I want to tell you about the morning I found out I was pregnant in a hotel room in Arizona, about two hours before I walked on stage in front of hundreds of people. That is just one of the pinch-me moments I'm sharing today.
Ten years ago this month, I started this business as a brand-new newlywed with a graphic design degree, new to Nashville, Tennessee, and absolutely no idea what I was doing. And now, 10 years later, I want to take you on a little trip down memory lane through some of my biggest pinch-me moments from this decade. This is so fun for me personally to reminisce on and I think there are lots of lessons for you in what I'm sharing too.
So if you're new here, I'm Elizabeth McCravy. I've gone from doing custom client work, to selling mugs on Etsy, to website templates and online courses. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, this podcast, which now has 333 episodes, happened too. I'm a mom to three kids four and under, a wife to my husband Adam (who you'll hear about in some of these stories), and a Christian who loves to talk about faith, which actually comes up in one of the moments I'm sharing today.
These are all moments I'll never forget. Some of them I've never talked about publicly. Some of them, if you're a longtime listener, you may have heard me mention (or even witnessed happening). And some of them still make me emotional. At least one of them involves Sara Blakely.
I have 14 moments to share, in no particular order. I'm definitely forgetting some, but these are the 14 that came to mind when I thought about pinch-me moments (things I'll never forget from my business journey so far). Let's get into it.
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So like I said, these are 14 pinch-me moments from the last decade in business. To define "pinch-me," these are visceral moments that happened, things I'll just never forget. Obviously, things like starting my template shop, starting this podcast, and various retreats and events I've attended are all amazing milestones.
But these are different. These are the moments that stopped me in my tracks. And the last one I'm going to share is something I'm still pinching myself over, literally today as I'm recording this.
Pinch-Me Moment #1: The first time I made a template sale while I was sleeping.
This was many years ago, 2018, so about seven years ago now. Pretty quickly after launching my template shop, it was my birthday weekend and my husband Adam and I were in Atlanta visiting his family. I still remember waking up in my in-laws' guest room and looking at my phone and seeing a text notification. Back then, I had set up sales notifications via text through Zapier every time someone bought from me, I'd get a text. (Now I get a Slack push notification, but back then it was a text.)
So I wake up, look at my phone, and someone in Hawaii had bought a template while I was sleeping. Her name is Sloan and I still remember that without even looking back at old emails. She's bought more templates since then, she's been a longtime affiliate and customer, and she may even be listening to this episode. Hi Sloan, if you are!
I just remember thinking, Oh my gosh, this is insane. I didn't know this person. I had never talked to her before. But I had made money while I was sleeping. It truly is the coolest, most surreal feeling (and what a sweet little birthday gift too).
Read more: 3 Things to Do Before You Buy a Showit Website Template
Pinch-Me Moment #2: Finding out I was pregnant with my daughter Sofia at the Showit Spark Conference.
In November 2024, I spoke at Showit Spark Conference for designers in Arizona. You're actually going to hear about that event again in a moment, because it was truly a highlight of my entire career. There were so many sweet moments from that conference.
But the morning I was going to speak, I woke up really early because of the time change and had a lot of time to kill before the first session (and even more time before my turn to present). I got tired of practicing my presentation, so I took a pregnancy test. I know. So random.
The first time I shared this story on the podcast, people were like, "Wait, why did you have a pregnancy test with you? Did you go to CVS?" No, I actually had two pregnancy tests that had been in my toiletry bag for a while. I hadn't intentionally packed them, they'd just been in there. I had a feeling. I wasn't expecting to be pregnant, but something felt off, and I was kind of bored, so I took one on a whim. And it was positive.
I just about lost my mind, with excitement, but also, I'll be honest, with stress. Because Ethan, my second, was only eight months old at the time. It was only my second work trip away from him, ever. I still felt very much postpartum from my C-section with him, and I could not believe I was already pregnant again.
So I compartmentalized a lot that day and went on to give my presentation which in itself was a pinch-me moment. Presenting on affiliate marketing to all these incredible Showit designers, some of my favorite people. I texted two girlfriends after I found out, but I wanted to wait to tell Adam in person when I got home.
There was just something so special about finding out in that place, with those people, and then walking onto a stage to teach knowing that my third baby, and probably my last, was already with me. And then later finding out she was a girl. It was surreal.
Now Sofia is eight months old. She's my girl, my home birth baby, my VBAC baby — a home birth after a C-section. Every time I've found out I was pregnant, it's been so special and memorable. But that trip, tied both to such a highlight in my business and to finding out about my last baby, my daughter… it was just everything.
Pinch-Me Moment #3: Having podcast listeners and course students come to faith, or come back to faith, through this show.
I said these are in no particular order, and they are. But if there were a number one, this might be it.
I'm not a ministry. I'm not a minister. I run a business. I don't even sell faith-related products. I sell courses and templates and I teach business.
But over the years, I've used this podcast platform to talk about my faith in God. It felt very natural, and it felt like what God was calling me to do (even knowing it had nothing to do with what I sell, even knowing not everyone who follows me wants to hear that kind of content, and even knowing I risked diluting my business content by going there). I decided to do it anyway.
And God has used that in such special ways. When I look back at 10 years, I think if nothing else good ever came from this business, the eternal weight of specific people coming to know Jesus through this content would be worth it. That alone would be enough.
Over the years, I've had many people tell me this podcast made them curious about faith. Some became Christians. Some reclaimed a faith they had walked away from. Some still aren't Christians, but they see believers differently than they did before. And I had a situation last year, and she may be listening to this, where I got to have an almost two-hour phone call with someone, answering her questions about God, talking about faith, and praying with her. What a gift and what a privilege. And that never would have happened without my business, because we connected through her being a student and a podcast listener.
You who have had that experience who have messaged me, emailed me, had phone calls or long DM conversations with me… you know who you are. I want you to know that those conversations are meaningful to me in ways I will never be able to put into words. I love that God used me and this podcast to reach you. That is a blessing in my life.
And if you're someone listening who feels God calling you to use your platform, your business, even though it's not a ministry, to share your faith: do it. You don't know who God is trying to reach through you. He may want to use your business in that way too, in addition to all the other ways he'll use it. That is a huge, huge highlight.
Read more: 4 Ways to Bring God into Your Business as a Christian Business Owner
Pinch-Me Moment #4: The Breakthrough Brand meetup I hosted at Spark Conference.
You're going to notice a trend… Showit comes up a lot in these highlights. Showit, the website builder my templates are built for, has been a massive part of my business over these 10 years. The people, the platform, the events they've put on… all of it.
So at that same Spark Conference where I found out I was pregnant with Sofia and where I spoke on affiliate marketing, I also hosted a meetup for course students and podcast listeners. Many of you listening may have been there. It was casual, just during the lunch break, at a restaurant and brewery nearby. But it was truly one of the highlights of my entire career.
Sometimes the things that feel hard to pull off, things that are really just you, talking to people, turn out to be the highlight of your whole career so far. Meeting so many of you in real life, people I've known online, been on coaching calls with, seen build websites with my templates and hugging you in person genuinely filled up my soul.
I record this podcast alone in my office. My coaching calls happen through a screen. So getting to actually be in person together, at an event like Spark, with a room full of people who found me online made everything feel real in a way that's hard to describe. It's the only time I've ever hosted a meetup like that in my business. It was really, really special.
Pinch-Me Moment #5: Sara Blakely posting a photo with one of my coffee mugs.
This was actually a pinch-me moment that happened multiple times, because she kept reposting the photos.
Sara Blakely is the founder of Spanx — billionaire, entrepreneur, mom, wife to Jesse Itzler. An incredible person. If you don't know who she is, look her up. She does a series on Instagram called Mugshot Monday, where she posts a photo with a mug featuring a fun, funny, or inspirational quote, usually with a caption to go along with it.
Back when I had my Etsy shop — I don't currently operate it, it's on pause because it stopped making sense at this stage of my business, but at the time, maybe 2019 or 2020, I had an active shop selling mostly coffee mugs with fun quotes that I designed as a graphic designer. They were dropshipped.
Someone who worked at Spanx bought one of my mugs as a gift for Sara. I knew someone at Spanx had placed an order because I remember entering the shipping address — Spanx headquarters, Atlanta, Georgia.
But I had no idea it was a gift for Sara Blakely herself until it showed up on my Instagram feed and I was tagged in her post.
She had a beautifully written caption about her experience getting married later in life after building her company, and I loved what she shared. I also got to exchange a few messages with Sara on Instagram because of it, which, in itself, was very much a pinch-me moment.
She tagged me in the post, which was so generous. She both tagged my account and wrote in the caption: mug from Elizabeth McCravy. And I got so many sales every time she posted (honestly an unmanageable amount for a little Etsy shop). I remember thinking the first time it happened: my tiny side hustle is not set up infrastructure-wise for this many people buying the same coffee mug all at once. I also gained a lot of new followers, all women interested in business, which felt so fun and relevant.
And beyond the sales and the followers, there was just something really special about seeing her holding something I had dreamed up, designed, and created myself. Big pinch-me moment.
And like I said, it happened four or five times because she kept reposting it, and every time she did, I'd get that big influx of sales and that sweet tag showing up in my feed all over again.
Read more: 3 Lessons I Learned From My Etsy Shop Side Hustle
Pinch-Me Moment #6: Meeting the CEO of Showit the first time and winning Showit Designer of the Year.
This one feels a little vulnerable and also kind of funny to share. Showit comes up again… I told you we'd keep hearing about them.
In 2019, I went to my first Showit event ever. Back then, Showit hosted a conference called United, and it was truly one of the best events of my life. At one of the evening parties, I think it was after the first day, I worked up the nerve to go introduce myself to Todd, the CEO of Showit. I wasn't expecting him to just be there, casually hanging out with everyone. I had pictured him being more off to the side somewhere, but he was just out among all the photographers and designers, fully present and accessible.
So I walked up, introduced myself very nervously, I had told myself, I have to make sure I meet him at this event. And before I could even finish introducing myself, he already knew who I was. He told me he was excited to meet me and knew I was one of their Showit designers. It was such a cool, unexpected moment.
Now, having known Todd for years and been around him many times, on Showit trips, at their headquarters, even beating him in a game of Settlers of Catan on the trip right before I found out I was pregnant with Sofia, I can say he is just so, so good at what he does.
From that very first interaction, I noticed: he runs things differently than I would expect from the CEO of a software company. And that's because he genuinely does run his business differently. He's deeply people-focused and community-focused. Even though my business looks nothing like Showit, I've learned so much from watching how he leads, and from the things he's taught at the DXP designer experience events over the years.
But that first meeting, and the surprise of him already knowing who I was, that was really, really special.
And at that same United conference, I also found out I had won Showit Designer of the Year. I didn't even know that award existed. I showed up to my very first Showit event with no idea what to expect and walked away with that. Really, really cool.
If you're a designer and you've never been to Spark or any other Showit event, I would highly recommend it. Showit events have been a consistent highlight of my business, and that first one set the tone for all of them.
Pinch-Me Moment #7: Speaking at my college.
Ever since I started my business, it was a dream of mine to speak at my college or high school. Not because I went to some fancy school where getting invited back is a big deal (it was not Harvard). I went to a very normal high school and college. But I wanted to be the voice I wish I had heard when I was that age (someone talking about careers in design, creativity, and entrepreneurship).
I still remember, as a senior in high school, my guidance counselor trying to push me toward nursing as my college major, for the sake of stability. Creative fields, let alone entrepreneurial ones, just weren't really represented or talked about where I grew up.
So in 2019, and I'm realizing I have a lot of highlights from that era, it really was a sweet few years in business. One of my favorite college professors ever asked me to come back and speak at an event they were hosting.
It was kind of a job fair format, with other graduates speaking, some entrepreneurs and some who had gone into design and media careers, all sharing: here's what you can actually do after you graduate.
I said absolutely yes. I worked really hard on my presentation, put together a PowerPoint, did a Q&A after. It was just some random stadium-style classroom at the school. I got to hang out with a lot of students in my former department afterward, who made me feel both old and young at the same time.
Both of my parents came to watch, along with my husband Adam. And that turned out to be really significant. It was the only time either of them got to hear me speak at an event. My dad passed away the year after that. So the fact that he got to hear me talk about my business journey in person, before he passed, means a lot to me. It was just really fun and full-circle in a way that's hard to put into words, getting to stand up and say, hey, you have another option. You don't have to go work a nine-to-five. You can build your own thing. Here's what that can look like.
Pinch-Me Moment #8: The Showit trip to Cabo, Mexico.
Continuing the Showit trend, in early 2020, right before the pandemic hit, I got to go to Cabo, Mexico with some of the top Showit designers and members of the Showit team. It had a brand trip feel, and they were actually testing out the concept for what is now DXP, Designer Experience, which is now hosted at Showit headquarters in Arizona.
It was just so much fun. I made friendships with designers I genuinely look up to and admire. I learned things that helped grow my business — both through the structured sessions Showit put together and through conversations by the pool, drinks in hand, just talking shop: here's what's working, here's what's not, here's what my last launch looked like, here's what hiring was like for me. We went on a boat excursion, filmed content for Showit, brainstormed ideas with their team. It was a really, really memorable experience.
And since then, I've been on probably four or five DXP trips in Arizona with the Showit team, all of which have been highlights in their own right. Getting to go on a trip like that as a business owner, and getting to be around so many talented designers, swapping ideas and just enjoying each other's company, have been really, really fun.
Pinch-Me Moment #9: The craziest day of my entire business.
This one might actually be the wildest day of my entire business, ever.
My course Booked Out Designer, the one I mentioned I have a coaching call with students for later today, was originally launched as a beta offer. Meaning: I hadn't made the full course yet. I was going to sell it at a discount to a limited number of students and build it out as we went, with a promised completion date. The pitch was essentially: here's one module, the rest is coming by this date, and you'll get to help shape it along the way.
I had done solid promotion leading up to the launch. I opened the doors for the beta with 30 spots, thinking I had a full week to fill them at a discounted rate. I had a whole launch plan: podcast episodes, Instagram posts, emails, all of it mapped out for the week.
I didn't use any of it. Because it sold out in one hour.
Actually, it went over 30 spots because I couldn't turn the checkout off fast enough. I ended up with 39 students. And most of those 30 spots? Filled in the first 10 minutes.
I did eventually air a full episode about it, episode 114 of this podcast, the behind-the-scenes of my multiple five-figure beta launch. I'll link to it in the show notes.
But to share the blunt numbers now: that day, I made $39,000. All cash, no payment plans. $39,000 in one hour.
No ad costs involved. I didn't spend $20,000 on ads to make $39,000. It was just $39,000 in, all fulfilled, no payment plans. Literally insane. I had never experienced anything like it in my life. And that amount was just slightly less than my entire first-year salary as a designer.
It felt unreal that an hour passed and I had earned what would have taken me a full year at my first job.
Now, I want to be clear, I had to actually make the course after that. And that was many, many hours of work. I'm not saying I did one thing in an hour and made $40,000. It was a heavily promoted course that people genuinely wanted and were excited about, and a lot of work happened both before and after that day. But the day itself? Absolutely unreal.
And I was also newly pregnant at the time (about 12 weeks along) with my first baby, Colin. I had actually been waiting until after the launch to share the pregnancy on Instagram.
So that night, I went out to dinner with Adam to celebrate at our favorite casual Mexican restaurant. Cheese dip, enchiladas, chips, a glass of water — I don't think I even got a mocktail. And I just remember sitting there feeling so excited and grateful and honestly just shook. Like, I cannot believe that just happened. What is life?
So many of those 39 students I still keep in touch with. They've gotten huge wins from Booked Out Designer. Many of them have been guests on this podcast and are running incredibly successful businesses. A really, really awesome moment and probably the craziest single day of my business, ever.
Pinch-Me Moment #10: Meeting listeners, students, and customers randomly in real life.
This one is a collection of moments rather than a single event, but it belongs on the list. Meeting people in person who listen to this podcast, who are students, or who have bought templates, not at a conference where you might expect it, but just out in the world.
At a conference, you're prepared for it. But when you're at lunch with your family, or at the zoo, or at church, or at a baby shower, and someone says, "Hey, I listen to your podcast" or "I'm a Booked Out Designer student, we were on a call together last week," that's something else entirely.
I had one instance at a party where someone said my voice sounded familiar, but she'd never listened to my podcast. We couldn't figure it out and then realized she had been listening to me on someone else's podcast on the drive to that very party. Just wild.
Last summer at the zoo, a listener came up and introduced herself. It happens around Nashville too, at places I frequent.
With podcasting specifically, it can be hard to feel connected to your audience. I don't know who's listening in their AirPods right now, or playing this in their kitchen, or hearing it in their car. So when someone comes up and says, "I've been listening for years" or "that episode really meant something to me," It makes the work feel significant in a way that's hard to describe.
Pinch-Me Moment #11: Taking real maternity leaves, three times, as an entrepreneur.
This one actually encompasses three separate moments, but I'm grouping them together. In 10 years of business, I've had three babies and three maternity leaves. And I'm genuinely, deeply grateful for that.
In America, it's extremely common for women to receive just six to twelve weeks of maternity leave, and for men to receive nothing (or maybe one to two weeks). That's a whole other conversation, and one I have a lot of feelings about. I truly hope we see a shift toward valuing paid parental leave beyond 12 weeks in this country.
But as a business owner, it can actually go either way. Sometimes owning your own business means more flexibility. But often, it means no one is paying you while you're away, and there's no employer covering your leave so taking time off can actually be harder, not easier.
All of that being true, I'm just so grateful I've been able to take meaningful time off with all three of my babies.
Every maternity leave, I've done some work, like the time Black Friday fell during my leave with Colin and I ran that sale before going back to rest, but it's fundamentally different from leaving your newborn at daycare and walking into an office at six weeks postpartum.
Even now, Sofia is eight months old and I still feel like I'm easing back in. She doesn't take a bottle and is exclusively nursing, which means I'm with her the majority of the time… and I want to be. I feel really grateful to this business for making that possible.
Pinch-Me Moment #12: Starting a real estate business with money from this business.
Some of you longtime listeners may already know this, I've done about four episodes on real estate investing on this podcast:
Episodes 134-136:
Episode 197
Episode 198
5 Properties Later… What Wish I Knew Then That I Know Now — Real Estate Investing Edition!
My husband Adam and I have a real estate side hustle. We own five properties — mostly in middle Tennessee, one in Alabama — and we self-manage all of them. I should say, when I say "we," Adam actually self-manages everything.
I wish I could say I helped more with that side of things, but he is amazing and truly does it all. He runs his counseling practice and our real estate business.
But it's a pinch-me thing because we mostly funded it with money from this business. Instead of lifestyle creep, just spending more as the business made more, we invested it into something that now generates income for our family, builds assets that will appreciate over time, and something we're even getting to involve our kids in.
Just this past weekend, we had tenants moving out and were doing showings for new ones. Adam took Colin along to see what a house showing looks like, while I stayed back with Sofia and Ethan. It's just really cool to be able to bring our kids into that world as parents.
Pinch-Me Moment #13: Speaking at Christy Wright's Business Boutique Conference in 2018.
I have so many highlights from those early years. But this one was special for two reasons: it was both my first speaking engagement as a business owner and my biggest speaking engagement to this day.
I don't do a lot of conference speaking: it doesn't fit my life as a mom, and I don't want to travel heavily for work. So I haven't done many. But this one was ironically local to me, and 10 years in, it's still the largest thing I've done. Truly one of the biggest highlights of my business journey.
Over 3,000 women were there in this huge conference space. It wasn't a keynote, it was a live Q&A panel with Christy, who hosted the conference, and my friend Amy Gabriel, who founded LippyClip and who I still keep in touch with today. Christy interviewed both of us about our businesses. I think it was called the Success Stories Panel.
We were both pretty nervous and both very, very prepared. The conference team had given us the questions in advance, so I had practiced answers ready for everything. And then, 3,000 women in the audience, the questions were completely different. So it ended up being me and Amy just thinking on our feet the whole time.
I have the full thing recorded and I've watched it back since. I've even shared clips on social media. And honestly? I love what I said from that stage — all of it totally off the cuff, after feeling so rehearsed. There's something kind of great about that.
I connected with women at that event who have followed my business ever since: people who became podcast listeners, students, and friends. It was a really significant exposure moment early on, and I think it helped propel me forward in a lot of ways.
I remember getting off the stage and checking my phone later and watching my follower count grow in real time as people in that audience went and found me on Instagram, joined my email list, and visited my template shop. I didn't even have this podcast yet at that point. Just a really, really cool pinch-me moment.
Pinch-Me Moment #14: My life right now.
This last one is different. It's not a speaking event, an award, or a message from someone whose life was changed by my content. It's much simpler than that and it's not the kind of thing that shows up on a highlight reel. It's mostly unseen. It's just me and my family.
The pinch-me moment is this: right now, I get to mainly stay home with my kids while my business still runs. I get to be in that stay-at-home mom role more than I ever have and that genuinely feels like a dream.
When I was a brand-new mom, four and a half years ago, my business required a lot more of me. Going back and forth between work and caring for a baby was really, really hard. I was exhausted. The time constraints were a lot.
If someone had told me then that one day I could mostly stay home with my kids while still running and maintaining my business, stepping back in some ways while stepping forward into something new, I don't know if I would have believed both could be true at the same time.
But here I am.
I know seasons as a parent are short, and that's been helpful for me to hold onto, not in a scarcity way, not the "you only get 18 summers" kind of thing you see online. More just: seasons are short, and that's actually a reason to step into them fully. Right now my youngest is eight months old and my oldest is four and a half. It's a genuinely short window where all three of them are under school age. I don't even know what the next season of motherhood looks like yet, but right now, defined more than anything by Sofia's age, this is the season I'm in.
Right now, I'm working one day a week. That day is today, the day I'm recording this, and I'm with my kids the rest of the time as their primary caregiver. Our schedule is more complicated than that makes it sound, and I'm probably oversimplifying it. But this feels like my dream.
Motherhood and family life is my dream even more than having a successful business. And I feel so deeply grateful that I get to do both: that I have the blessing of a business I've spent so many years building, one that now helps fuel the ability to be present and focused on raising my kids.
I'm not sure I've phrased all of that perfectly, but that is the final pinch-me moment.
Read more: What I Wish I Could Go Back and Tell Myself on Day One as a Business Owner
What an Incredible 10 Years in Business
I hope it was enjoyable to walk down memory lane with me, and thank you for letting me share some of these moments: many of which I haven't talked about publicly before. I hope you also found some things in here that apply to your own business and your own life and the way you're building things.
Thank you so much for listening, and thank you for being a part of this business in whatever capacity you are, whether you started listening today or you've been here for years. You have been a blessing to me in these last 10 years. Thank you!
Episodes mentioned:
Episode 114 Behind the Scenes of My Multiple Five-Figure Launch (the Booked Out Designer beta launch)
Real estate investing episodes: 134, 135, 136, 197 and 198
Links Mentioned:
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