From Friends to Co-founders: How Alkemis Paint Finds Balance in Business
After bonding at a wellness retreat, Maya Crowne and Price Latimer built Alkemis, a non-toxic, all-natural paint brand. As business leaders, they are more committed to well-being than ever.
Author Novo
When Maya Crowne and Price Latimer met at a Santa Fe wellness retreat in June of 2020, seeking community and connection during the depths of lockdown, both women were at a professional crossroads.
Latimer, a career artist and designer, had just stepped back from a restaurant brand she’d co-founded and grown across international locations; Crowne, who’d built a decade-long career in finance, had reconnected with her own artist instincts and was exploring the idea of developing a truly healthy, all-natural architectural paint brand.
“I was in the process of painting my New York City apartment, and asked my local hardware store for a healthy paint, but the low-VOC [volatile organic compound] options still smelled like toxic chemicals,” Crowne says. “I went down a rabbit hole, and when I met Price, a very organic friendship developed. I told her about my idea and she said: Do you know what I do professionally?”
From there, the two set out to build Alkemis, a non-toxic, zero-VOC, all natural “wellness paint” that launched in 2023 with headquarters in San Antonio. The architectural paint has earned Cradle 2 Cradle certification and coverage by industry-leading outlets including Architectural Digest and Elle Decor. Now, as Crowne and Latimer work to keep up with the demands of a fast-growing business, they’re systemizing ways to drive success without losing their sense of self, well-being, and balance. Here’s how.
1. Use deadlines as a motivator.
After roughly three and a half years of research and development, supported by hired experts, trusted advisors, and industry leaders that Crowne and Latimer cold-contacted for advice and guidance, the pieces of Alkemis started coming together. By 2023, the co-founders knew where their product would be produced, had a go-to-market strategy outlined — and then it was just a matter of doing the work.
“We knew all the steps forward and just put the deadlines in place,” Crowne says. “That structure is important. Without deadlines, everything always takes longer than you anticipate, and you risk losing momentum.”
Science agrees: Parkinson’s Law is a concept, first introduced in 1955, that work expands to fill the time available to complete any task. In short, the more time you give yourself, the longer that to-do list will take. Strict deadlines keep projects moving forward.
2. Build and respect boundaries.
“When you’re working 80-100 hours a week, you just need a break,” Latimer says. Both she and Crowne prefer getting outdoors for a walk or hike to reset, but they’ve learned to systemize their moments of rest, as best they can.
“On Saturdays, I do not work,” Crowne says. “And I really try to stick to that because I do work on Sundays. It’s really about holding space for moments of reset and being really strong about that.”
Latimer tries to spend one day of the weekend seeing art or a film — “It doesn’t always happen but we make the effort,” she admits — and the pair work to respect their team’s time as well. “We don’t want to hit people up over the weekend,” Crowne says.
That’s good for the business, the founders, and Alkemis’s partners. Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management promotes treating at least a part of your weekend as a vacation; time to truly disengage with tasks and to-dos rests the brain and recharges it for the workweek ahead, .
3. Nurture your partnership.
For business partners who were friends first, Crowne and Latimer know that their relationship is something they must take care of. The foundation of that is embracing an executive coach, with whom they work with both as a pair as well as individually. In addition, they make time for the activities that first bonded them as friends: Wellness retreats, meals out, and open conversation.
“It’s fundamentally important to us to have a respectful relationship as founders,” Latimer says. Crowne echoes: “That requires constant nurturing to understand how people respond to deep levels of stress and how to support each other in that space, communicate, take ownership, and self-reflect. We make sure we have touch-bases, to always ground ourselves back in our friendship.”
4. Give yourself (and your team) the grace to work flexibly.
Alkemis is based in San Antonio, Texas, but Latimer spends most of her time in New Mexico while Crowne is anchored in New York. Their fractional CFO is in Portland, Oregon, and their customer service team is virtual. Rather than allow that spread to create hurdles, the founders see it as an opportunity.
“One of the benefits of being an entrepreneur is that you’re not necessarily stuck to a 9-5 schedule or even a location,” Crowne says. “You can work when you want to. Price is a night owl, I’m a morning person, and we like to allow that flexibility within our team too, to a degree, as long as we’re getting the work done.”
That can actually lead to getting more work done: studies show that allowing team members to work when they’re most productive can drive outcomes as well as worker happiness.
