THE LIFESTYLE OF NOT GIVING UP
Entrepreneurship isn’t a job, it’s a lifestyle. A way of living built on persistence, humility, and the willingness to reinvent yourself again and again.
When you decide to follow an idea, you don’t just commit to a vision. You commit to setbacks, uncertainty, and the uncomfortable truth that what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. In reality, building a brand is less about one brilliant plan and more about learning how to respond when the plan breaks.
To me, innovation is often misunderstood. People think it’s only about doing something new, but I’ve learned it’s equally about knowing when to let go. It’s the courage to kill your darlings. To step back and admit: this isn’t working. And then to rebuild with sharper discipline and deeper understanding.
There is a special kind of strength in rewinding and starting again, not because you failed, but because you listened. Listened to your customer, the market, cultural shifts, technology, and the truth that your business model must evolve if your vision is going to survive.
In the early years, I held on tightly to every detail. Every creative choice felt personal. But over time, I realized that resilience is not simply pushing forward. True resilience is staying flexible enough to change direction without abandoning what you stand for. It’s protecting the essence — the quality, the identity, the purpose — while having the courage to redesign the path.
Some of the most powerful signals I’ve received came when I didn’t push at all: when our first product, a classic white T-shirt printed with “I AM YOUR SISTER,” spread organically across markets, and people wore the message and made it part of their own story. That kind of response teaches you what to build more of — and what to stop doing altogether.
And for me, that is the real lifestyle of entrepreneurship: staying in the game long enough to evolve.
Because persistence isn’t stubbornness. It’s a conscious choice to keep moving, while becoming wiser with every setback. And the entrepreneurs who truly succeed aren’t necessarily the ones with the loudest launch — they’re the ones who can adapt, rebuild, and keep going until the vision finally becomes real.
Jenny Ringsö is the Founder and Creative Director of IAYS (I AM YOUR SISTER), a Scandinavian premium knitwear brand built on craftsmanship, sustainability and the idea of sisterhood. Since 2015, she has grown IAYS organically without external capital, combining design integrity with a scalable business mindset and global ambition.
