Six Years of Foulplay: Six Lessons from Running a Small Business
Foulplay Games is turning six! What started as a passion project between two friends has grown into a business that has sold thousands of games, reached players around the world, and helped bring people together through storytelling, teamwork, and a little murder.
Each year brings new challenges and new milestones, and each year we look back and realize just how much we’ve learned. To celebrate our sixth birthday, we’re sharing six lessons from six years of running a small creative business together.
And yes, we’re also doing a birthday sale! All of our games are 20 percent off through July 21.
Here are six things we’ve learned along the way that we hope will support other women-owned creative small businesses!
1. Start before you feel ready
This lesson comes up every year, and every year it feels more true. The best way to make progress is to simply begin. Waiting for the perfect time or the perfect version of an idea often means never starting at all. It's tempting to believe you need to plan everything out or have every detail prepared in advance, but most of the learning happens once you’re already doing the thing. Start small, keep it simple, and figure it out as you go.
2. Stay grounded in your mission
When you’ve been at something for a while, it’s easy to get pulled in different directions. New ideas, collaborations, and opportunities will come up that seem exciting or urgent. We get lots of requests for custom content and opportunities, but not every opportunity is the right one. We’ve learned to pause and ask if a decision really supports the kind of business we want to build, the lifestyle we want as creators, and the experience we want to create for our community. When you stay close to your original purpose, it becomes easier to make confident, thoughtful decisions.
3. Don’t quit your day job
We always get asked if we would ever want to make Foulplay our full time job and our answer is always, “not right now!”. There’s a lot of pressure out there to make your side project your full-time job. But we’ve found that you don’t need to quit your job to take your work seriously. If something matters to you, you’ll find time for it. More time doesn’t automatically lead to more progress and focus, consistency, and prioritization are much more powerful. Most of Foulplay has been built in the evenings, on weekends, and in between other responsibilities, and that’s okay!
4. You will have time to revise your decisions and nothing is ever final
We’ve rewritten almost all of our games multiple times! That’s part of the process. No decision is permanent, and no version is final. It’s better to release something, get feedback, and make improvements than to wait endlessly to publish or release a product until it is perfect (whatever that means!). Putting work into the world is the only way to know what works and what doesn’t. Every launch is just a starting point.
5. It’s okay to sell
Selling your work can feel uncomfortable, especially if you’re not used to thinking of yourself as a business. But making money isn’t separate from serving your community, it’s a reflection of whether you’re meeting people’s needs. If people enjoy your work, they’ll want to support it. Selling is part of the process, and asking for a sale is simply offering something of value.
6. Don’t fear critique. Fear silence
One of the biggest reasons people don’t start something new is fear of being criticized. In reality, especially at the beginning, the more common experience is silence. We have been very rarely critiqued but people may not respond, may not share, may not even see what you’re doing. That can be harder than hearing feedback. But it’s not a sign to stop. Keep putting your work out there. Keep showing up. Momentum builds slowly, and consistency matters more than perfection. Now we celebrate any negative critique because it means our work is out there being seen and experienced by more people!
Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past six years! Whether you’ve hosted one game or ten, shared a photo, written a review, or told a friend, we wouldn’t be here without you!
To celebrate six years of mystery and mayhem, all of our games are 20 percent off through July 21!
From growing Foulplay Games to navigating challenges as entrepreneurs, we’re sharing the biggest lessons learned in six years of running our women-owned small business.
