it in the first place. And that was to have flexibility, to be the kind of women we want to be and also to serve that in customer. To not just sell a planner that's going to sit on a shelf somewhere. Because a lot of people make office products we want to sell and equip women with a tool that's going to help them achieve a fresh start. Like really, really impact change in their lives and not just be. I always say that if I ever just own a planner company, I don't want to do this anymore because it's too much work.

Yeah.

But I think we've just been really, really dedicated to the core of who we are and why we do this. I think that's been our secret sauce.

Yeah. And just being willing to say no to things. I mentioned this too in Master of One part of mastering anything vocationally is saying no to a lot of good things. You guys were in 800 stores. People would kill for that 40% of your revenue. And you're like, nah, cut it out. I'm sure it wasn't that easy.

Yeah. It was a wild thing. But I remember thinking, I either do this or I'm going to really burn out. We have to make a pivot. And it felt so weird to be like, okay, we have all. I had just published my second book. Like we had all these amazing things happening. And I remember thinking, who am I to be Miserable. Like, I have everything I ever wanted, and it really does. I think that just like you said, we narrow our path and we, I think, can be more successful when we do start saying no to seemingly good things, even if just for a season. When you and I were talking about earlier podcasts, I said no to doing podcasts for years until it was the right season.

You know, well, what isn't part of this, too? Just when you get wholesale accounts and you're selling direct to consumer, the business is just, like, way more complex. Like, your whole brand is built around simplicity. Right. So that had to factor into that decision. I am curious, like, as the business has grown, I've run businesses of varying degrees of complexity. It's hard to ensure that the business stays simple. I'm curious what steps you've taken to make sure that it doesn't become overcomplicated.

Yeah. You know, one thing that we did, the women who are on my team, we have nine, including myself. When last year happened and all of us, or some of us became homeschooling parents, we were like, oh, wow, okay, so how are we going to do, you know, all of these things? And we all work from home, we're all remote. And we instituted what we call batch planning. And so twice a year, we will take one to two full days of us on Zoom, and we plan out in Asana, our project management system. We plan content for six months at a time.

I love that.

And it is so great. And, I mean, we were forced into it because we all work weird hours, and we all needed to know what direction to go in and be on the same page. But to do it like that, it just. It frees us up so much to have a simpler company, to have a simpler business. We're not meeting once a month to plan out the next four weeks. I know right now what's launching in April 2022. So it just is so helpful to always be thinking, like, how can we make this simpler?

I'm obsessed with batching. Even the podcast today. I. We used to do it once a quarter. I would do 15 episodes in three days. Yeah, that's a lot. It was a little bunch. But then we would, like, release episodes six months after Covid started. And we were talking about COVID starting. We're like, this doesn't make any sense.

Oh, right. Yeah.

But even now, like, today, I'm doing four interviews, right? Yeah. There's so much magic that happens there when you're able to stick with one thing for a long time. Are you doing that with your podcast, are you going to batch produced?

Yeah, yeah, we are. I thought at first I would do it weekly, but then when I started looking at what all was involved and all the other things I have going on, we decided to record five at a time. And so we're going to do five in a day and do that like once every month or six weeks or so.

All right. We talked about batching, we talked about making tough decisions to focus. What else do you think world class entrepreneurs do that their less masterful counterparts don't?

You know, I'm just starting to kind of learn this other part of being an entrepreneur at a certain level of experience. I felt a couple of months ago as if I was ready for a change. I didn't know what that looked like, but I knew that Simplified had grown into so much more than just Emily Leigh. And I was kind of getting really involved with my work as an author and then this podcast thing. And so we promoted one of the women that I work with to chief operations operating officer. And she's been in the role now about a month or two and she runs Simplified. She runs the day to day and the planning of it. And it has freed me up to do the things that only I can do for the brand. And it was so scary and hard to say, okay, I am gonna hand the reins over. But she's, I mean, she's a rock star. She's amazing. But I think that people who are true masters of what they do, they know when it's time to empower others as well.

And they're good and disciplined at limiting themselves to only the activities that they alone.

Yes.

Can do.

Can do, right? Yep. Yeah.

Your name's on the business, your name's on the books.

Yeah.

Only you can do that, right?

Absolutely.

So everything else somebody else can handle. I love that. Hey, what is your. You get young kids like me. What does your day look like from the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed?

Oh, good question. So I have a 10 year old and then we have 6 year old twins. I wake up around 6 o' clock on a good day, but usually around hesitate.

About 6 o'.

Clock. 6:30. Well, that's a lie. I wake up at 6:30. I set my alarm for 6 o', clock, but by the time I press snooze a few times, I'm out by 6:30 I will get ready. And then the kids are up at 7 and I get them fed. My husband takes them to school. School, now that they are back in school, in person, thank goodness. And I will work well. Actually, when they leave, I will work out for a little while. I think that that is just so important for my mental health. Gives me energy to do all the things I have to do. So I'll work out for like 30 minutes, get ready, and be at my desk by about 8:30 or 9. And then I work pretty steadily all the way until about 2 o', clock, and then I have to go pick up my kids from school. After that, they come home and I may answer an email here or there, but I try not to work. I try to switch it off. That is a luxury that has only come with time because there are many years of working in the middle of the night and having little babies at home and, you know, looking completely different. But now that they're in school, I think things are a little more streamlined.

Yeah, it's good for people to hear that. That comes in seasons. It comes after you put in the work, right?

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. In the beginning, I mean, when I was first starting the business and I was working at a corporate job an hour away, I would stay awake until 2 or 3am, go to sleep, wake up at 6, go to work, come back and just keep working. I mean, I was absolute workhorse. But it is. It's seasonal.

Yeah. By the way, am I remembering this right? That corporate job, that was when you were here in my hometown of Tampa, right?

Oh, yes. Are you. How did I not know this?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you were in Tampa for years, right?

I was. I was there 10 years. And I. The job that I had, I was working at USF in their Women in Leadership and Philanthropy program.

Interesting. I didn't know. Yeah, that was gonna be my question of where in tip you work. Did you like working at usf?

I did. I really did. But I also. I was. I worked with women who were just doing so many amazing things in the community, and they were just really, like, making stuff happen. And I was like, I don't want to sit in this chair anymore.

Yeah, I totally get that. All right. You talked about your daily routine. What are some of your regular spiritual disciplines. What does that look like for you?

That also, I think, has changed season to season. I think now I'm able to be a little bit more disciplined about it. I like to have a few minutes in the morning to just have some quiet time. Some friends of mine and I locally started a very tiny little Bible study. We meet on Friends Fridays at my house and have coffee. And right now we're talking through the Book of John, but it. It's changed over the years. But I think making time for yourself, for your spiritual wellness, your mental health, that has been something that's been really important to me over the last couple of years.

I'm curious if you see the work that you and your team are doing at Simplified, connecting to the Lord's will in the world and the work that he wants to see accomplished in the world. Do you see those things intersecting at all?

Yeah, wholeheartedly at Simplified. I think that the work that we do, I think that it really. I hope that it really empowers women to be their very best and to be able to serve in such important ways and not just in big ways in the community and that sort of thing, which is very important. But I think there's a lot of magic that happens inside a home, no matter what size your family is or what it looks like. I think that there's magic inside the four walls of our homes. We've all seen that this past year when we've been kind of confined to them. I think that what Simplified does is empowers women in that space really well. And I think that impacts not just the women themselves, but their families and children also.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we talk a lot in this podcast about being exceptional at work. I've written about this a lot before. We're also called to be excellent fathers and mothers and husbands and wives. Right. We're to do all things for the glory of God, not just work. Right. I'm curious if you've ever reflected on what aspects of God's character you reflect through your work. Right. Like what are those qualities of God that you. You see in yourself as you go to work every day?

That is a good question. I think that I've been told before that I have a childlike faith, and I often. So that comes from me not being raised in the church. I was raised by a very faithful family. My grandmother taught me God and really influenced my faith a lot. But it wasn't until I was older that I learned a lot of the Bible. And so I've been told before that I have a childlike faith. And I think that little, maybe mustard seed, sometimes perspective is what I bring to it. I think that especially in my writing, I don't think that I, or I often wonder if I fit in the same category as other Christian writers because I'm not often able to speak as eloquently as they are and reference scripture as eloquently as they Are. But I do come at my faith from a learning perspective, from a constantly growing perspective, and from what I've heard, which is like, the hugest compliment ever, is that people find that very inviting. They feel like they have a seat at the table and part of the conversation, and that's really, really important to me.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think you're writing too. I loved Grace, not Perfection, which was cool. Thank you. One, two, three. Yeah, I loved it. And I loved it because I thought it was just very gospel centric. Very grace centric. Right. It's something we talk a lot about. The podcast is that while I do believe there's a biblical mandate for the pursuit of excellent work, there's no biblical mandate for the attainment of that, for any sort of success or level of subjective excellence or results or whatever. Yeah. The gospel ensures that we're secure regardless of what we do at work. So I'm curious, like, how you manage that tension between the pursuit of wanting to do great work, but also giving yourself grace along the way.

You know, I think I've messed up enough to just feel really comfortable in it, honestly. It's kind of like, you know, starting this podcast of mine. I've been doing work at Simplified for so long that we've just been on this great trajectory and learning how to. How to do a new craft. It's been a little humbling. It's just different. It's just. It's just different. And so, I don't know, I feel like that part just comes kind of natural to me. I've dealt with perfectionism a lot in my life, and it's something I've worked a lot on. So, yeah, I think it's just a daily give and take.

Yeah. You're releasing this new podcast. You're also releasing this new book called Growing boldly. What's the 32nd overview of that new book?

Yeah. Oh, my goodness. It's Bright Yellow number one.

I saw it. I love it. Yeah.

I just had this fire in me. Early 2020 from yellow. I see the world in colors. I just had this fire in me that was so, so fired up about entrepreneurialism. And how many books are out there telling you to be a girl boss or a boss babe or hustle till it hurts or blah, blah, blah. And those books are great, but I wanted a book that was going to honor the journey and honor the rest and honor the sacrifice and, like, the whole picture. And I wanted it to be built around a framework that was extremely actionable, that didn't just inspire you with stories from my own journey and the journeys of a lot of other women who've gone up against crazy hard things. But like, at the end of the day gave you tactics for how to actually go out and dare to build a life you love.

And I love the bold theme. I've been writing a lot about this lately. We, as Christ followers, we should be the boldest people on the planet. We have nothing to lose because at the end of the day, we have Christ. Right. That should lead us to take big swings. Right? So I love that you're writing about that. You read a ton. You read a hundred books last year, which is just silly. I'm curious which books you recommend or gift most frequently to others.

Okay. I just finished a book yesterday and I cannot stop thinking about it. It was called the Four Winds. It's by Kristin Hannah. And I am very impacted by fiction books, also nonfiction, but I love fiction books.

How are you impacted by fiction? I'm interested in that.

So I was an English major. After my existential life crisis of choosing a major, I decided I would not choose a career at that time. I would choose to study what my heart felt called to. I think the Holy Spirit was nudging me in a direction. And so I chose creative writing and studying literature and books. It just, it was so fun and exciting and I. I learned the beauty of like these parallels that I would find between characters and the symbolism of different things. I think that those kinds of messages just speak to me in such a concrete way. I love good fiction. And the Four Winds was just. It's actually a fictional story about a woman making her way to California from Texas during the great Dust bowl situation of the 19, very early 1900s. And it's just a fantastic story about strength and grit and grace and love. And it's just wonderful.

My wife just finished this like five days ago.

Oh, is she just talking about it non stop?

Yeah, she's talking about it nonsense too. So I feel like I've read the whole book, which is good because I don't read fiction. So I'm like, oh, great. Like I know the Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. Now, anything else, especially nonfiction or fiction that you love to give out?

Definitely essentialism by Greg McKeown. I'm sure you've heard that one. It's just so good. Atomic Habits by James Clear. Those two are so phenomenal. And then one came out today by Cal Newport.

Yeah, I read it.

It's terrific. Email. Oh, did you read it?

I can't Wait, Cal's coming on the podcast? Yeah.

Get out. That's so awesome.

Yeah. So I think your episode's airing a couple weeks before his, which I didn't know Cal was a person of faith, so I was really excited that he agreed to come on. The new book is terrific. I love Cal Newport. I mean, Deep Work is up there as one of my all time favorites.

Yeah.

This new book, A World Without Email, is challenging. I'm not sure I agree with a hundred percent of it, but he's thought really deeply about this topic and I love it.

Makes you think. I just love it.

Yeah, it's great. It's like Cal at his best. All right, who would you most like to hear in this podcast? Somebody who's a Christ follower and is world class at what they do vocationally. Who do you want to hear talking about these questions?

Cal Newport.

Hey.

Yeah. Seriously, right?

What an answer.

Definitely. You know, I really enjoy Jen Hatmaker a lot. I look up to a lot of incredible women I feel like who've gone before me in the author world and with their ministries. Jenny Allen, I'm reading her book right now.

Get out of your head.

Yes, it's wonderful. Annie Downs is just a dear friend of mine, so, yeah, I can give you a whole list.

Those are good answers.

Yeah.

Good answers. All right. One piece of advice to leave this audience with across a bunch of different vocations. Some of them entrepreneurs, some of them writers, whatever. What they share is a passion for Jesus Christ and doing great work that serves people well. What do you want to leave them with?

I would say to remind yourself that you are absolutely worthy of a life that you love. No matter what that looks like, be it a career or a family, be ready to do the work. And also give yourself a chance to take a nap when necessary.

I love. I love that so much. That's a good note to end on. Hey, Emily, I want to commend you for the excellent work. I've always been so impressed by Simplified. Everything you guys put out is just stellar and quality. Thank you for revealing God's creative character in the world and just reminding us to do all of this work with grace. Hey, guys, the book is growing boldly. What's the name of the podcast? The Simplified Podcast.

You got it. The Simplified Podcast.

There you go. By the time we release this, that'll be out. So go subscribe to that and you can find emily@emilylay.com Emily, thanks for hanging out with us.

Thank you so much.

Hey, guys. I hope you loved that conversation. Hey, if you subscribed to Emily's podcast, the Simplified Podcast, while you're at it, subscribe to the Call to Mastery so you never miss an episode in the future. If you're already subscribed and you're loving the content, take 10 seconds right now. Go rate the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in to the Call to Mastery. I'll see you next week.