Libby was the featured guest for Mary Foley’s Live Like Your Nail Color
Club in July 2008, and helped Club members live like the nail color
“Making Waves.”
Mary Foley, Founder of the Live Like Your Nail Color Club says:
“It can be a scary world out there and we’re not always willing to engage in it. Libby’s experiences and the Making Waves nail polish she inspired are a reminder that we are capable of trying new things, making positive changes, and facing our fears.”

See http://www.GoBodacious.com for more information. 

On April 5, 2008, Libby was the featured guest on Smokie Sizemore’s telechat for her Smart Woman’s Club members.

Smokie says: “Libby is one smart woman. She honestly said what so many women won’t when asked about her drive to take on a business while mothering 2 very young children. She was Bored. There’s more to life than diapers and crayons for some of us. Finally the truth is out. The members were rocked by her honesty and applauded her for her courage. The hour flew by for everyone as Libby recounted her highs and lows to success.”

See http://www.smartwomansclub.com for more information. 

Making Waves
by Libby Brown

Published by Crossroads Press
 
Reviewed by Kim Bagato

Self-proclaimed serial risk takers, Libby and Stewart Brown, reveal trials and triumphs of leaving the mainstream in Making Waves.

“Dreams, not memories move the world forward,” says author Libby Brown. This phrase, partnered with determination and a clear vision, delivered the Browns to the destinations of their dreams, one after another.

The first of this three-part journey describes the creation of “This End Up,” a unique furniture business built by the innovative Browns and their partners. Listen in as the negotiations go back and forth and as they compassionately deal with woeful employees. View the benefit of a nurturing work environment and the long-term loyalty.

Seeking that rush of risk, the Browns move from a predictable life to riding the turquoise sea aboard their yacht. In this second risk, they learn how much they cannot control and how smooth sailing can be more life threatening than it may appear.

The final part of the book continues to inspire anyone who questions if the pursuit of his or her dream is worth the risk. The Browns “step out onto the entrepreneurial dance floor together one more time.” Compelled to set down roots in paradise, they spend sleepless nights and blissful afternoons planning and building the Fowl Cay Resort. It didn’t take long for the Browns to see that what worked in business stateside didn’t necessarily translate to their new homeland in the Bahamas. Desiring only to create a welcoming place for family and friends, Stewart and Libby buoyed one another through the tumultuous waters of unanswered questions and unending delays.

This is an enlightening story of risk taking and reward. The tone is not one of power-hungry spotlight seekers, but a realistic view of weathering the storms that threaten to drown dreams.

Brown’s writing is colorful, warm, and inviting. I felt like I’d spent the morning listening to a friend share her stories over a latte, leaving me energized and eager to pursue my own dreams.

Armchair Interviews says: For all who like to dream or have a dream.

Libby appeared on Virginia This Morning on WTVR CBS 6 on Wednesday, September 12 at 9:00 a.m. 

The University of Richmond is incorporating MAKING WAVES into their orientation program for incoming first-year MBA students (September 2007) as a platform for discussion about entrepreneurship and risk. 

Ripples from MAKING WAVES have reached the other side of the world! From Australia, Mr. Cheyenne Morrison of Coldwell Banker Morrison’s Private Islands, International Private Islands Specialist, has posted a blog on his web site about MAKING WAVES and Fowl Cay Resort. “I used to recommend ‘Can’t Stop the Carnival’ by Herman Wouk to all potential island buyers and would now like to recommend MAKING WAVES.”
You can check out Mr. Morrison’s blog at:
http://private-islands.blogspot.com/2007/02/making-waves-fowl-cay-resort-bahamas.html

MAKING WAVES was the #4 best seller at Barnes & Noble Libbie Place the week of 2/19/07 and the #8 best seller the week of 4/2/2007. (Go to www.Richmond.com, select “What Richmond’s Reading” and select  Archives.) “Best showing ever of a privately published book in this store,” said store manager Paula Gear.

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business has ordered 150 copies of MAKING WAVES for their MBA curriculum. Of interest to the school is the juxtaposition of the vast differences that the same entrepreneur faced in two different circumstances, why she continued to choose risk even after risk “showed her its backside,” and how she managed to balance her life during two such different scenarios.

Photo by Clement Britt/Richmond Times-Dispatch 

Bottom line: Have fun
This End Up founder energizes retailers with rat tales and good times

By JEFFREY KELLEY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

On This End Up Furniture Co.'s opening day in September 1975, the first customer wrote the check to "Up Your End," a black rat scared a woman away and a young boy -- the founder's 2-1/2-year-old son -- relieved himself on one of the Fan District shop's wooden chairs.
"Would you have thought that day fun or frightening? Would you have found it an inspiration or insanity?" Libby Brown asked a Retail Merchants Association breakfast crowd of about 230 yesterday. "How many people would have been eager to return to that store the next day?"
It's a good thing she did. Before long, Brown and three business partners -- one of whom was husband Stewart -- found "we could sell the furniture as fast as we could make it."
. . .
The idea "concocted by two hungover bachelors with a shipping crate" -- her brother and his friend -- took off. After six months, sales of the simple furniture made from hardy wood exploded. The Richmond furniture company rolled out stores across America and into Canada. The founders got a windfall when they sold the 250-plus store chain in 1985.
This End Up was the success story Brown shared along with two other tales of risk in a speech that prompted laughter, "oohs" of inspiration, questions and, ultimately, a standing ovation from the retailers.
After selling the company, the Browns set off into the Caribbean Sea on a yacht, in an era of their life she admits was awe-inspiring but luck-pushing.
. . .
Sure, there was the pitch-black evening on the boat's flybridge, listening to Enya, sipping Baileys Irish Cream on ice and beholding the Milky Way -- "a blanket of stars you feel is going to drop on you."
But there were also the Novocaine-free stitches her husband's leg received from an angry doctor, a robbery at the hands of machete-wielding pirates and "a rogue wave the size of an office building" that capsized the Browns' 70-foot yacht "on a beautiful, cloudless day."
After having experienced the joys of the sea but growing weary of the water's lurking danger, Brown longed to become an entrepreneur again.
In September 1997, the couple began development of Fowl Cay, a 50-acre Bahamian island in the Exuma Cays about 70 miles southeast of Nassau. Everything -- food, water, nails, wood -- had to be brought in by barge. The couple had a lease that lasted about a half-century, but the government wouldn't renew it, she said. It meant the Browns could have lost everything if the lease expired.
"Our net worth was like ice cream melting in the noonday heat," said Brown, who planned to use the resort for friends, family and customers. After three years, the couple moved into their island paradise. Four days later, a hurricane "ripped up the toughest thing I'd ever accomplished."
Five months later they were back in business, but logistics -- unreliable pilots getting folks to the island, getting food to the restaurant -- hindered success.
"I spent many days furious, hurt, scared and doubting myself," she said.
In May, the Browns sold Fowl Cay to the Sandals resort group. Brown has written a book on her experiences, called "Making Waves."
. . .
Her lesson?
"Although my love of taking chances hasn't always loved me back, I don't want to die untried and unspent. I refuse to let my dreams turn into regrets.
"My mission since I agreed to sell furniture made from shipping crates has been to make sure that life uses me up."

Furniture Today, the weekly business newspaper for the furniture industry, ran an article about Making Waves in the October 4, 2007 edition — the week of the High Point Furniture Market.

Furniture Today article PDF 

Speaker at risk forum to share lessons she’s learned
 
By AARON KREMER
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Quick quiz: Which business idea proved wildly successful for Richmond’s Libby Brown?

a) Starting a furniture company

b) Building a resort on an uninhabited 50-acre Caribbean island

If you guessed a, you’re right.

Extra credit: on which one did she do the most research?

If you guessed a, you’re wrong.

Brown started This End Up Furniture Co. and made a bundle when she sold the company in 1985. She said she did practically no market research before jumping in.

Not so for the resort. “As I got older and matured, I did copious research on whether to open this island. But I knew only the tiniest surface part of what it would take,” Brown said.

Brown, who wrote a book about her experiences in business called “Making Waves,” will talk Friday morning at a forum about risk. The event, which starts at 7:45 a.m. at the Holiday Inn Central on North Boulevard, is sponsored by the Retail Merchant’s Association. It costs $15 for members, $25 for nonmembers.

For more information, visit www.retailmerchants.com/calendar/index.html#fff.

See this article on inrich.com»

By Bill Glose

As a bank employee and mother of two toddlers in Richmond, Libby Brown led a comfortable life but wanted something more. She wanted rewards and the thrilling risks that went with them. Investing $500 and considerable effort, she co-founded the crate-furniture company This End Up, which grew to become a 253-store mega-chain. Brown then sold the company to undertake a new adventure: buying her own Caribbean island to build Fowl Cay Resort, fighting legal, construction and cultural battles all along the way. Making Waves shows how the American Dream is achievable for anyone with the guts and determination to go for it.

Stacks of Style by Megan Marconyak

MAKING WAVES by Libby Brown

In 1975 Libby Brown opened the first This End Up store on Strawberry Street: “My brother called me and said, ‘I’ve been making couches out of old shipping crates, and don’t you want to open a store?’” The first This End Up blossomed into 253 locations across the United States and Canada, leading to the chain’s sale to the Melville Corporation. Brown and her husband worked for the company for another five years and then took a second big risk, sailing off on a 70-foot yacht. After spending eight years traveling between Jacksonville, Fla., and Venezuela, surviving storms, an attack by pirates and capsizing, the couple purchased a 50-acre island in the Exuma Islands in the Bahamas, where they started a resort in 2002. The next logical step for Brown was to write Making Waves, which was released in late 2006. “It’s really about taking risks and taking chances and not letting your life pass you by,” she says.

Libby Brown and her book MAKING WAVES are featured in the March 2007 issue of FiftyPlus Magazine. On the cover and in the center spread, the article by Angela Lehman-Rios highlights Libby’s “life as a risk-taker” and the adventure of writing about her life’s journeys.
Read the article >>