We have now officially been live for four whole months, and get this: Dan and Sammy are still on speaking terms! Did anyone (but family members) really think that we still would be talking to each other?
For those of you that didn’t know it, Sammy and I are brother and sister. Not only are Sammy and I siblings and business partners, but we are also (along with our older brother) best friends. In fact, even though I am a little more than three years older than Sammy, for the first time since we were little kids, at some recent meetings, we were mistaken for twins. While we are not twins, we are very similar and understand how we each think which is great (in some instances) but also means it’s incredibly easy to get under each other's skin, and get frustrated with one another.
During the first month that we were live, we argued a lot (about big things, and small things), which made it difficult to forget about Neon Bandits when we were together hanging outside of work (and for those of you that live in start-up world, you know that “work” is essentially anytime you are not sleeping). At family dinners, our parents often became referees for our arguments, texting conversations were all about socks and ideas. Friday afternoons, happy hour time, became war-room time—in more than one way.
While I can’t say that we have stopped yelling entirely, we quickly realized that while it is easy to yell at each other, ultimately it got and still gets us nowhere. While we thought we knew each other very well (heck we are siblings), we had not really worked this closely before. So now, we have tried our best to split up the workload so I have certain facets that I run, and Sammy has certain areas that she runs. Certainly, there is a lot of overlap (and still some toes stepped on) but we are making a concerted effort to divide and conquer.
Since we are able to work so closely together that people think that we’re twins, we are both excited about the future of the brand. We have been able to feed off one another and lay the foundation for a bright (no pun intended) future.