By Best Shift Hockey | A Decade of Doing It Anyway
Ten years ago, I was a healthcare professional with two little kids, a basement full of t-shirts, and the kind of confidence that can only come from not yet knowing what you don't know. I thought I was starting a hockey clothing company. I had no idea I was actually starting the most transformative decade of my entire life.
Best Shift Hockey turns ten this year. And while I'll be the first to tell you that success is something I'm still defining — still reaching for, still reshaping as I go — I have learned some things. Countless things, actually. The kind of things that cost you sleep and money and sometimes your entire sense of self before they finally click into place.
So here they are. Ten lessons from ten years. Take what resonates. Leave what doesn't. That's actually lesson six — you'll see.
1. There Is Enough Room for Everyone to Be Successful
I'm leading with this one because I believed it from the beginning, but now I've proved it to myself. Our society is so wrapped up in competition and the idea that "if you're not first, you're last". Everyone is out there trying to beat everyone. I'm just trying to be happy - and I hope everyone else is too. Someone else's win is not your loss. It's not. The hockey community is enormous and growing every single year, and there is more than enough room for every brand, every business, every idea that genuinely serves it. When you operate from abundance instead of scarcity, everything changes. Collaborate. Celebrate others. Root for the table to get bigger instead of guarding your seat at it.
2. You Don't Know What You Don't Know — And It's an Overwhelming Amount
When I started Best Shift Hockey, I did not know how to manufacture a product. I did not know how to build a website. I did not know how printing worked, how distribution worked, how to manage a profit and loss sheet, how to work QuickBooks, or the best places to invest in the business to create the most growth. I knew I had a good idea and I knew the market gap was real. That was it. Everything else was learned the hard way, on the job, often after already making the mistake. Give yourself grace for what you don't know yet. You will learn it.
3. You Really Do Have to Spend Money to Make Money
Stupid, dummy dumb dumb cliché. It's also just true. Inventory costs money. Good design costs money. Building a website that actually works costs money, marketing costs soooo much moneyyy. The bootstrapping phase is real and necessary and character-building, but at some point you have to invest in your business if you want it to grow. Which brings me directly to —
4. Don't Overspend on Things That Won't Move the Needle. And Don't Panic If You Do.
There were times when I sat at my kitchen table and had to decide which bill I was going to pay and which one was going to sit in the pile and hope I could somehow cover it next week. Or whenever. Those moments were real, and they were hard, and they tested me in ways I wasn't fully prepared for.
I was healing from an especially awful divorce during some of the earliest years of building this company. I was gradually emptying my 401k to provide for my kids and myself. And eventually came the day when that safety net account was completely, definitively empty. That was my all-in moment. Not by choice — by necessity. Things changed because they had to.
If I had thrown in the towel any of the times it crossed my mind, I wouldn't be sitting here writing about ten lessons from the last ten years. So, spend - but try to do it wisely. Panic productively. And keep going.
5. Figure Out Who You Are Along the Way
Not just as a business owner. As a whole, entire, spiritual being in a human body. It's not woo-woo - and don't ever try to convince me that it is, and I'm telling you — it matters. Building a business strips you down in ways that nothing else quite does. It shows you what you're made of, what you actually value, what you'll fight for, and what you need to let go of. I am a completely different person than I was in 2016, and a meaningful part of that is because running Best Shift Hockey forced me to figure out who I actually was - and who I wasn't. Do the inner work alongside the business work. Trust me on this one.
6. Do It Your Own Way
Read the books. Listen to the podcasts. Hire the coaches. Get the advice — all of it. And then take what resonates and leave what doesn't align with who you are and where you're going. No two entrepreneurial journeys are the same, and you are allowed to make yours your own. The frameworks and formulas and five-step plans are tools, not mandates. You're building something that only you could build. Build it how you want to.
7. Find Your Village
Banks. Accountants. Employees — you'll know when the time is right, and it will likely be later than you think you need them and earlier than you feel ready. Find community small business programs, mentors, and other founders who get it. Find the help. Ask for it. Accept it. Because here's what I know: the moment you stop trying to white-knuckle your way through every single thing alone is the moment you start to feel like you might actually make it. You need a village. There is no version of sustained success that happens in complete isolation.
8. Fail Forward
You are going to get things wrong. You are going to look back on the way you did something in year two and physically wince at the inefficiency of it. You are going to hire people you shouldn't have, sign contracts you shouldn't have, and invest in things that don't pan out the way you planned. That is not failure. That is the process. Fail forward. Learn the lesson, adjust the course, and keep moving. Eventually — and I promise this is true — it stops being scary and starts just being part of how you work. The stumbles are how you get better. Let them teach you.
9. Rest. Please, Please, Please Rest.
I may, or may not, have learned this one the really hard way.
Q4 is the Super Bowl [or Stanley Cup, if you will] of product-based small business. It is everything you already overextend yourself on during the rest of the year, multiplied by one thousand — and the entire success of your business basically depends on it going well. Holiday shoppers are strrrressed. And sometimes — not always, but sometimes — that stress comes out - well, mean. Sometimes people type things into a customer service chat that they would never say to another human face to face, because they think that they are typing to a chat bot or a call center.
But it's not a bot. It's you. Maybe the message is coming directly to your cell phone while you're 1500 miles away from home having dinner with your extended family to remember the one year passing of your dad 2 days before Christmas. Just maybe.
But I digress. Just know that small business owners are also parents, and children, and real feeling humans, and sometimes the stress of carrying [most of] it squarely on your shoulders can bring you a little too close to teetering on the razor sharp edge of a shmervous shreakdown.
I am fine now, thanks for asking. (I went back to #7 and found helpers)
Rest is not a luxury. It is necessary. Schedule it like it matters, because it does.
10. Look at What You've Done
Stop. Right now, wherever you are in your journey — stop and look back. Look at what you built from nothing. Look at the customers you've served, the problems you've solved, the version of yourself you've become in the process.
YOU DID THAT.
When I started Best Shift Hockey, I was selling t-shirts out of my basement. Today we have customers in all 50 states, a hockey training facility in Minnesota, travel camps and clinics around the world, and The Bandits — our travel roller hockey program that launched in 2025 and has already claimed six national championships in its first year alone.
And somewhere along the way, talking to other women at trade shows and expos — women who heard my story and felt something connect — I found my purpose beyond the business. I now run my own consulting practice working with women in the early stages of building their own companies. And I use my experiences as a solo traveler around the world as a tool to help other women find their independence, autonomy, and confidence. A hockey clothing company started in a male-dominated industry led me directly to my community, and to myself.
None of that was in the original plan. All of it matters more than the plan ever could have.
So yes. Look back. Reflect. Celebrate. And then turn around and keep going — because if the last ten years have taught me anything, it's that the next ten are going to be even better.
Best Shift Hockey is a women-owned hockey lifestyle brand founded in 2016. Shop the collection, learn about our training programs, and follow along at bestshifthockey.com.
Keywords: hockey mom entrepreneur lessons, women-owned small business advice, starting a hockey clothing company, best shift hockey story, female entrepreneur hockey, small business lessons learned, hockey family brand, women in business hockey