Greetings, colorful people!

As an entrepreneur who sells color and color solutions for a living, this coined self title of COLORPRENEUR is apropos, wouldn’t you agree?

As a prelude to today's topic of 7 colorful entrepreneurship lessons I’ve learned, let’s start from the beginning—my childhood. For as far back as my mind journeys, color has fascinated me. In kindergarten I’d spend more time mixing paint colors than I did creating art itself.

Coloring books and Crayola crayons were my favorite playthings, and I would practically memorize the names of each Crayola, experimenting with color combinations on the pages of said coloring books. My foray into entrepreneurship occurred at only six years of age, when I went door to door to sell my finished coloring pages to neighbors. Even then I understood that everyone should have a little bit of color in their lives! .

This obsession with color was further fueled by a book my father gave me as a child. Annie’s Rainbow by Ron Brooks was THE quintessential read of my younger years. The main character Annie is a little girl who goes in search of a rainbow she saw at a distance. Annie travels through a wooded area to finally arrive at a water fountain from where the light refracts and forms her beautiful rainbow above. Fascinating read for any child and well illustrated!

Color remains my obsession as an adult, and LFB Color’s mission is to educate and empower people and brands on the best use of color! Learning as much as I can about it has become a vocation, a true calling. Education and study are integral parts of the LFB Color business model, so every year we enroll in color coursework, study trends, and keep abreast of developments in the color specification world.

Becoming a mother in 2000 is what inspired me to give true entrepreneurship a try, as my goal was to raise the children at home while also gradually building a business around their schedules. What better way to build a business than around the one topic I enjoy most: that is, color!

Slowly but steadily LFB Color Consulting has grown into the established architectural color consulting firm it is today, based in Houston, Texas and serving residential and commercial clients worldwide.

Today I want to share from the heart 7 lessons I’ve learned on this long, winding, invigorating, magical journey as a colorpreneur.

1. It’s a roller coaster of mental ups and downs for years on end.

Entrepreneurship, especially of the creative variety where I sell the intangible that is color specification, has brought with it many ups and downs. Part of the challenge is educating the corporate and architectural communities on WHY color is so vital to their projects and success. Without color you HAVE no project!

Once the value of the work is conveyed, it then falls upon me to introduce LFB Color to the right clients and industry partners. Some seasons are more fruitful than others! It’s the nature of the business. Sometimes we are planting seeds through selective networking and meetings, and other times we are balancing workload, content creation and delivering color education.

2. Pivoting is a way of entrepreneurial life

I feel like an NBA all-star with all of the pivoting I’ve had to do as a colorpreneur. For years I worked in professional color analysis, teaching women and men what colors best complement their skin, hair and eyes for wardrobe, makeup and jewelry purposes. I had a years long stint creating on-air content as a “color expert” for TV programs, and then partnered with some department stores on fashion/color events.

I pivoted to this world of architectural color consulting, beginning with a strategic collaboration with a Benjamin Moore store franchisee—then the pandemic struck and business was annihilated for so many of us! The next monumental pivot was building my architectural and corporate color consulting from ground zero, and here we are in 2023 now working on both residential and commercial projects.

My advice: pivot, pivot again if need be, and be EXTREMELY open to new and distinct business directions!

3. Nothing—not even a pandemic—can stop us from entrepreneurship.

We entrepreneurs must have an unflappable belief in ourselves AND our business concept. There is a market for what LFB Color offers, I have proof of concept, and pandemics won’t discourage me from continuing to discover the plethora of ways my business can serve the community locally and worldwide.

Has it been a little unnerving at times? Well, of course, but this colorpreneurial life is the only one for me! Color is a happy business, friends.

4. Entrepreneurs carve out time daily to learn new business skills.

If you’re not learning a new skill or business practice, your entrepreneurial mind and concepts stagnate. A business is a type of living organism, in constant state of evolution and hopefully growth. The only ways to grow business are to educate yourself as an entrepreneur, explore new areas of industry opportunity, and let your clients’ feedback inform your future business decisions and offerings.

An example of this for LFB Color is our decision to expand our offerings from solely paint color specification to all colors, materials and finishes. Our clients began requesting color design assistance for everything from lighting and plumbing fixtures to wallpaper, tile and upholstery fabrics, so we expanded to offer all-encompassing color direction.

5. We creative entrepreneurs are zany—in the good way.

What can I tell you? We’re zany, but in the best possible way. We have to be a tad “off our rockers” to live day to day waking up and finding our own opportunities to earn a living. The weight of entrepreneurship falls upon our shoulders, and the pressure certainly mounts, but we’re wild dreamers who know it’s worth it to have businesses all our own—and freedom!

6. I only share my most ambitious, almost unfathomable goals and dreams for LFB Color Consulting with other entrepreneurs who’ve gained my trust.

I’ve learned to share my ideas and entrepreneurial vision with like-minded people only—period. We learn from each other, as well, and share business tips and lessons one entrepreneur to another.

7. The crossroads we all reach as entrepreneurs: Do we go back to corporate America or continue pioneering these unique paths for our companies?

Every single entrepreneur must regularly assess their business model for feasibility and profitability. This should be done quarterly if not monthly in my opinion, especially in the beginning. Are there some times when an entrepreneur should cut losses? Yes, there are such times, and most of us in the entrepreneurial world have had several business “learning experiences” before we stumble upon success and long-term profitability.

For LFB Color and my brand, it took a lot of analysis and soul searching to ultimately stay the course and work tirelessly to take this colorcentric business to new heights!

Thankfully, LFB Color Consulting is in growth mode now and very much adapting and pivoting as we need to! We hope you have enjoyed our thoughts today on entrepreneurship and its inherent challenges.

Please share with us any questions or comments YOU have about entrepreneurship and/or creative business. We’ve enjoyed this “heart to heart” discussion today and hope that it resonates on some level with you, our beloved color aficionados.

Until next time,

your color strategist Lauren B.