Emily Ley, Founder, Emily Ley Paper & Gifts, is returning to EntreCon 2016.

Emily Ley is one of Pensacola’s exported success stories.

Ley, grew up in Pensacola, graduated from the University of West Florida and became the executive director of Ballet Pensacola. She then worked in nonprofit management and public relations before launching her company, Emily Ley, in 2008.

After a successful online launch, Ley’s products – including her signature Simplified Planner – grew to be carried in more than 300 retail outlets across the United States and around the world.

As a speaker at EntreCon Nov. 5 in downtown Pensacola, Ley shared the stage with a high school friend who also has turned big dreams into a business, Jarrod Morgan.

Morgan is one of the founders of ProctorU, which provides secure online test proctoring via webcam. Their partners include Troy University, the University of Alabama, Oregon State University as well as certification programs.

Ley and Morgan both agreed that the entrepreneurial spirit that EntreCon seeks to harness is a critical tipping point for Pensacola’s future.

“You really have no excuse in Pensacola now,” Morgan said.

Ley, whose line of stationery and signature planners are aimed at helping busy women “carve out white space” in their whirl of their lives for their families and themselves. It was born out of a Ley’s work in graphic design, as well as out of her desire to make it OK for women to admit, they can’t keep it all in their heads.

An image of Emily Ley's Simplified Planner.

Ley said that social media was key in the early and remains a driving force in it. Ley made the decision early on to build her company debt free. Which meant, for example, selling monograms on Etsy until she had built up enough money to add on.

“I was all about how can I not pay for things and still get the word out,” Ley said of the role social media played in her company’s growth.

A candid photo she posted of her messy house, largely courtesy of her two young children, on Instagram, for example, not only generated engagement among the account's 115,000 followers, “I saw a spike in our sales.”

From Emily Ley's Instagram account. This image generated more than 3,000 likes and comments including, "thanks for the truth behind what being a mom and a business owner looks like."

Keeping the line between engaging her audience and maintaining some privacy is something she and her staff now work to be aware of. But, she says, the sense of authenticity that image conveys is part of her brand and its appeal.

“It’s authentic when I post things like that, but it’s very intentional,” Ley says. “I feel like it gives women permission to say, ‘I’m not perfect.’”

As her business has grown, Ley has tried to remember how she answered the questions, “what do you want to be?” Do you want to have a big warehouse, with lots of employees and multiple lines of inventory and make a lot of money. Or do you want to be have a smaller footprint, with fewer employers and make “enough” money but maybe not as much as you could.

“I chose B,” Ley said of the option that gave her a smaller profile because it was more authentic to her vision.

Staying true to that vision, whatever it is for your business, is what Ley believes is the real measure of sustainable success.