founder diaries: going live for the first time (and surviving it)
august 2025. blissli goes live.
the website is published. the products are listed. the first social post is scheduled. everything that has been theoretical and private for months is suddenly visible, real and available to be judged by anyone on the internet.
here is what i remember about it.
the lead-up
the week before launch was the most exhausting week of the whole process. not because there was so much to do, though there was, but because of the specific mental state you enter when something you've built is about to become public.
i checked the website more times than i care to admit. not for anything specific. just to check. to make sure it was still there and still looked right and no one had done anything to it.
there is a particular kind of anxiety that comes from knowing that in a matter of days, real people (not your friends, not your family) will look at the thing you made and decide if they want to spend money on it. it is simultaneously very exciting and very uncomfortable and i think probably unavoidable.
the day itself
the honest answer is: the morning of launch was quieter than i expected.
the website went live without drama. the social post went out. i sent an email to the small list of people who had signed up in the weeks before. and then i waited.
the first order came from someone i didn't know. that sounds like a small thing but it wasn't. a real person, with no reason to be kind to me about it, looked at the website and decided to spend their own money on a candle. that felt significant in a way that's hard to articulate.
what i expected vs what happened
i expected to feel exhilarated. i felt more relieved. the thing exists. it's real. it's out there.
i expected the website to immediately have loads of traffic. it didn't. this is normal and i knew it intellectually, but knowing something and feeling it are different things. the first few days of a brand new online shop are humbling. the work of building an audience was only just starting.
i expected selling to be harder than making. it is. the candles themselves i know how to do, the formula, the pour temperature, the wick size, the burn testing. building a business around them is a completely different kind of work.
what no one really tells you
there's a specific transition that happens when your business goes live. before that point, you're a person who is going to launch a candle brand. after that point, you're a person who has launched a candle brand and is figuring it out day by day.
the second one is much better. the uncertainty is the same but the relationship to it changes. before launch, uncertainty feels like risk. after launch, it feels more like the texture of the thing, just part of how this works.
i also wasn't prepared for how much i'd learn from the early orders. the customers who ordered in the first few weeks gave me feedback, either directly or through what they chose, that shaped what happened next. early customers are genuinely valuable. they're not just sales. they're information.
looking back on it
going live felt like a very big deal in the lead-up and felt surprisingly ordinary on the day itself. and then, in retrospect, it feels like exactly as big a deal as it was.
blissli is a real thing now. it has customers and a collection and a story that's still being written. that all started in august 2025 when i published a website and hoped for the best.
if you're about to launch something: do it. the waiting doesn't get easier.
love, amy.