Work hard but don’t burn out

Working hard is a good thing. However you can, working hard is generally going to be a good thing. Not working hard, or waiting out the clock, doing the minimum amount of effort to keep your job, or even purposefully not doing your best is generally not a good thing. Working hard can be easy, but it takes effort. Working hard can be showing up consistently, on time. Working hard can be consistently doing your personal best. Working hard can be excelling at your job or working fantastically long hours. Working hard can also just be knowing when your mind or body needs to take a break. Work hard, but don’t burn out.

Let’s say you were a car. Something happened, and you’re now a car, for the sake of this example. A car with manual transmission, forgot to mention. Ok, so you’re a manual transmission car and unfortunately gears 2-6 don’t work all of a sudden. You’d need to not rev your engine as much, and go at a slower and steady pace. In this situation, because you’re a car with an engine, you’re working hard. You’d be not burning out by maintaining a steady pace, instead of trying to go as fast as possible.

Work hard, but don’t burn out, however it means to you. If you’re someone who is able to drive fast while stuck in first gear, that’s a good thing. If you’re someone who is happy maintaining a slow burn, that’s great too. Find out at what level you can perform, where you’re still doing your best, and are aware of your personal limits. Don’t compare yourself to others.

Everyone works differently, and performance level does not always correspond to visibility. Somethings may look easy, but actually be very difficult and vice versa. It isn’t reasonable to expect yourself or others to perform at maximum capacity 24/7/365. By finding your own performance level and encouraging others to do the same, you will all be preventing yourselves from burning out.

What is a white label product?

If you’ve ever bought a product from an influencer or as a limited time drop, that product was likely a white label product. White label products are goods that are manufactured by one company, and then re-branded and sold by another company. Makeup, supplements, candles, generic coffee, wine, or any good that can be mass produced can be a white label product. White label products are made by manufacturers that are expert in production, and only sold by other entities that don’t have or want that manufacturing expertise.

White label products are excellent for one time promotional drops, because you don’t need to invest in R&D before releasing your product. White label products are also great for influencers, or other small businesses, because the product already exists in the world, only waiting for a novel re-brand.

Some white labeling services are automated and directly built into website hosting platforms like Shopify. Searching through the Shopify App Store, you can find private labelers for generic coffee brands, generic makeup brands, or services that will print and ship apparel on demand. With the help of these white label services, you can start a coffee brand, a makeup brand, or a clothing company literally overnight.

White label products rely on the re-branding of the influencer or business in order to make sales. White label products are made specifically to be consistent and able to be repeated in mass production. Once branding is applied to the white label product, it becomes either novel or differentiated in how the product is sold.

These white label products are often utilized in the creator economy, as influencers and creators generally don’t have full unlimited access to a manufacturing warehouse. White labels are great because they democratize a lot of product categories so that anyone can build a business within that category. You no longer have to own roasting equipment to be a coffee roaster. What you can do is start with a white label coffee product, build your brand, then buy roasting equipment if you want to specialize more. Now that you can make anything, what do you want to make?

What is a marketplace?

Online marketplaces can sell to people, to other businesses, or create a two sided platform like Uber’s drivers and riders. Marketplaces can cater to any industry or customer. Airbnb creates a marketplace where people can list their homes for rental by visitors, where Airbnb gets a cut with every transaction. eBay is one of the most classic examples of a marketplace, where people can shop for goods that have been listed by other people on eBay. Marketplaces are convenient for both buyers and sellers, and if you can think of a marketplace as a business, they can generate a lot of profit when people use the service.

“A two-sided market exists when both buyers and sellers meet to exchange a product or service, creating both bids to buy and offers (asks) to sell. This can occur when two user groups or agents interact through an intermediary or platform to the benefit of both parties,” explains Investopedia. Examples of this type of marketplace are Airbnb, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, Upwork, eBay, and Uber.

“Food delivery marketplaces are a common example of three-sided marketplaces, in that they are comprised of restaurants, delivery drivers, and consumers. Multi-sided marketplaces are often harder to get off the ground because they need to acquire and retain additional sides of the marketplace,” furthers Andreessen Horowitz.

All marketplaces benefit from something that is called the network effect. This what happens when the amount of people using a product increases over time. When there is ample demand, supply can meet that demand if the business is functional or the idea is salient. If the first person ever to open a new food delivery app specializing in local food is met with ample selection, they’re more likely to recommend the app, which means the delivery driver and restaurants can make more profit.

Online marketplaces can be great businesses because they are generally based off of software, and not so much hardware. Uber doesn’t actually own cars, they just take a cut from every successful trip or food delivery that their reservation software makes. These businesses are resilient, and can scale up and down as necessary. To think about what could be a marketplace, think about where there is demand with unmet supply, and how software can fix that.

Turn garden leftovers into seeds for next year

At the end of the year, when nights begin to get cold and the warmth of the sun becomes scarce, you’ll likely find leftovers in your garden that are either overripe, or found when clearing out for the season. While these spares can be composted whole, with a little bit of effort, you can get enough seeds for next year and more. One pepper can replace a gardens worth of plants, and a single tomato contains more than you’ll need for years to come.

This year, a handful of Garden Salsa peppers, several Black Cherry tomatoes and a single Gypsy pepper were still on plants, or nearby and still intact.

To save seeds from peppers, break open the peppers with your hands. Make sure to break the peppers open with your hands and not with a knife, to ensure that seeds aren’t broken while cutting. Remove the seeds from the center of the pepper, and let them fall into a bowl of water. Once all of your peppers of the same variety have been harvested from, pour out the water over a paper towel, and let dry, and compost the food waste.

To harvest seeds from tomatoes, similarly to saving seeds from peppers, break tomatoes open over a bowl of water, then pour the seed water over a paper towel to dry. For tomatoes, you can cut them to help get to the seeds easier, with less worry of seed damage than with peppers.

Once seeds are dried out, store them in a cool and dry area, overwintering them for the following year. While you don’t have to do this process, it is a good way to save some money and get a head start on next year. Additionally, if you have a specific heirloom variety that you like, this is a guaranteed way to ensure that the variety will be available next year. Have you finished your fall cleanup yet?

Dig up dahlia tubers for planting next year

Dahlias are beautiful, circular flowers that rebloom in prolific color from first bloom until frost. These vigorous growers come back year after year in warmer regions, perennially. In zone 5b, however, dahlias aren’t hardy to the cold winter. This means that you have to re-buy tubers every year, unless you dig up and reuse the roots of the flower.

Wait for a day after a rain when the ground is more workable, and try to dig up the roots of the flowers by pulling on the base of the flower stalks. The tubers should still be intact if you are gentle, and by storing them in a cool and relatively dry environment, they’ll overwinter for next year’s planting.

According to Dahlia.org, “One should store the tubers at a nearly constant, cool temperature. Most growers seem to recommend a range of 40 to 45 degrees. Freezing temperatures ruin tubers, and higher temperatures encourage microorganisms and fungus to destroy them. Also, warm temperatures prompt tubers to develop sprouts and feeder roots too soon. One prominent grower uses a discarded refrigerator, not plugged in, with a plastic gallon container of ice changed every few weeks to provide cooling and humidity.

One should inspect tubers monthly during the winter. Throw away any tubers that show signs of rotting. By checking frequently, one can throw away rotting tubers before the rot spreads to otherwise healthy tubers. Some growers say that if one stores tubers so that they do not touch (as one could in a wood container but not in plastic bags), then rot will not spread. A rotting tuber releases a gas that hastens the developing of eyes and sprouts. A rotted tuber can therefore be useful for tubers that are very late to develop. Anyone who uses a rotted tuber for this purpose should check the bag frequently to ensure that the rot does not spread to the healthy, late tubers.”

How to distribute your own music

It has never been easier to release music. Whether you want to profit off of your work, or just release music as a weekend project, music making and distribution is becoming more simple and more cheap every day. Below are a few of the most immediate way to begin getting your work out there:

Soundcloud

If you’re a new musician and have never distributed your own music, Soundcloud is going to be the fastest way to upload a song to the internet. All you need to do is create an account and upload your song file. You have the opportunity to add as much metadata to your song as you’d like (album art, credits, genre, tags, etc.) but if you just want a link to share that contains your song, Soundcloud can get you up and running in a few minutes. The popular streaming platform even has a genre of music named after it, or soundcloud rap.

YouTube

Do you make music videos or lyric videos for your music? YouTube is a simple way to upload the visuals for your music that has a built in music community of listeners and artists. The majority of the world’s music listening occurs on YouTube, with people opting to watch ad supported videos over paying for subscriptions. “Google has announced that it has 50 million users subscribed to or trying YouTube Music and YouTube Premium, which is a marked increase from the 30 million subscribers it reported in December 2020. This seems to mark a continued trend in people looking to make the jump from the free versions of YouTube and YouTube Music, even as more services are competing in the space,” reports the Verge.

TuneCore, etc.

Before the internet, and even well into the commercialization of it, in order to release music on streaming platforms or make it available on Internet Radio platforms like Pandora, you would need to sign to a record label with distribution infrastructure. If you didn’t want to sign to a label, you could always start your own label, but that was more costly and time intensive than releasing music yourself today. It costs $15/year to be able to release your music on all internet music streaming platforms, a relatively new opportunity for artists. This takes the gatekeepers out of the way, letting artists release music themselves, whenever they want, without giving up a percentage of profits to a label.

Social Media

If you’re just starting out, want to build anticipation for yet to be released on streaming music, or would like to experiment without a formal release, you can release snippets of music or full tracks on social media. With social media livestreaming you can work on music while getting feedback from your audience, then release the final product at a later time. Social media is a great way to feel less pressure when working on music, because it can be considered to be more of a living piece of work, instead of a final track uploaded for distribution.

However you want to release your music, today is the best time in history so far to be a musician. It has never been easier to release music, it has never been more possible to collaborate with others, and this possibility has never existed for more people. The barriers to entry are very low, and you can even make music on your phone. Now that you can release as much music as you want, what is your next song going to be?

Wholesale your artwork or craft with Faire

Ever dreamt of having your handmade ceramic housewares sold in a store like Crate and Barrel or your local boutique, but don’t know where to start or are overwhelmed at the thought of cold calling sales? In the past, to offer a collection to a retail establishment, you as an artist would need to prove that you can deliver a quality product, reliably, and then go out an find every single one of your customers to sell to (not forgetting that you would actually have to make and deliver your product on top of this). Today, with services like Faire, you can list your handmade artwork or craft goods to sell at wholesale to retail and ecommerce establishments.

Taking Faire as an example, if you are a ceramicist that makes a standardized craft product, like a handmade plate, that is unique to you (but still reliably similar enough to be bought in bulk), you can list that item online to be bought at wholesale. The buyers of your craft good can be small boutiques, larger regional chains, or even ecommerce stores that want to dropship unique goods. After you list your product, Faire will then find you buyers, then all you need to do is fulfill orders once they come in.

This capability takes a lot of pressure off of an artisan, as it saves the proactive sales that someone would have to do while starting their business, and creates a passive way to generate sales.

If you’re just starting out as an artisan, getting your first few sales online while building your portfolio of sold goods can be a great way to prove reliability to an in-person boutique. After retaining a few boutique clients, you could be on your way to selling in a big box store like Target or CB2.

Of course, you can opt to blend your sales approach by listing your craft products on a service like Faire, while also reaching out to local retailers or businesses within your community or through cold calling. Having a diversified approach to finding new business will often help in the long run, as online sales can come in when in-person outreach stalls and vice versa.

Selling your work through established channels like retail boutiques and high end retail can be a fantastic goal for an artisan to aspire to and achieve. Retail buyers are always on the lookout for new products to offer in stores, and by utilizing a modern digital tool like Faire to get a jumpstart is a great way to get your work in front of the people who make decisions about what is sold in stores. The best part about Faire is that it is almost completely passive, meaning once you list, the marketplace does the work for you. If you create craft goods, what store would you want to sell in?

Birdsong and birdwatching boosts mental health

Listening to birdsong or encountering birds in your environment has a positive effect on mental health. In a recent study conducted by academics from King’s College London, it was found that hearing birdsong and encountering wild birds in the environment gave a noticeable boost to an individuals mental health. As a bad mood is not generally conducive to getting work done, this effect is an interesting find, considering it may just take a walk outside to get through a case of writer’s block or a spark of creativity.

“A sample of 1292 participants completed a total of 26,856 ecological momentary assessments between April 2018 and October 2021. Everyday encounters with birdlife were associated with time-lasting improvements in mental wellbeing. These improvements were evident not only in healthy people but also in those with a diagnosis of depression, the most common mental illness across the world. These findings have potential implications for both environmental and wildlife protection and mental healthcare policies. Specific measures, aimed at preserving and increasing everyday encounters with birdlife in urban areas, should be implemented,” as reported by Nature.

The next time you’re stressed out at work or finding yourself unable to get a project done, maybe taking a short break with a walk outside (or maybe even listening to some birdsong on YouTube) is just what is needed.

How to learn from Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon Mechanical Turk is a platform created by Amazon that serves as a marketplace for small tasks that need to get done. If your business has thousands of hours of audio that you need transcribed. If your organization wants to double check the results of a computer vision experiment, against a third party, Amazon Mechanical Turk can show your data set to however many people you want to pay for validation. Amazon Mechanical Turk lets people list tasks, that may in the future be completed by artificial intelligence, to be completed by people that get paid for their work.

As Amazon describes, “Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing marketplace that makes it easier for individuals and businesses to outsource their processes and jobs to a distributed workforce who can perform these tasks virtually. This could include anything from conducting simple data validation and research to more subjective tasks like survey participation, content moderation, and more. MTurk enables companies to harness the collective intelligence, skills, and insights from a global workforce to streamline business processes, augment data collection and analysis, and accelerate machine learning development.

While technology continues to improve, there are still many things that human beings can do much more effectively than computers, such as moderating content, performing data deduplication, or research. Traditionally, tasks like this have been accomplished by hiring a large temporary workforce, which is time consuming, expensive and difficult to scale, or have gone undone. Crowdsourcing is a good way to break down a manual, time-consuming project into smaller, more manageable tasks to be completed by distributed workers over the Internet (also known as ‘microtasks’).”

How can your small or future new business learn from Amazon Mechanical Turk? The experience of someone listing a microtask on MTurk is as if an artificial intelligence was completing the work and reporting back to the creator of the job. The reality is that, based on the job specifications, Amazon took that information and listed it to a workforce, who then completed the task. This completed work is then sent back to the job creator, seamlessly and seemingly automatically.

This principle can be applied to many other technologies that people use every day. What is Uber but an app that connects someone to a driver, who then drives that person to where they want to go? What is AirBnb bus a website that shows you places in the real world that you can stay a weekend at? If you order groceries online, doesn’t that set off a local supply chain of people fulfilling that order?

If you aren’t familiar with technology or someone that codes, then technology can seem elusive and magical. Uber can seem like an impossibly difficult concept because of how novel it is to be able to request a taxi service on demand, when the previous non-tech version had such a difficult user experience. Airbnb can seem like an experience of wonder booked from your phone, teleporting you to a fully lived in environment, when you’re really just traveling in a new way. Ordering groceries online is so easy that you can forget that the simplicity is made by several people shopping, packaging and hand delivering your goods.

So what does this all mean for your business? If you’re a small business, a business that hasn’t started yet, or a not-yet-tech-enabled business, ask yourself this question: what simple tech can be used to make my business seem high tech?

If you’re a retail boutique on Main Street, you can very simply bring your live inventory online and make your physical store shoppable from anyone in your community’s computer or phone. If you’re a food truck with a knockout bestseller, you can create a subscription meal service for regular customers. Maybe you want to make a local marketplace for personal trainers, but don’t know how to code. Couldn’t you just make a webpage with an application form, hire trainers, then make an e-commerce website that lists the profiles of your new hires?

To tech enable your business, create a new tech platform, or just start a business online, you don’t have to have years of expert coding knowledge or a team of elite computer programmers on staff. A lot of the work has already been done by the people who made platforms like Squarespace, Shopify, social media, and the tools that work with these platforms. All you need to do is to be able to think about your business creatively, and ask yourself what you want to get done. Then break that down into tasks, and see what online tools are available to achieve those goals. If your business isn’t online yet, how are you going to start?

Artificial intelligence can generate creative works, what now?

Artificial intelligence can now generate unlimited creative works almost instantly. Not necessarily literally, but AI can now create text, images, audio, video, and edit these elements together to present a completed work, on demand. If you are a creative that makes a living working with any of those creative elements, this can be a stressful thing to think about. It isn’t far off to think that artificial intelligence will very soon be able to complete most job functions that a person would otherwise had needed to type into or scroll along a laptop. While some creative jobs may get replaced by artificial intelligence in the future, as long as humans are around, so will careers, jobs, tasks, or even DIY projects to occupy idle time in a fully automated, technology enabled future.

“Stock image giant Shutterstock has announced an extended partnership with OpenAI, which will see the AI lab’s text-to-image model DALL-E 2 directly integrated into Shutterstock ‘in the coming months.’ In addition, Shutterstock is launching a ‘Contributor Fund’ that will reimburse creators when the company sells work to train text-to-image AI models,” reports The Verge.

Imagine walking your favorite art fair, going to a local art gallery opening, or admiring artwork at a nearby cafe. Do you imagine the art fair to be full of artists and people enjoying the day? At the local art gallery opening, would it eventually get boring if week after week the artist at the event was a nondescript supercomputer in a box? While waiting for your brewed tea latte, would you rather read an artists statement generated from an algorithm, or a story from someone in the community?

While jobs like writing news articles on stock prices may get replaced over time by an artificial intelligence, what may remain is the long read analysis written by a human author. An artificial intelligence may end up generating rudimentary social media graphics for business-to-business companies, but a startup clothing brand will likely benefit from hiring a photographer and graphic designer to create custom graphics that incorporate visuals of the product. An AI is already one of the most successful contemporary pop stars, but there will always be an audience for human musical acts that perform live.

Artificial intelligence can also be a tool to help people perform their creative pursuits better, faster and more experimentally. A single person can now generate infinite content, and can use to that new ability to create unlimited social media imagery for the app that they’re coding before they launch. An architect can use image and video generation to develop infinite concepts for clients, with relative ease. AI can be a symbiotic reality for creative people, if used to enhance one’s current ability.

As long as there are people, there will be jobs, tasks and creative pursuits. Creative work may evolve, but it will likely stay around as long as people do. While people are around, there will likely also be a need for human stories. Art is less about the work than the story of it. The context of artwork is what ascribes meaning to an object. If you made an artwork that you like, it’s partly because you made it. If you’re interested in the story of an artist, you may also find that meaning in their work. Even if you enjoy artwork just for its visual or craft appeal, there’s usually a cultural history to dive into that gives greater meaning to the work. Just because AI is here, doesn’t mean opportunities for people to be creative are going away. Even on the off chance that all jobs get automated by a computer, you may still want to paint a painting to pass the time.

Have you tried Upwork to find work?

If you’re a writer, editor, producer, designer, marketer, analyst or perform any other service that can be done for a client remotely and haven’t checked out Upwork yet, it may be worth it. Upwork and other online job marketplaces are excellent ways to market your services to the entire online world of people who are trying to hire for their jobs. By tapping into online job marketplaces you can reach millions of hiring managers and independent businesses, who are trying to hire for gig-based jobs, expanding your total addressable market to the entire online world.

When you list your services on an online job marketplace like Upwork, your immediate surroundings become less important, because you can reach an almost limitless audience.

In a report published by Upwork, the benefits to becoming a digital freelancer are almost obvious:

“Freelancers are seeing more demand for their work -- Twice as many freelancers have seen an increase in demand in the past year as have seen a decrease (32% increase, versus 15% decrease).

• Technology is helping freelancers find work -- Nearly seven in ten (69%) freelancers said technology had made it easier to find freelance work, and 42% said they have done freelance work via the Internet.

• As demand increases, so does reputation -- Almost two out of three (65%) freelancers said freelancing as a career path is more respected today than it was three years ago.

• The potential for earnings is helping to drive freelancing’s growth -- 80% of non-freelancers surveyed said they would be willing to do additional work outside of their primary job if it was available and enabled them to make more money.

• There’s room for growth -- Three times as many freelancers expect their hours to increase in the next year as expect their hours to decrease (38% expect to increase hours, versus 12% expect to decrease).

• Millennials (workers under 35) are more likely to freelance -- 38% of Millennials are freelancing (compared to 32% of those over 35) and Millennials are also most optimistic about the future of the freelance job market, with 82% saying that the best days are ahead (compared to 74% of those over 35).”

You no longer have to find every single one of your clients yourself, in your local area. You don’t have to find a way to advertise your services independently, and you don’t even need to make freelancing your main job. Online job marketplaces like Upwork make it so that you can reach out to millions of potential gigs, regardless of where you live. This means that you can build your portfolio a bit faster and easier than you would have if you had to do it all yourself. Technology, like digital marketplaces, does a lot of the work for you, you then just have to actually complete what you’re hired to do.

Hardware and software has made it possible to do anything

Even just ten years ago, in order to open an online store with premium quality product photography and attention grabbing videos on social media, you would have to spend thousands of dollars upfront—before even making a sale or listing your first product. Fast forward to today, in 2022, modern smartphones and online tools have cut that cost down to almost nothing. If already have a relatively new smartphone (with a good enough camera and video capability) and an internet connection, you already have all of the tools you need to start an online business.

A decade ago, in the faraway land of 2012, Squarespace had yet to launch commerce tools. Shopify was available, yet not as simple to use as today. You still needed some time to learn the specificities of whatever tool you were using. Today, in 2022, Squarespace has commerce tools (in addition to scheduling tools, membership tools, the ability to sell directly on social media, etc.) that are simple to use, and take very little time to get up and running with. Shopify is simple to use today, and now even offers warehouse management for big businesses. Most platforms you’ll use today are generally pretty similar to figure out, and much more user friendly.

Today, there exists a combination of software and hardware that makes it simple to start a business online. This is a possibility that is so new, that the effects have yet to really be seen.

Before this new availability of easy to use and widely available technologies, to start a business you’d need to rent a space, find a way to reach an audience, figure out payment processing for yourself, and still have time to actually run your business. Now, it is possible to start any business that you want, online, and sell on day one.

While you’re likely not going to develop a self sufficient online business overnight, after some time, you really can build something to support yourself for the long term. According to ZipRecruiter, “as of Oct 18, 2022, the average annual pay for an Ecommerce Business in the United States is $68,139 a year. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $32.76 an hour. This is the equivalent of $1,310/week or $5,678/month”

The ecommerce market is also relatively new in scope, despite having had players like Amazon around for what seems like forever. According to Statista, “in 2020, e-commerce sales accounted for over 14 percent of all retail sales in the United States and were forecast to rise to nearly 22 percent by 2025.” This means that the vast majority of people are still buying in stores. Ecommerce has yet to even get close to 50% of total retail, meaning that the online market only has room to grow.

Now that the physical limitations and barriers to entry are mostly out of the way, save for a monthly fee to keep a website running, or the cost of your phone bill, anything is possible. If you want to start a clothing business where you sell designs that are extremely niche, you don’t have to worry about finding enough people in your local community to support that business. You can just sell online, and find your place within the online marketplace. If you want to sell meal prep kits from your kitchen, you can now do that from Instagram. If you can think of it, it can probably be a business. So now that anything is possible, what do you want to start?

Nothing is new, everything is new

Nothing is new. You’re likely never going to think of a completely original business or idea. If that’s holding you back from starting something, consider this: Apple didn’t invent the smartphone. Canon, Nikon or Sony didn’t invent the digital camera. Did McDonald’s invent the cheeseburger? Probably not. Thought Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, they are the leading smartphone manufacturer in the United States. Kodak invented the digital camera, but other brands offer the industry’s best reviewed cameras. McDonald’s absolutely did not invent the burger, but they did create a process that has made their business the most successful in its category.

Nothing is new. This is a good thing because that means you don’t necessarily need to invent something out of thin air to create a successful business. You don’t need to create a sublime work of artistic genius to sell consistently, and make a living on Etsy (in fact, it’s probably better if you don’t). If you want to open a coffee shop, an idea that has been done before, then what is your differentiator?

You don’t need to wait to think of a brand new idea, as long as you aren’t directly copying other people or infringing on copyright. All you need to do is think about what you want to do, and put your own personal spin on it. Are you starting a clothing brand? Are you trying to convey a specific message or idea with your work? What kind of products do you want to sell? What is your personal take on your idea, either aesthetically, rhetorically or in process?

If you want to start a business, side project or creative pursuit and have been waiting for a completely original idea to start, then free yourself of that limitation. Once you begin trying out ideas you will figure out your own style. Learn from your progress and follow where your work leads you. Stay mindful of your initial ideas, and don’t be afraid to pivot after finding out new things based off your progress. What do you want to work on?

Don’t know where to start? Good

If you’re thinking of starting a new project, creating a business or beginning a creative outlet but have no idea where to start, that may actually be a blessing in disguise. Sure you don’t need to think too much about what you’re making if you’re just drawing a quick sketch or painting, but if you’re thinking about starting something more long term without a solid idea, you may be intimidated. Luckily, if you’re thinking about starting something new, you likely already have an idea of where you want to go. All you have to do is try something, and listen to yourself.

It’s easy to look at successful companies or masterworks of an artist and think that those ideas came to the creator fully formed, and created in one go. However, this is usually never the case. Amazon was originally going to be called Kadabra, and started only selling books. Facebook (now Meta) started as a less than kind website where people rated other people on their college campuses based on their physical appearance. Airbnb started as a company where you could rent air mattresses in homes. The more you look into your favorite companies, the more you’ll see that success is more a factor of persistence and change, than clairvoyant vision and perfect execution.

You may or may not be working on the next Facebook, but if you aren’t, and just want to get started on working on something, then just begin to think about where you want to end up. Think about what motivates you to get started on your project. Don’t get too hung up on specifics. Be general with your thoughts, and consider that is realistic for you to accomplish.

If you only want to start a creative side project, don’t oversubscribe and commit to yourself something that is too much work compared to your available time. Setting realistic goals will help you feel positive about your progress, and not get down on yourself by not meeting unrealistic goals.

Anything that you want to do, just break down your goals into smaller milestones. If you want to start a business, then break that up into setting up a website, setting up your social media, incorporating your business, and launching. Those are all different things to work on, and by separating the tasks, they will become more manageable and satisfying to work on. Anything is possible, just not immediately. Where are you going to start?

Now growing at Homestead Creative (October 2022)

Homestead Creative’s first indoor farm is already showing growth a little over a month after first planting. The 4”x4” grow tent space contains five 10 gallon grow bags, two 5 gallon grow bags, a potted Jade plant and a one and a half year old Jade plant propagation. Outdoors, two flower grow bags are being prepared for 50 bulbs of daffodils and tulips.

Within the 10 gallon grow bags are Yukon Gold potatoes, planted on September 18th. The potatoes begun sprouting around October 14th, increasing vigor daily, watering only as needed. The potatoes are planted in potting soil comprised of alfalfa meal, bone meal, earthworm castings, sandy loam, kelp meal, fish meal, forest humus and moss.

Planted in the 5 gallon grow bags are Grey Oyster mushrooms, planted on October 18th. The mushrooms’ rye grain based spawn are growing in a substrate made of straw. The mushrooms are expected to inoculate the straw based substrate and fruit within 3-4 weeks.

The Jade plant propagation grew from a leaf that dropped off of the other Jade plant in the terracotta pot. Succulents can be propagated by taking a leaf or a cutting, and placing on top of a bed of soil, watering infrequently.

A part of Homestead Creative’s vision is a symbiosis of nature and creativity. As plants grow, so do creative ideas. Ideas grow from one another, and similarly this first planting will inform future plantings at Homestead Creative.

Start collecting emails as soon as possible

Whatever your business is, you should think about collecting the email addresses of your customers as early in your business as possible. Email addresses are the best way to reach customers. You can reach out directly to an audience of people who have already purchased from you with new products, services, sales or announcements. If you don’t spam your mailing list, you’ll likely keep subscribers, and gain more as you post more content or grow as a business. Over time, this can become an invaluable asset to your business, and possibly your most successful sales channel.

You can use your mailing list for anything related to your business or industry. You can write about the latest news about your business, discuss future plans, link to blog posts, announce future products, offer pre-sales, really anything you can think of that gets your business out there. Mailing lists are a direct way to reach people who have opted into hearing from your business.

Whatever you use you mailing list for, keep track of your open rate and unsubscribe rate to inform future mailings. If you notice that your open rate is going down and people are unsubscribing, you may need to either send email less frequently, or invest more time in the quality of your mailings. Infrequent and information rich mailings can payoff by not annoying customers, and giving them something that is worth their time to read or shop. An added benefit to reduced email frequency is that you can work on your emails over time and with less stress than a weekly or daily commitment.

As for a base metric to consider, “Your conversion rate tells you, in no-nonsense terms, the efficacy of your public-facing content. If 6% of your website visitors join your mailing list or make a purchase, your website is 6% effective.

But here’s the thing: That's actually very good. In fact, a ‘good’ website conversion rate falls between 2% and 5% across all industries. Industry-specific conversion rates vary quite a bit more,” according to Mailchimp. If you’re an artist or creator that has an engaged online audience, your open rate will likely be a much higher percentage than a big box store. Once you figure out your own baseline open rate, check to see over time what content is more popular with your specific audience.

According to ConstantContact, “the average ROI through email marketing is $36 for every $1 spent. Simply put, you invest a dollar and in return receive 36 times from it.”

Every business is different, but one thing that is common amongst all businesses is that it’s best to have a direct line of communication with your customer base or audience. If you don’t think about doing this early enough in your business, you may overspend on advertising or spend too much time focusing on reaching new customers than working on your business.

If you have a retail storefront, you can collect email addresses at your cash register. If you’re an artist that sells at art fairs or a farmer selling at a farmer’s market; either keeping a signup list handy, or integrating email signup into your Square Reader can be a great way to build a mailing list. Most website hosting platforms like Squarespace and Shopify have email collection and newsletter functionality built into their products natively.

However you decide to use your mailing list, figure out a way as early as possible to be able to reach your customers or audience directly. Over time, a list of email addresses can grow into a growing customer base that can be infinitely rewarding for your business, depending on what you sell. Obviously a luxury real estate broker’s mailing list may be worth more over time than a graphic t-shirt makers, but what’s the same is the direct line of communication to an established customer base.

Planning your Zone 5b garden in the fall

When should I plant in Zone 5b? Whether you’re new to gardening or someone who has been growing vegetables your whole life, it is helpful to see a list of commonly grown vegetables, and when to plant them. This helps if you’re planning for next year or checking to see what can be grown at last minute. The chart provided below, made by the University of Illinois Extension, lists whatever you may want to plant, and when to plant it. Click through to see if planting outdoors by seed or transplant is recommended.

If an outdoor transplant is recommended, check the germination time for whatever seeds you’re propagating, and count that time back from the recommended plant date. That will be the recommended day to start germinating seeds indoors. You can also find ready-to-plant vegetable plants at your local garden center.

Go for a walk

You should probably go for a walk. Metaphorically, literally, however you take your walk, maybe a walk is something to consider. Going for a walk can clear you head, help you generate new ideas, process current problems, or focus on future goals. Going for a walk with another person can help you do all of these things with the added benefit of another person’s perspective, while also keeping social and in touch with another. Going for a walk by yourself can help you learn more about yourself, think about what you’re working on, or figure out how to improve personally or in business.

Going for a walk, with an intention in mind, is essentially dedicating a specific amount of time to a goal. If you go for a walk on a few mile long trail, then you’re going to have a lot of time to think. You may as well make that thinking productive. In a business sense, going for a walk to think about your business objectives can help you explore new ideas and drill down on current operations. In a personal sense, going on a walk with an open mind will let you get in tune with yourself, with time to think, or just let thoughts pass along with your footsteps.

Going for a walk can even help you from getting too stressed out in business, according to Harvard Health, “getting 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise, such as brisk walking, is important for all aspects of health, including stress management.”

Going for a walk can even mean taking time out of a full day on the laptop to recharge during work from home, doing something offline. Watering houseplants can be staggered to become a daily 10 minute task (one plant Monday, another Tuesday, etc.). Doing 10 pushups and 10 sit-ups is an easy way to get some quick endorphins and light exercise for the day. Taking a break from typing to make freshly squeezed lemon water, with a lemon and a carafe of water can be a delicious, simple thing to look forward to in the day.

Going for a walk is taking a short amount of time out of your day or week to get outside (or outside the day) and focus on something peaceful or productive personally. By taking that time for yourself, you can create space for yourself to ask yourself questions about your business or life, and figure out what you want to do. You can process things that are happening currently, or reflect upon the past to learn. You can simply be, and recharge. Going for a walk can be whatever you make it to be. Find some regular time to do something positive for yourself and make it a routine.

You can start a creative business with $10

You can start a creative business with ten dollars. Less even. Under the right circumstances, you could probably start a creative business for zero dollars, and some imagination. What is a creative business? A creative business is a business that generates capital, or dollars, via a means of creativity. A creative business can be anything. A creative business is a lemonade stand, a creative business is a fashion brand, selling your art, or starting a business for a craft or the trade you work on. A business doesn’t have to be a billion dollars yet, or ever. A business can be something where you start small and grow into a self sustaining income, over time.

How can a creative business that can sustain someone’s living expenses be created for $10? By starting with an idea and $10, you can grow to become anything you want to be, with effort and focus. If you want to create a business selling art, you can purchase a good amount of art materials from Walmart, and list you art works on Etsy for $0.20 each. If you want to create a fashion brand, blank t-shirts can cost as low as $3-4 (from, again, Walmart) or you can curate ideas (and make money) by thrifting and reselling on Depop. If you offer a service, you can create a month’s worth of Google Ads for $10 and teach what you love to do.

If you have a lot of friends or a well developed social network, you can sell directly to people that you already know. You can also tap into the global e-commerce market of billions of people by selling online. By utilizing online marketplaces, social media to promote your work, and in-person events and networks, you can jumpstart a creative business almost overnight.

The idea is where to start. What do you want to do with your business and where do you want to end up? Is this something that you’d like to become your main source of income, or keep as passive income? Is there something specific that you’d like to accomplish with your business itself? What do you want to work on?

If you’re already making things in the world, these answers may be more clear. If you’re just starting out, these are things to think about and ask yourself. The answers will guide yourself to where you want to go.

Ten dollars is all you need, and again, probably even less. Even just thinking about what you’d like to do is technically working on your business, and thoughts are free, so I guess you just need to think about what you’d like to do. You don’t even need a name or LLC for your business yet. Formalizing your business costs a bit more, but you don’t need to do that until you want to start making more money, or make your business your primary income. So what do you want to work on?

Internal podcasts for businesses are great employee resources

If you have ever listened to a podcast before, you’re probably aware of how dense they can be with information, especially over a long period of time. By keeping an internal podcast for your business, you can create that same information dense resource for your own business. Creating an internal podcast, that is only accessible by your employees, can help you set goals for your business while keeping everyone informed with the steps to get there. Your podcast can be a weekly 15-minute business update, a monthly hour, or released infrequently as company-wide communication is needed.

This podcast can be created at zero to very little cost to your organization. Your spend is essentially however polished you want the final podcast to be. If you’re just recording yourself on your phone and that’s all the podcast needs to be, then your new company resource essentially only costs your time. If you want a little bit more production value or programmed segments for your internal podcast, then the cost can run you a manageable amount that can be done at a DIY scale.

With the convenience of your employees being able to just listen to a podcast about company wide announcements, like events and special projects, you may reach more employees in a new way. Dive into depth about specific ideas and how you want your business to operate. You can interview business leaders and managers of your business to explore how employees can improve business results. Take employee feedback for discussion or suggestions for topics

An internal podcast really doesn’t have to be something to be intimidated by. It is easy to record, edit and upload a podcast to a service like Spotify’s Anchor that will give you a private link to send your employees, or include in company-wide communications.

Over time, an internal podcast can become a deeply information rich resource for your employees that takes shape in progress. It can be a minimal time investment for great long term reward, or a fun new project to try that will have good impact for your business. A prompt to start: what does your business do and what keeps it profitable?