When Things Don't Work Out the Way You'd Hoped

Saying goodbye to a beautiful business I worked nearly four years to build.

Last week, I sold a business that meant a whole lot to me. And strangely, I’m still grieving about it, still feeling sad even though it’s been many months coming.

A lot of people know me from the work I’ve done in producing luxury events, or from the very successful destination weddings programs I’ve created and built in the Caribbean and Mexico, or even from my books about weddings and home entertaining. But this post is not about that.

I guess that last sentence is not entirely true, because it was as a result of the earlier success that I was able to start a passion project in a woefully overlooked area of our human experience, and to try to really transform a taboo topic—death and dying. You know, your basic end-of-life type stuff. I wanted to make it better, more modern, more personal than your average funeral home offerings.

Side note (I love a side note!): now that I live in France, whenever I try to explain to folks here those two aspects of my work life, I say that I went “de l’amour à la mort” (from love to death). The fact is, the two have quite a lot in common, but that’s another story.

I came to this idea via a personal experience. In 2015, my younger sister was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer, and we were all thrown into a tailspin. It was the first time the idea of mortality had really touched me, touched my family in my generation. I started to look for resources and respite, and I became obsessed with the idea of improving things.

Side note: my sister is cancer-free now after a long battle.

With a small team, I spent 2019 preparing to launch Farewelling, an online platform to bring end-of-life planning into the 21st century. We had a group of incredibly supportive and brilliant investors and advisors, and our mission was clear.

Even before we had a logo or a website, I created some fake ads as inspiration for the team to capture the modern spirit of the Farewelling brand

We launched in October of that year, and our launch party was an important milestone for me. I felt true pride, such excitement, such purpose. It was thrilling. It was the first time in years I had been so passionate about creating something. I wanted to take my talents and apply them to help the larger community, and to build a good business that would do good.

Scenes from the Farewelling launch party on Wall Street (in the offices of Dom & Tom), November 2019

This post is not about the journey of being a startup entrepreneur, nor of what it took to create a vision, to manifest an idea, to make it real and usable and (hopefully) useful. To make something beautiful and design-forward. To assemble a team and work with them every day, even during the pandemic, when we were just starting out. If anyone cares, I can talk about that later.

What this post is about is what it feels like to let go of an idea you have closely held and cherished. To hand over your beloved work to someone else. To realize that you have come to a certain ending, to your limits, to a point in your path that you cannot traverse. To an outcome you discover you cannot control.

And it’s actually worse than that. With this post I wanted to explore how it feels to fall short. How it burns to know that you had a great idea, that you gave it your all (in my case a full-time-plus commitment with no salary whatsoever) for more than three years because you believed in it so much, and that it still didn’t work out the way you’d hoped, the way you’d envisioned, the way you knew it could.

If you’re a person who identifies achieving goals with “winning,” this type of ending can easily feel like a failure. For me, it’s frustrating on multiple levels. First, although I had sincerely felt I could take Farewelling all the way to a place of great success, at a certain point I had to admit that that wasn’t going to happen. It wouldn’t be me. Selfishly, this realization hurt terribly. Even though seasoned CEOs and business rockstars told me hey, it’s not that simple, that the market, timing, and other factors are always in play, I still blamed myself.

Next, I felt such a profound sense of pride and responsibility that our investors had put their faith in me and the team we had assembled. I was motivated by their confidence to go nonstop, and I gave it my all, working remotely from my little Brooklyn apartment throughout the lockdowns of the pandemic, doing what felt like thousands of Zoom meetings to advance our cause.

Farewelling Command Central in my Fort Greene, Brooklyn studio

I was devastated in 2022 when it became clear that I had to let our investor family know we couldn’t continue, that we wouldn’t be the star in their portfolio they’d be able to brag about. Instead, we’d be a tax write-off. Not at all the same thing.

And finally, I felt so sad that we hadn’t been able to grow our community to the heights we’d predicted in the timeframe we’d given ourselves. We needed more runway, and we didn’t have it. I knew that in shutting down the platform, I’d be disappointing at least some of the nearly two million people we’d served. I had hoped to offer them so many more resources for navigating a difficult time and topic.

The crazy thing is, after much soul-searching and strategizing, we’d dissolved the corporation, and I’d made the decision to “turn off the lights” this summer, after letting our subscribers know months before. But in the days between my giving the order to deactivate the platform and the developers actually getting around to pulling the plug, I got an email.

It was an outreach message from someone who has a business that was featured in one of our memorial gift articles. They said in the email that they’d had success with that mention. They were wondering if we could find other ways to partner.

I felt bad but I said, “Look, sorry to tell you this, but Farewelling will be completely deactivated shortly.” Then jokingly I added, “so unless you’re interested in buying it...”

There are other details, but the long and the short of it is, they were interested in buying it, and we have just completed the sale over the last few weeks.

The wild range of emotions I’ve felt over these days (and am to some degree still feeling now) includes:

Gratitude that Farewelling will continue to have some kind of role in helping families at a difficult time, and that our work won’t just disappear into digital darkness. It will live on, at least for a time.

Admiration for the entrepreneur who recognized Farewelling’s potential and was eager to take it on. Their attitude of respect for what we had created and their vision for what the platform can become were a gift to me in a difficult time.

Reluctance at handing it all over. I’ve never transferred a digital platform and just the act of providing logins to all the varying aspects of the business along with trusting someone else to continue it…it’s a lot, and so I keep directing myself towards optimism.

Disappointment in myself for not being able to carry the business through another valley, for not being able to finance it alone when I couldn’t raise our third round of investment, for not being able to solve everything more quickly.

Side note of love: Monsieur B offered to invest in the company just months after we were married, and although I refused, I will never forget this act of kindness and respect.

Humility at having to sell the assets of my former creation for just enough to pay our final bills rather than hitting some number I had imagined. I was looking through my old journals from 2019 and found a list of “Things I’ll Do When I Sell Farewelling.” Scroll all the way down to read part of the list while I try not to cringe.

Sadness at letting go of something so beautiful, so powerful, so loved by so many, so loved by me.

Relief at knowing that letting go will clear the mental space I need to move forward. I feel physically lighter now.

So, yeah. This is not the outcome we wanted, nor the result I envisioned. But it is what it is, and that’s how business goes. I am so proud of our team, and I know we moved the needle forward.

We changed something, and that is worth the effort. People felt a connection with what we created. It helped them in one of the most difficult moments of their lives. Also, it was so incredibly fun and exciting working on something revolutionary.

Sure, we didn’t get to that J-curve of financial results that VC’s want to see before the express confidence in the business, but we actually helped families.

Now I hope that Farewelling will live on and continue to provide resources and guide people toward an end-of-life experience that is in line with their values, their preferences, and the things that have meaning for them.

Getting ready to interview the brilliant Sarah Cooper for Farewelling: The Podcast. You can still listen to episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

Because we should all be celebrating a beautiful life, beautifully.

As for me, the next chapter awaits…thanks so much for reading this personal story, and stay tuned, friends! This substack is a part of my new chapter, so if you feel like supporting me, please just share this or any of the other stories with someone who might enjoy them. It would mean a lot to me as I’d love to grow this community.

Have you ever had to say goodbye to something that didn’t turn out as you’d hoped? You can always write me an email or a question about your own letting go, or your next chapter at karen@karenbussen.com (I love to connect about creativity and transformation) or just leave a comment below.

The great Mo Rocca was a guest on the podcast too. We drank cocktails and talked about life, death, Tastycakes and his podcast, “Mobituaries,” which by the way is delightful.

FROM MY NOTEBOOK, A PARTIAL LIST:

“THINGS I’LL DO WHEN I SELL FAREWELLING” — 2019

Buy Mom a condo (maybe)

Buy my dream apartment

Take an extravagant journey

Buy a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat

Give a lot of money to great causes

Get more massages

Tesla? Vintage Jaguar?

Surprise people with thoughtful ideas

Definitely more massages