About Me
Hi, I'm Holly.
I grew up watching my parents build things from scratch. Two entrepreneurs, figuring it out as they went, wearing every hat, solving problems nobody had written a playbook for yet. I didn't know it at the time, but I was absorbing everything.
I co-owned my own business in my early twenties, operating a retail and mail-order shop on Queen St West in Toronto that grew to over $1.5M in annual revenue over six years. I learned what it actually means to run something. The vendors, the cash flow, the customers, the chaos, the moments where everything depends on you making the right call with no one to ask.
In 2010 I took a girls road trip to Boston and met a dude named Frank outside an Allston bar. I drove home to Toronto the next day...and booked a flight back for the following week to spend my first 4th of July with him. We were married in Boston two years later. On January 1st, 2012, I crossed the border on a green card and made it official. I navigated the entire immigration process myself. No lawyer. Just me, a lot of paperwork, and the same instinct I apply to everything: figure it out.
Yes, I left Canada. I know. I get it. But Boston has genuinely earned my heart, especially Eastie, the North End, and a perfect summer day on the ferry when the whole city feels like it's exactly where it's supposed to be. Scrappy, passionate, fiercely proud of what it makes. Reminds me of home.
What I've built and run since:
I spent the next decade and a half inside other people's businesses - learning, leading, solving, building. I ran operations across 30+ locations for an experiential hospitality brand. I headed up marketing for a fast-growing DTC subscription grocery company, fired their marketing agency, and did it better myself. I co-founded a salon that's beating the 75% small business failure rate and is now five years strong, running the entire back end remotely in an hour or two a day.
The work I'm most proud of happened during COVID, when the business I was running had to close every single location overnight. In two weeks I built a full DTC product line from scratch including international sourcing, packaging design, product testing, ecom launch, all with no blueprint, no oversight, and no time to overthink it. It worked.
That's the kind of brain I bring to your business.
Why I do this:
I've always been the person who takes everything on. Not because I have to but because I genuinely love the problem-solving, the building, the moment when something that was broken starts working. I love small businesses specifically because the stakes are real. It matters. And when things aren't clicking the way they should, that weight lands on you personally in a way it never does in a corporate job.
I started Raven & Ready because I kept meeting founders who were brilliant at what they built and completely buried in everything around it. And I kept thinking, "I know how to fix this. I've lived this. I want to help!"
When I'm not working:
I'm probably in my backyard, weather permitting. I'm growing 20+ species of fruit and vegetables (and genuinely crossing my fingers that my Granny Smith apple tree finally produces this year). Or I'm out exploring New England with my husband Frank, and our 7lb rescue chihuahua Rex who is somehow the calmest dog alive. Truly, he hardly ever barks. We got the one chill one!
We love local food, regional farmers, and finding the best independent neighborhood restaurants wherever we are. I care deeply about the kind of businesses I work with, the ones rooted in real ingredients, real communities, and real craft. Food and beverage, wellness, the people growing and making things. That's my world, in work and in life.
Ready to talk?
Still here? Good. That means we should probably talk. Click below to answer a couple qs for me, and let's get started.
