In December 2019, Cassie Abel was having a moment. She was trying to run two small businesses and went into labor when her only employee, a part-timer, emailed saying she was taking a full-time job elsewhere.
Then COVID hit. Her mother was hospitalized in the first wave, and her dad had a heart attack and was airlifted to a nearby hospital.
Her parents slowly recovered. Abel's businesses didn't rebound as quickly.
Clients at her PR marketing and consulting firm were paralyzed, not sure when the world would open up. Her women's outdoor apparel company, Wild Rye, was also facing uncertainty. "We had retailers emailing us, threatening that they were going to cancel major purchase orders because they didn't know what the future held," she says. But as people started escaping their homes and getting outside, they needed gear, and Wild Rye started to grow. Abel shuttered the consulting business and went all in. Now the Idaho-based CEO has 11 full-time employees and posted more than $4 million in sales last year, despite the impact of tariffs.
Hard work, vision, grit all got her there. And a little help from someone else.
