Milestones, Mistakes & Memories: The Story of Created Colorful 5 Years In

Dec 11

It’s been five years since Created Colorful began, and let me tell you, it has been a RIDE.

From accepting Venmo payments in a nursing tank and writing results emails while I watched my babies on the monitor, to leading a team of thirty through doing virtual color analysis for 30,000 people, it has been such a rush.

But nothing lasts forever. The only constant is change. And damn, in the past few years we’ve been through a lot of change.

When we started, color analysis was new and exciting. Now, more women I talk to know their season than not. Back then, we constantly sold out of our color consults. Now, we’re serving up links by palette to our people.

The only things that haven't changed? The love we have for you. The obsession we have with color. And the mission we’re on to help you find a little more confidence in your closet—whatever that looks like.

Because we know it’s about so much more than color. And it’s only a matter of time until that confidence spills over into the rest of your life.

Love a story? Buckle up. Ours is a good one.

The Lindsey Myers Origin Story

*Don’t tell her how much shit she’s about to go through, k?*

It’s hard to tell you the Created Colorful story without telling you my story, too. There is so much overlap, and, to be real with you, some days I couldn’t even tell you where the company starts, and I end. So, I have to start by introducing you to 20-something Lindsey.

Before Created Colorful, the plan was to become a counselor. I even went to grad school for it. But right after I graduated, I had my son and decided to stay home with him. I loved the cuddles, picnic blanket hangs in the sun, and all the time I got to spend with him, but I quickly realized I needed a creative outlet for me.

Because I’d always been drawn to color, I decided to start painting, and it brought me so much joy. I let myself play with contrasting colors, doing shadows in purple, painting something random in orange. I poured so much time into coming up with different patterns that still made sense with the value and depth of color, as I intentionally challenged myself to branch out from neutrals. (Okay, life, easy on the foreshadowing.)

My old Etsy painting shop, where the Created Colorful insta was born

Then, my daughter came along. After a painful season of waiting, loss, and grief, she was a true gift. And I was so relieved to have her in my arms. But with two kids and then-undiagnosed ADHD, I was also flooded and overwhelmed every single day, which played out in a fashion catastrophe: oversized grey sweat pants and a nursing tank.

Dramatic? Okay, maybe. But every woman knows that a clothing meltdown is never really about clothes. The real catastrophe was that I had nothing left for myself. Ever. It was like I didn’t even exist. Every single day, I just thought about the tasks I needed to do and what everyone else needed from me. And I didn’t realize how much that hurt my self-esteem. I used to feel cute. I used to wear heels. (In college, I was even that girl who’d wear heels randomly to class.) So, yes, it was “just” fashion, but it represented so much more.

Enter: Color Theory.

I heard about color theory through a friend. She was raving about it, and I was over here like, “I wear all black, I’ll probably be a winter!” (That was so not true.) But I was curious.

I went home and started googling, researching, and learning everything I could about it. And before long, I was completely hooked. I swapped my black nursing tank for a Target tee in one of my best colors (rust, if you wanna know, I’m a Warm Autumn), and that simple, five-dollar change made me feel better about myself than I had in years.

Color theory sparked my creativity the way painting had, and I couldn’t wait to tell everyone I knew about it. So I started sharing about it on Instagram—because I’m a girl’s girl, and it just seemed like something everyone should know. Faster than I could even believe, everyone said, “Ooh, do me!” And I knew I was on to something.

Everyone’s Favorite Year: 2020

By 2020, things were popping off, considering it was something I kind of stumbled into. I had a list of people who wanted to pay me to tell them what their best colors were. It was my dream job.

I think that, in the midst of this awful and hard year, color theory was putting into words or visuals something everyone was feeling—or maybe desperate to feel. Toilet paper was running out in stores. Everyone was a little scared. We were all huddling up inside our house. People just resonated with the feeling of being a shell of themselves in 2020. And many of us were seeking something—anything—to make us feel more like ourselves.

If it had been intentional, starting my business at this time would have been a genius marketing move. But really, we all just happened to be on the same wavelength at the same time.

The Scrappy Beginning

Sometimes I get nostalgic for the early months of Created Colorful because they were so scrappy, I was still so green, and every interaction was so full of heart.

At the time, a friend was living with us while she went through a divorce. She had skills on the iPad, and I can still see her so clearly, sitting in the living room with me, drawing the color circles that would become my first palettes. Soon after that, my cousin Danielle came over to take my first branding photos. And I hired my designer, Karima, to make me brand colors and a website. (My first big investment!)

Even though I saw the potential in what I was doing, I was so obsessed with accuracy and quality that I moved slowly. I took 100 practice clients before charging a single dollar, because I wanted to practice with clients from every age and ethnicity, in every palette, before I sold anything.

Then, when I did start charging, I used to email people back and forth and take Venmo. They’d send me $30, email me their pictures, and I’d write up a results email and send it to them with the palette my friend had hand-drawn. I would actually hand-type each results email one at a time. If I’d never emailed anyone about a particular palette before, I’d figure out on the spot how to explain Deep Autumn and what being in that palette meant for them. It was so personalized for them, but also so personal to me. I like to think that’s what set Created Colorful apart.

The OG palette my friend made for me on her iPad.

The Big Break

One of my best friends, Kate Strickler, runs an Instagram account called Naptime Kitchen that has always had an incredibly loyal following. (If you know Kate, this is no surprise.) She’s the one who first told me about colors after having hers done and loving the result and what it meant for her closet.

Fast forward to the end of 2020: Kate told me she planned to post about Created Colorful during the small business shout-outs she always does before Christmas. Once before, she had done that for my paintings, and it had brought me a lot of business, so I knew it would be big. I still remember my husband, Josh, and I sitting down together, and him saying, “When she does this shout-out, don’t set a cap. Just let it ride, and we’ll figure it out. It could be big; let’s just go for it.”

I had a few weeks to get my business as ready as possible for the shout-out, so I decided to hire my first analyst: Tori.

Tori had her colors done with me in early 2020, and afterward, she reached out to me, saying, “I think this is going to be big,” and “When you need to hire someone, I would love it to be me.” I contacted her, she was in, and I trained her on the spot. During these crazy weeks, Tori and I were on the phone every day. She is a genius, and she picked it up so quickly.

The day of the shout-out, we sold 150 consults. That was the big shift from side hustle to “holy shit.” Tori and I worked all day, every day. I went to bed at midnight, woke up at 6 am, took care of my babies, and, somehow, we made it all happen.

Women Encouraging Women

In January 2021, Josh decided to leave his job, and we switched roles. Created Colorful became my full-time job (and our family’s sole income), less than a year after I started it. 2021 was also the year I went all-in on hiring the women who would become the Created Colorful team. And that changed my life in ways I never saw coming.

Melissa, a make-up artist, had her consult done and reached out to me saying, “I really loved my consult, I think I could do this. Are you hiring?” Why yes, Melissa. Yes, I am! All of a sudden, incredible women I hadn’t previously known at all were in my life in big ways, and I loved it.

Melissa is incredibly gifted with colors; with her years of experience as a MUA for people of all skin tones, being an analyst was second nature to her. Writing long emails, on the other hand, was not her fave (lol). She kept it real with us, which led to a behind-the-scenes pivot that turned out to be such a gift for the business and enabled us to scale.

As we looked ahead to hiring more color analysts, we realized that it’s kind of hard to show up with top-tier color analyzing energy AND write personalized, thoughtful and empathetic results emails for every single client. And we wanted our analysts to be able to devote their full energy to getting your colors right.

Business-wise, it might have been smartest to just cut the long results emails altogether. But, the “I see you” results emails had become part of the process Created Colorful was known for. So we wanted to find a way to make it all make sense without losing what made us, us.

We thought: What if we hired an “encourager” of sorts? Someone with endless energy for people. Someone who sees people well. Someone who would gladly bring the hype and human connection to each results email.

I asked my good friend, who fit that description, if she would be interested, and she paved the way for that role. She loved it, and it allowed us to get through more consults while preserving our best analytical and emotional energy by dividing our roles. This felt like such a win!

*Kim is now crushing it working for herself over at @kimstigrams and @kimscolorfulfinds*

We put out a call for more encouragers, and because so many people had been moved by the encouragement they got with their results emails, we received hundreds of applicants. As a team, we read all the applicants' encouragement submissions blind, then decided whose words moved us most and hired them. This was how we found every encourager except one: Kim.

Kim had been a client before, and she made such an impression on me that I called her and pitched the encourager role to her. When she came on, it was such a spark for the team. Eventually, she took over the encourager training and later became Creative Director, a role she absolutely nailed, building our blog from scratch and creating epic capsules, until late 2025, when she left to work for herself. (Go, Kim! xx)

2021 was also the year we got interns. (Did you know, our Creative Director, Octavia, started out as an intern?!)

An early practice client of mine was an academic advisor, and she pitched me on the idea of interns. She put up a job posting, and we collected resumes, but before I could review them, she pulled me aside and said, “Hey, before you read these, I have somebody I think would be amazing who didn’t put in for it yet.” She pitched me on Octavia, and the rest was history. We also hired the lovely Hope, who basically set up the whole system of how consultants and encouragers communicate. We wouldn’t be where we are today without both of them.

When I started, I had so. many. emails. Way too many emails. I was getting stressed. My friend Megan, the most gifted person I know with logistics, took over that role for me.

Quickly, I realized that I needed somebody to do quality checking for the consult results emails I was writing (remember that then-undiagnosed ADHD?). I told Megan this, and she was like, “What about my mom?” Cathy has been on our team ever since, and she’s the reason why I can count on one hand the number of people who’ve gotten their results late.

*Megan, my college friend, OG email queen*

*Cathy (Megan’s mom, quality assurance pro)*

When Megan had to move on from her role, we hired someone new to take her place. Her name? Also Megan! Megan has been in this role for the last three years, and we couldn’t do what we do without her.

2021 was a boom for Created Colorful in every single way.

There were always more people who wanted color consults, and they wanted them faster than we could fulfill them. We constantly sold out. At one point, we had a 6-week wait for results. That’s when we started cutting them off. We’d have launches where we’d open the consults, sell 300 in 30 seconds, and then sell out. We just could not meet the demand.

It was during this time that we started our Women of Color list with guaranteed access to consults. We knew there weren’t many companies that could accurately consult for people of color, and we knew we wanted to make and keep our service accessible. So we started the list, and later recruited from it for our next round of hiring.

Videos, Reels, and Reality Checks

In 2022, we had our first team retreat, which was really, deeply, hilariously fun. We all went to Wilmington and, among other things, recorded this video.

There was a lot of light and happiness in this season. We were growing, building, and we had no clue there was an end in sight. We were all learning and being challenged together, and we were very close because of that. We were meeting a need no one else was, and it was a happy place to be. Everyone joined the team because they loved women and were personally touched by the work we were doing. Every person who joined our team was a client first. It was really organic.

In 2022, I also realized I had changed sizes and was wearing the wrong size most of the time. I shared about that, and it really resonated.

This was the beginning of me learning that confidence isn’t just about color, it’s about accepting yourself and loving your journey. It was the earliest seed for what would later become my Love Your Closet course. It was also the beginning of my platform shifting from being solely about color to one that brings people along on my style journey.

In February 2022, I made my first reel ever, even though it really intimidated me. To my absolute shock, it actually did really well!

Playing around with reels helped me reach tons of new people. I did an online series called Find Your Best [Orange/Green/Etc.] in NYC right after moving there. It was really popular! And I think this is when I shifted from just reaching people who hadn’t had their colors done to helping people who knew their colors to find what they needed. In real time, I was realizing the next questions my business would need to answer. Questions like: “Okay, I know my colors, but how do I find my best blue in person?”

The next big milestone was my viral reel, which got 2.7 million views and helped me gain 70,000 new followers! It was so surreal.

Every time I hit a new milestone, I did a dance series and took requests in my stories. That started my dancing stories (IYKYK).

Learning To Love Your Closet

February 2023 was the first time I had a New York friend come over and do colors! Personal milestone! Friends in New York!

Then, on November 7th, we launched Love Your Closet, and that was the first official step I took toward becoming a style…influencer? Educator? You tell me.

When I started publicly exploring my style, I heard from so many women who told me that getting their colors done kicked off a lot of deeper work for them. Women who started working through other struggles, like grief. Through these shared experiences, I realized colors were serving as an on-ramp to more, which validated everything I had learned so far, and made me feel creative yet again.

I wanted there to be some resource that could take someone’s hand and walk them through the whole thing. Colors were the starting point, but there was so much more that I wanted to share—that I would share if I were talking to a friend.

Creating Love Your Closet felt so empowering and personal because it’s in my voice. I get formal when I write, but using the same voice that I’d use to tell a story to a friend, and speaking into your ear and your heart, meant a lot to me. A ton of people bought it—more than I ever thought—and it was a fun thing to do. I felt like I could close my laptop and breathe. Even if all someone had were their colors and that course, they would be set up with all the tools they’d need to find their style and work through whatever transition they were going through.

Behind Every CEO…

In 2024, Tori stepped up and into the role of Director of Operations. That was huge. For the first time, I felt like I had a partner in making the big decisions and carrying out our vision.

Being an accidental CEO humbled me big time. Colors may have come naturally, but I had a lot to work on as a leader. I travelled to a monthly leadership development group for a whole year, went to therapy, and started learning how to cope with my anxiety and what I would later learn was ADHD, which made it hard to do it all. My team stepped up and supported me through every step.

Looking back on the life of Created Colorful so far, the biggest throughline I see is how it wouldn’t have worked with just me. If Tori hadn’t stepped up at the beginning, if I hadn’t had incredible interns, and if a diverse and talented group of amazing women hadn’t joined the team and brought their insights and expertise…I would be standing alone right now, talking to a much smaller room, speaking from a much narrower experience.

Every single person who’s touched this team has had a measured impact on me, the company, and the clients we serve. Each of their personalities shaped the consults and the brand in ways that made Created Colorful what it is. There’s a legacy in Created Colorful for every person who’s ever worked here.

Scaling Back and Slowing Down

2025 has been a hard year for me personally and in business. Some of the grief has come from having to de-scale Created Colorful and downsize back.

Over the last few years, we tried everything to keep it going at the same scale, from hiring a publicist (which didn’t do much, but got me on a lot of podcasts!) to going the influencer route and getting me an agent (which really has worked, but we’re always trying stay true to the OG Created Colorful and not get lost in links).

The major win that came out of this experimentation? Weekly emails with shoppable links broken down by palette. Y’all love these emails!

Another win? I feel closer to you—my audience members, my friends—than I have in a long time. Being open and honest with you, especially about the state of our business, the world, and how I can better serve you (while still keeping my team employed), has been so healing and is helping me remember who I was and what I wanted to do when I started this company five years ago.

Changed, For Good

Created Colorful has had some high highs over the last five years. It’s also had some low lows. And I’ll be honest: Right now, business-wise, we’re in a bit of a low.

Of course, this is sad and scary for me personally. I’m the breadwinner. My family relies on me. Life is only getting more expensive. All that. But that’s not the grief. The grief part comes from how badly I wish everybody could still be here. How much I wish everyone still had their place and their role.

If money were no factor, I would have everybody here forever. They each left something extraordinary behind. They all helped each other grow. And now, they’ve each become the master of their domain, their area. Created Colorful was so well done because of their excellence and their love for our clients.

It’s so easy to look back on Created Colorful and focus on the numbers. Especially when things aren’t going well. Especially when I’m anxious. Especially when everything’s a mess, and I feel like I need something I can measure, manage, or control.

But on my deathbed, I know that when I look back at Created Colorful, I won’t think about any of that. I’ll think about Tori. Octavia. Kim. Megan. Cathy. And every other woman who added her spark to this fire. I’ll think about the dance parties, the photo shoots, the creativity, the laughs, and all the times we sold out or hit it big because it meant we were building something together, something women needed, something that mattered—and it was working. And it really was the best.