I DISAPPEARED. HERE’S WHAT I WAS BUILDING.
NO BS MARKETER BY AMANTHA PERERA
If you’ve been wondering where this column went, so have I. For a while, I stopped writing. Not because I ran out of opinions, because anyone who knows me knows that’s not possible, but because life got loud in a way I couldn’t fit into a weekly column. Things were breaking. Things were being rebuilt. And honestly, I didn’t know how the story ended yet. I still don’t, fully. But I know enough now to tell you what happened. So here it is. No filter. No BS.
The founder who couldn’t let go
When you start a business from nothing, it becomes your child. Organic was mine. I knew every client, every caption, every edit. I was in every meeting, every WhatsApp group and every late-night revision. And that was exactly the problem. I thought being involved in everything meant I cared. What it really meant was that I had become the bottleneck. Every brand’s work started to look the same because it was all passing through the same brain. Mine. The ideas felt repetitive. The team felt boxed in. Slowly, my own people got frustrated with me. They weren’t wrong.
Here’s a lesson nobody puts in a LinkedIn post. Sometimes the biggest thing holding your business back is you. Letting go wasn’t a clean decision. There was a lot of back and forth. I’d step back, panic, jump back in, mess things up and step back again. Ego is a stubborn thing. It tells you nobody can do it like you can. Sometimes that’s true. Most of the time, they’ll just do it differently. And differently often turns out to be better.
Nobody tells you this when you start out. A founder’s job changes. In the beginning, you do the work. Then you have to build the people who do the work. Eventually, your job is to protect the space they need to do it well. That includes protecting it from you. I was still trying to be the best editor, the best scriptwriter and the best account manager in the building when the business needed me to be none of those things.
When I finally handed the work to my team properly, the results came almost instantly. Fresher ideas. Faster turnarounds. Clients who were happier than they’d been with me hovering over every frame. Today, I’m a shareholder in Organic and I stay involved in strategy. But the people running the show day to day are my team, and they are out there absolutely killing it for our clients. The foundation is built. The work is in place. Watching something you started grow without needing you in every room is a different kind of pride. A better one.
ROUND TWO, FROM COFFEE TO PIZZA
While all of that was happening, I did what any calm, reasonable person would do. I started another business. Some of you will remember Divide, the franchise café I ran on Nawam Mawatha. I loved that place. But I sold the outlet. With the location and the price point, it simply didn’t make sense for me at that point in my life. Walking away from something you built is hard. Holding on to something that doesn’t make sense just to protect your pride is harder. I’d rather keep the lesson than keep the ego. So, I gave food and beverage another go! This time, not coffee. Pizza.
Alongside my partner, Kamod Halambage, I opened Cargo, a wood fired pizza joint in Nawala. The idea was simple. Proper wood fired pizza made for the Lankan palate, at a price anyone can afford. Not a once-a-month treat. A Tuesday night, “machan, let’s just go” kind of place. For me, Cargo is a way of giving back. I’ve always been drawn to B2C businesses because I love people. I love watching someone take that first bite and smile. No campaign report has ever given me that feeling. Marketing taught me how to get people through the door. Hospitality is teaching me what to do once they’re inside.
THE YEAR I GREW UP, A LITTLE
I’m 24 now. Somewhere between the late-night revisions and the pizza ovens, a lot of growing up happened. The reckless years are slowly coming to an end. Not completely, let’s not get carried away. But I’ve noticed something. At 20, your losses are lessons. At 24, with a team, partners and customers depending on you, your losses are still lessons. They just come with bigger consequences, and other people feel them too. I lost brands along the way. Some walked because I was stretched too thin. Some walked because we simply weren’t the right fit anymore. A couple of them stung more than I’d like to admit. You don’t put that in your Instagram highlights, but it’s part of the story, so it goes in here. What I’ve learned is this. Losing a client isn’t the end of you. Refusing to learn why is. Every brand that left taught me something about how I run my business, how I communicate and where I was spreading myself too thin. If I could tell 20-year-old me one thing, it would be this. You don’t have to do everything yourself to prove you’re good. Building people who can do it without you is the real flex.
THREE THINGS THIS CHAPTER TAUGHT ME
Control is not the same as care. I thought holding on tight proved how much I cared. It mostly proved how little I trusted the people I’d hired. The day I started trusting them was the day Organic started growing again. Walking away is a skill. Selling Divide didn’t mean I failed. It meant I was honest about what made sense. Not every chapter needs a sequel. Some just need a good ending. Your people are the business. Clients, customers and campaigns come and go. The team that stays through your worst decisions is the real asset. Look after them like it.
WEEK BY WEEK, FROM HERE ON
So that’s where I was. Learning to let go of the business I built. Selling one business and starting another. Losing some things, winning others and growing up somewhere in between. I’m not here to pretend I’ve figured it all out. I haven’t. But I’m better than I was last year, and I plan to be better again next year. And now I’m back. Every week, I’ll take you through it. The marketing, the businesses, the wins, the losses and the lessons in between. No polish. No pretending. Just the real stuff. Keep reading. This time, I’m not going anywhere.
