00:02:59.100So if you printed it on, say, a dish towel, I would totally buy it.
00:03:04.240And usually I hate unsolicited advice, but that was actually really good advice.
00:03:08.500And so I went. That's totally the sort of thing that a customer would say and you'd be like, uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. But I was I learned to screen print at this community printmaking center that's still there. It's really fantastic. And I went to like it was a drop in. You know, you come in with a project and they walk you through it.
00:03:31.120And I was going all the time because it was 2009 and I was unemployed.
00:04:49.480And how do you think about your own business today?
00:04:51.720Because most freelancers I know, really think of themselves as like a collection of different
00:04:56.720income streams right like there's just a lot of things that they're doing so that they're not
00:05:02.400relying on just one income stream because that's precarious in this environment so yeah how do you
00:05:07.460think about it yeah i am i a freelancer i'm not sure i'm a freelancer i think like i am partly
00:05:15.680because what i do primarily is licensing and so licensing is different from freelance and that
00:05:21.780freelance, you're actually providing a service that's specific to that client. Whereas with
00:05:26.640licensing, I am essentially renting out a piece of art to a company for a specific reason, for a
00:05:34.280specific amount of time, for a specific amount of money. And so they're coming to me and I've
00:05:39.080already created a body of work for the most part, like 95% of the time. And so that's part of my
00:05:46.420income stream. So am I a freelancer? Maybe. Right. And we're going to talk about this in
00:05:52.460the episode. Like, what do you call yourself? Like, am I a small business owner when I employ
00:05:58.040myself? Like, does that make you a small business owner? Where's the line between freelance and
00:06:03.700non-freelance if we're all self-incorporated? Like, are we all both in some way if we're playing
00:06:08.080freelance taxes? Right. That's a whole nother thing, too. So yeah, it's really complicated.
00:06:13.260Yeah, I'm paying my social security tax and I'm paying what my employer would pay as social security tax.
00:06:18.940So, yeah, you know, I am as I consider myself a small business, partly also because I design and manufacture and sell my own products.
00:06:28.720And so I've got that arm of the business as well.
00:06:31.540And I'm importing and I'm dealing with all kinds of things that I think can be scary to people if they've never done them before.
00:06:38.340But once you do it once, it's like, oh, this is super simple.
00:06:42.040yeah if it's not simple like you get through it yeah yeah it's not any more complex than like
00:06:46.780learning how to use I don't know excel or something like that you just need to learn it
00:06:50.740one of the reasons we wanted to have you on the show is because you do talk in the sort of meta
00:06:57.880way about the difficulties of owning a small business and just how fraud it is so why do you
00:07:06.260like talking about being a small business owner and like just how all the dynamics work?
00:07:12.620I think a lot of times if you're used to having a full-time job working for someone else or if
00:07:18.420you don't work, you think that in some ways this is easy and that it is not interconnected to other
00:07:26.360things and that it's a really good way to make money. And so I want folks to understand that
00:07:32.220this is actually not easy at all that there are a lot of moving parts that in many ways I think as
00:07:39.040a small business owner and as an artist quite honestly I am the canary in the coal mine I'm
00:07:45.700more subject to the whims of changes in the government and in policy than people who have
00:07:52.260the cushion of a large corporation or even a smaller corporation buffering them against
00:07:58.820some of those changes and so I like everything from tariffs to health care to social security
00:08:07.460like all of that stuff really impacts me in this way that I viscerally feel that I don't think
00:08:13.480people feel right away when they have a regular job yeah um and I also want people to understand
00:08:19.340like art is a business um it is something that I do for fun quite honestly sometimes it's not fun
00:08:26.300But also because it is a career path. It has its ups and downs and it should be treated seriously. Because if there's one thing that we all consume, it actually is art and creativity, even if we don't realize that that's what we're doing.
00:08:41.020Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that. I think the numbers show that more and more people are trying to figure out a path forward that doesn't involve being tethered to a larger corporation. But at the same time, they're trying to figure out how to insulate themselves from some of those changes. Like you said, being the canary in the coal mine. I'm thinking about health insurance changes right now.
00:09:03.340And if you are, right, if you don't have a partner who is employed by a corporation that is providing health insurance, like how that changes what is and isn't possible.
00:09:23.800I've been running a small freelance business doing mostly graphic design and marketing support for small business and nonprofit clients for years now.
00:09:32.580And I'm really struggling with how hard it is to make a decent living.
00:09:36.720We already know that MLMs are predatory, and the classic gig economy apps are too.
00:09:42.060Is freelancing as a design professional just another hustle culture sham now?
00:09:47.480Promising fulfillment and independence, while basically no one will pay you enough for your expertise,
00:09:53.460plus the overhead of running your own shop,
00:09:55.800requiring you to do business development on increasingly unshittified social media platforms
00:10:01.140with less and less reach every month, especially in the age of software, which democratizes design
00:10:08.160in quotes, and now so-called AI design tools. It seems like any potential this avenue had to
00:10:14.720be legitimately workable is gone. Is it just me? I don't think I mean, no, it's not just you. Oh
00:10:24.240my gosh. I mean, that completely encapsulates my journey over the last 15 years since I started
00:10:30.380doing this seriously yeah yeah 2010 is really when I started treating this as a business
00:10:36.080so first things first every few years some new design tool comes out and everybody's like oh
00:10:43.880god this is democratizing design where are the designers going to go what are they going to do
00:10:47.940yeah we're still here so like I went on to Canva and I can't figure it out to save my life and I
00:10:54.920do fairly complex things in in photoshop so i i have no clue but all the other stuff like
00:11:01.680absolutely yes we're exploiting ourselves um in so many ways and i think what ends up happening
00:11:08.220is we're not valuing our own labor because no one values our own labor yeah but they also don't
00:11:14.860value their labor and so like we are in a society a country where nobody's labor is valued like i
00:11:23.420it's and it's only getting worse right um yeah I think about the work so I have a part-time
00:11:30.620consulting job where I do social media for a clothing company and I spent six and a half hours
00:11:37.720filming editing doing voiceover for a two and a half minute video for two and a half minute reel
00:11:44.560yeah and I think about how that labor is largely invisible to everybody who consumes it right
00:11:51.460Yes. And it's being presented on a platform where people are just scrolling through all day long, like myself included. And so and it's right. It's one of those unshittified platforms where Instagram used to be great. Yeah, I'll be honest. Like I have a career because and I have a following because I started on Instagram in like 2012. Right. And I had all these projects and I got a lot of followers.
00:12:14.680and if anybody wants to find out how to build an instagram following it's like well you go back to
00:12:20.3802010 and you start you know hosting in 2012 right um i don't but yeah it's not just you and i don't
00:12:29.520know what to say except that in some ways social media is not a good place to do business development
00:12:36.960yeah it's maybe a good place to start but you've got to move on from there yep and that a lot of
00:12:43.080the work that I have gotten for freelance work, like when I've done illustration has really come
00:12:48.620from personal relationships that I've had with people in the industry. But it can be really hard
00:12:54.760like when you don't have those connections in the industry to get connections in the industry.
00:13:00.500Right. No, I know. Well, and this also makes me think of this like, really difficult tension
00:13:07.220between artists like shouldn't talk about money and shouldn't like conceive of themselves as
00:13:14.000business people I get this all the time with writing right like with journalists it's like
00:13:18.100if you think of yourself as a business then it somehow lessens the quality of the writing
00:13:22.840but also you have to live and I also see it in the culture study newsletter in the comments a lot
00:13:29.580there's a really great pushback I think on like sometimes people will post a link to some earrings
00:13:35.820or to a quilt or something and they'll be like it's so expensive but like it's worth it and
00:13:42.540i'll see comments that say yeah it is expensive but that's what the labor is worth right and so
00:13:48.800there is i think this understanding that like stuff shouldn't be as cheap as we've come to
00:13:53.800understand it and that someone charging what that labor is worth does not mean that like
00:13:59.400they hate poor people do you know what like there's that right there's like a flattening
00:14:04.040sometimes in the discourse of like, if something's expensive, then you hate poor people.
00:14:08.940But poor people also need income, right? So, right, like, if you can't devalue my labor,
00:14:14.920and then say that me devaluing my labor, somehow elevates people who actually should be paid more
00:14:20.800for whatever it is that they're doing. Right, right, right. Totally.
00:14:25.460The logic just breaks. But I think we're also very used to online, like trying to make these
00:14:31.560caveats about like you know this is exquisite but also I know it's expensive and you're like it's
00:14:38.080expensive for a reason it's not expensive because it's a brand you know per se it's expensive
00:14:42.920because of the labor that someone put into making that thing right well and also like I'm 50 years
00:14:49.580old and I remember when I was a teenager that sweaters were like 60 and 70 dollars right um
00:14:57.160and that you got maybe two or three sweaters a year.
00:15:00.220I went to Catholic school, so I had a uniform.
00:15:02.480So my mom was more willing to spend that money.
00:15:05.320But I go into stores now and sweaters are $60 and $70.
00:15:10.520And so everything else has gotten expensive.
00:15:33.440And it turned into, in many ways, folks wanting me to provide them with, like, step-by-step explanations of what I was doing, which then was even more labor.
00:19:29.880you know who it's the perfect gift for it's for anyone who is always saying like oh i saw that
00:19:35.520picture that you posted on instagram can you send it to me aka parents and it's such an easy way for
00:19:43.280them to have access to the photo not just to like store it but also to have it in their homes you
00:19:49.100just text the photo to a number and then it shows up in their aura frame okay it's ridiculous it's
00:19:56.000amazing. Sometimes people get digital picture frames and they load like 12 photos and then
00:20:02.200those just rotate and it gets old. But the fact that you continue adding photos, like it becomes
00:20:07.480much more delightful. It's like a surprise that, you know, they're in their kitchen and they look
00:20:11.320over and here's a new picture that they haven't seen. With Aura, you get unlimited free photos
00:20:16.280and videos. You just have to download the Aura app and connect it to Wi-Fi. You can preload photos
00:20:21.580before it ships. So like, let's say you're getting it for someone and you're not going to be there to
00:20:25.800load photos when they open it up. You can actually preload the photos before it arrives to them.
00:20:30.960You can also personalize it with a message before it arrives, and then you can share photos and
00:20:36.100videos effortlessly straight from your phone all year long. Every frame also comes packaged in a
00:20:41.840premium gift box. It's quite nice. I've seen it with no price tag. For a limited time, you can
00:20:47.120visit AuraFrames.com and get $45 off Aura's best-selling Carver Matte Frames, named number
00:20:53.160one by Wirecutter by using promo code CULTURE at checkout. That's A-U-R-A frames.com promo code
00:21:01.640CULTURE. This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year. So order now
00:21:06.660before it ends. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.
00:21:11.880The Culture Study podcast is brought to you by bookshop.org. Here at Culture Study, we love
00:21:18.120bookshop.org all of the links that we use in all of the newsletters whenever we're linking out in
00:21:23.520the podcast it always goes to bookshop.org because where you shop for your books matters when you
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00:22:09.160Melody, what are you reading right now?
00:22:10.800Ooh, I am currently reading, I started it last night, a romance, a historical romance called A Caribbean Heiress in Paris.
00:22:19.400And it's so delightful because it's about a woman from the Dominican Republic who is in Paris trying to sell casks of her family's rum.
00:22:32.340And of course, her inheritance hangs on her success.
00:22:36.300and then there's a handsome Scottish man
00:23:05.700So that is next on my TBR list. Again, that's bookshop.org, code culture to get 10% off your next order at bookshop.org.
00:23:24.840Okay, next question. This comes from Carolyn.
00:23:27.720In my experience, hiring someone to do bookkeeping, promotion, social media, and other admin tasks would be really ideal.
00:23:35.160The administrative work drains time, energy, and passion that we need to do our actual artistic and creative work.
00:23:41.340However, paying someone to do that admin work would cut into profits so much that it seems like it might not be possible to earn enough to make the artistic part of the work financially sustainable.
00:23:52.460It just really seems like we have to do all the admin labor ourselves.
00:23:56.140I would love to hear thoughts on and tips to manage this tension.
00:24:04.460I hire out bookkeeping because if I didn't pay Crystal, my bookkeeper, to do my bookkeeping,
00:24:12.560I would be overdrawn all the time.0.79
00:24:17.480And also it would make tax time terrible.
00:24:20.040I also have a tax accountant now who I've put off for years and years and years because I'm bad at filing quarterly taxes and I always feel like I'm going to be judged for that.
00:24:31.140I mean, the truth is I went in with a profit and loss sheet that Crystal had prepared and he was like, you're so organized.
00:24:38.120But it's September 28th and we're just now working on my taxes.
00:24:47.480I have a shop where there have been years when I've done six figures in sales, and I'm mostly the person fulfilling those orders because I don't have consistent enough sales, because I don't have consistent enough product development in order to merit having a full-time or even a part-time person.
00:25:09.540So my advice is always to hire out for the thing you hate the most.
00:25:13.860And the thing I hate the most is the bookkeeping.
00:25:18.820Booking, I don't have to do a lot with.
00:25:21.440I do have an attorney for all of my licensing stuff who is worth the money.
00:25:25.760And quite honestly, if I am offered a licensing project that will cost me more in attorney's fees to review the contract, to review and negotiate, I just don't take the project on.
00:25:35.760And I will tell them up front, like, I know I can't do this because even for that amount of money, that's like two hours of my attorney's time.
00:25:45.200and I'm not going to make anything that for me was really difficult to transition into like
00:25:50.680looking at what was offered for say like a speaking gig that I otherwise maybe would want
00:25:55.400to do but then thinking about how long it would take me to get there how much working time that
00:26:01.180I wouldn't be like how much I wouldn't be able to work how much it would take off of me in terms of
00:26:05.640like extra labor, just tiredness, right? And then saying no for that reason. But I just, I was
00:26:13.800so precarious for so long that I always was like, oh, they want to give me $1,000? That's so much
00:26:20.960money. But it's not when you calculate those other things, but it was like to get to that point,
00:26:29.320it takes, I think, a learning curve. Melody and I were actually talking about, do we maybe want to
00:26:34.340like hire someone to handle some of like the nitty gritty stuff. And Melody said something
00:26:39.680that I think about all the time is that like, I don't want to train someone like it'd be so much
00:26:44.360work to train someone. Like I just want 120% of me. Right. Or you can find that person who needs
00:26:55.380very little training, but that will cost you, right? Like that is, again, that is consulting
00:26:59.820prices that is a premium and not like a college recent college grad who just needs some work on
00:27:05.640the side totally totally and so both of us like find ourselves in this position of like do we
00:27:11.000want to do that work to either find or pay someone to do that 0.2 or do we just want to like
00:27:16.180just freaking do it like just be better at organizing our time or something like that
00:27:21.840melody what's your thinking on this as also a small business owner yeah i tried last year to
00:27:28.460hire someone to take over some of my admin. And it just like didn't happen. I didn't, again,
00:27:35.860I just like didn't have time to really explain what I needed. And then all of these things that
00:27:41.620are in my admin process that only make sense in my head. And if one of those things were to
00:27:46.640disappear, I wouldn't know how to do the other things. And so now I just try to block off every
00:27:54.160Monday morning is admin time and so rather than doing it piecemeal which then I feel like it just
00:28:02.160expands and fills the whole day totally so I try to just limit everything to a certain time block
00:28:06.700but then I did like Jen I just got an accountant that is changing my life because she just every
00:28:14.260quarter emails and says this is how much you need to pay the IRS and I'm like I don't even have to
00:28:19.320get out my calculator app like so that would be the thing and i'm like very much looking forward
00:28:25.700they converted me to an s corp which is like the best thing that's happened to me this year
00:28:29.700so i'm just really looking forward to not having to think about any of that but yeah all of the
00:28:36.060rest of it i'm like somewhere last year i was like too busy to train anyone and this year i'm kind of
00:28:41.760like i don't have enough that i need to train someone yeah so i agree with jen hire out the
00:28:47.720you hate the most if you can yeah or that gives you the most anxiety and I think for all of us0.96
00:28:52.220like having an accountant who knows their shit like makes you less too terrified of the IRS0.97
00:28:57.560yeah um and I will also say I was audited last year because um of all the small payments coming0.97
00:29:05.000from from stripe payments from subscriptions and so the state of Washington audited me and when I
00:29:11.080first got the notification like I had this incredible fear response of like they're gonna
00:29:16.500take everything or something I don't know where that came from but I guess just like years of
00:29:20.700people saying the IRS is scary and being audited is scary but my accountant took care of everything
00:29:25.560it was totally fine I they the state actually owed me money and I think like having that assurance
00:29:31.820that your accountant will take care of it shout out to Siobhan my accountant um is really lovely
00:29:39.840oh can I say one more thing that I was just thinking about yeah I think I understand this
00:29:46.280trade-off of like I can't cut into my profits by hiring out this work but if you hire out that work
00:29:53.580you're going to have more time and more creative energy to make a little bit more money so that's
00:30:00.580also something that has changed a lot for me in the last few years of like hiring out even
00:30:07.380subcontracting some smaller projects to give me time to do better work on the bigger projects
00:30:13.500Well, and that's the thing is it's not necessarily, oh, I'm going to have more time to like heads down, write a piece or you know what I mean?
00:30:20.720Like sometimes it's extra time that will allow you to recover to do better creative work.
00:32:26.440I love that you bring up the craft fair.
00:32:28.320We have like a Saturday market on the island, and it's just people who come with their stuff
00:32:33.040And, like, first of all, it also, like, just feels really good to be talking to people about your artwork.
00:32:39.160And even if they don't buy, like, to answer questions, I don't know, it's a real community thing for sure.
00:32:44.700And especially if you're a college student, people get really excited to meet students and talk to them and ask them about their lives and want to support them.
00:32:55.260I mean, I would much rather do that than spend, again, six and a half hours filming a video of you crocheting.
00:33:02.500Like, is it really going to drive sales or is it just going to get more people to follow you and ask you questions about what it is you're doing and how they can do that?
00:35:12.040But now I have a base amount that I have to pay myself every month because I have, like, a mortgage now, and I qualified for that mortgage because I had three or four really, really good years of a lot of income, and I looked really great to banks for, like, a flash in a pan.
00:41:26.300So if you're a small business owner and your accountant isn't offering you those ways of saving on your taxes by putting money into your IRA, talk to them about it.
00:41:37.180Because it's a really important way for you to set aside money and also pay less in a pretty steep tax rate that we pay as freelancers.
00:49:31.440It's not coming from a place of integrity.
00:49:34.420it's not coming from my own voice um or i will try to copy a trend and then it ends up looking
00:49:40.100like my work anyway and it doesn't look like the trend which is also really a good starting point
00:49:44.560for anybody um totally right but do do your thing and if it's a hobby like seriously have fun and
00:49:52.760don't worry about the money hopefully you're recouping some of your expenses but that's
00:49:57.440really all you need to know that's like for the dahlias like our thing is like we want to like
00:50:01.760not lose money and like maybe make enough money to go on a fun trip at some point like that's the
00:50:07.500goal and that's like a really a lovely side hustle goal very different than people who are farming
00:50:12.580full-time um and I I love the point that like if you try to it's not going to feel honest and I
00:50:19.700think that that like you can almost feel it in your body when you're doing it like there's like
00:50:24.500a visceral way that you're like when she says like I when I make something that's outside of
00:50:29.040my own preference i can't i feel like i can't tell it's actually good it's like it scrambles
00:50:33.440the wires right like your taste wires because it's not what you like you don't it isn't probably
00:50:38.700very good because it's not the thing but maybe she sees like people really responding to other
00:50:47.000people making that work and wants to like have a similar response true but maybe who knows if
00:50:53.420those people are actually like selling a lot of it let's be honest I mean who knows I have a large
00:50:59.860social media following and I get all these requests like do you need do you need help
00:51:04.520managing your marketing your business your finances I'm like I can't even pay myself right
00:51:08.640now why would I pay you but I think from social media it seems like I have a completely different
00:51:13.760life and business than probably what I do have and part of that is choice right but I wouldn't
00:51:19.560be surprised if the things that are popular right now are not necessarily sustaining the people who
00:51:26.820make them. Yep. Agreed. Okay. Last question. This is a philosophical one. It comes from Alison.
00:51:33.040I'm a freelancer or am I a small business, entrepreneur, consultant, corporation? My
00:51:40.960business is registered as a limited liability corporation. How are we supposed to label a
00:51:45.940business of one, me, so that friends and family get what we do, but we also sound awesome enough
00:51:51.640to hire. For context, I work as a ghostwriter and editor. So how do you describe yourself now
00:51:57.660for people who ask you what you do? Oh, man. So for people who are like outside the world of what
00:52:04.720I do, I say I'm a commercial artist. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Partly because it's like
00:52:10.600generational thing. We're talking about my parents' generation and I say commercial artists
00:52:15.100and they're like oh right you know somebody who makes things that sell yeah and then we can get
00:52:19.600to a real conversation about what it means to be a commercial artist um otherwise if I tell people
00:52:25.340like well I'm an artist we get into like you're a painter you're a sculptor what do you do and
00:52:30.020then I have to explain surface design and printmaking to them um it's a lot of work but
00:52:37.320I will also you know like I will just say all the things that I do which is I'm a printmaker
00:52:43.260a surface designer, a writer, and a textile artist, and we can talk about any one of those
00:52:49.200things. But that's partly because I'm not a client-facing person, right? So if I were out
00:52:57.680there trying to get, like, if I were to say any of that to a potential licensee, they would
00:53:01.840understand what I'm doing. I'm speaking their language. But to people outside of that world,
00:53:07.240like commercial artist kind of works um i also have in the past because i do a lot of consulting
00:53:14.740work or have done a lot of consulting work i'll just say i'm a consultant because when i say i'm
00:53:19.640a consultant people have a general idea of what that means they don't really know but they think
00:53:25.080that means some level of expertise yeah yeah and they think that means that there's a lot of money
00:53:30.580involved. And so I highly recommend anybody calling themselves a consultant. Like muddy those waters.
00:53:39.720I run into this a lot because I always think of the conversations you have with like a hairstylist
00:53:45.500the first time that you go see them. Because a hairstylist is someone who has familiarity with
00:53:51.600lots of different types of jobs, but also like has a really wide familiarity, but not often a lot of
00:53:57.720depth like they don't know maybe a ton about what like if I say I'm a writer like the question then
00:54:04.080becomes like do you write like fantasy novels you know like like writing can mean so many things to
00:54:09.800so many people and I often don't want to get into like all of the like I don't want to talk about
00:54:16.660each of my four books I don't want to talk about being an academic before like sometimes you just
00:54:21.640don't want to talk about your job that much but people use it as such a a way to understand like
00:54:27.100how to interface with you even newsletter writer like that what does that mean like who what kind
00:54:34.020of newsletter like what audience of newsletter all of those things I don't know what to say
00:54:39.140and the other day my partner Charlie said introduced me as like the head of a media conglomerate
00:54:45.820which is also not true but I liked it more
00:54:52.460oh my god for years my mom had no clue what it is that i do because so she she now thinks she
00:55:05.420has alzheimer's so she only remembers bits and pieces so right now in her mind i'm a writer
00:55:10.240even though that was like second only to artists on the list of things she didn't want me ever to
00:55:15.540become and i had this i did two fairly large home collections for world market a few years ago
00:55:23.560there's no world market close to me and so i didn't get to see the collection in person until
00:55:28.680i went back to los angeles and i was visiting my parents so i take my mom into the store and we
00:55:35.080still had to wear masks at this time it was like late covid and so we're wearing masks and we walk
00:55:41.380in and I had no clue that there was going to be this huge, like six foot tall, more than life
00:55:47.720size portrait of me, like photo of me hanging in the store. And so we walk in and my mom looks up
00:55:54.220and she says, I think that's you. And then we, I like, yeah, that's me. I want you to see this
00:56:03.060collection that I created. So we're looking at all the collection. I'm showing her things and
00:56:07.080the manager comes over and says oh we love this collection so much it just came in it's really
00:56:13.140great it's selling so well and I'm like okay stop and I pulled down my mask and I said it's me I'm
00:56:18.880Jen and then they wanted their photos taken with me and my mom and as really and it was really fun
00:56:25.700and my mom was like well I want you to send me this and this and that because I get production
00:56:29.380samples and as we're leaving my mom looked at me and she said okay I think you're gonna be okay
00:56:35.280i'm like i'm in my late 40s at this point she had finally understood what it was i was doing
00:56:42.220and she was like you're gonna be okay at this point i'd already bought a house
00:56:46.140yeah you're like oh now i'm okay mom um i love that first and i love world market so like it
00:56:52.960just everything about this story comes together for me dream licensing it's like such a delight
00:56:57.860to work with i have so many items in my home from world market i i think my advice to allison
00:57:03.620like try out a couple things and see what seems right like you could be like i run i'm like a
00:57:10.960i'm a writing consultant or i'm an editing consultant or an editorial consultant and
00:57:15.720like see how people respond and if it feels like the the vibe feels right do you into them
00:57:20.360but you can be whatever you want seriously you can mess with people and make things up too
00:57:25.380it doesn't really matter totally what do any of us do i'm at the head of a media conglomerate
00:57:33.340melody what do you say uh it depends on who i'm talking to and how cool i want to sound
00:57:40.260yeah if it really doesn't matter and i'm just trying to explain why i'm free at like 11 a.m
00:57:46.400on a tuesday i'm like oh i'm a freelancer uh but if it's that's interesting just say that
00:57:52.240just a freelancer yeah because then there aren't really a ton of follow-up questions yeah um and I
00:57:58.560guess I also just don't want to seem like a kept woman but that's a different conversation um but
00:58:04.460then if I'm like if I'm having like a serious conversation with somebody and they're like well0.91
00:58:08.840what do you do for work I'm like oh I I have my own podcast production company and they're like
00:58:13.640wow oh wow and then I'm like feel like I'm faking it a little bit but when I decided to
00:58:21.100like become an LLC and make it official I was telling my therapist that I felt like I was such
00:58:28.840a poser and like everybody's gonna think that I'm so lame for doing this and like is it embarrassing
00:58:36.040to be like I'm a business owner and she was like let me tell you something my in-laws are as proud
00:58:43.160of me as they are of my sister-in-law's mlm people don't care they're really not thinking
00:58:52.100about it that hard yeah yeah so it's true uh jen can you tell us a little bit about what you're
00:58:59.200working on now because you said you were putting stuff into production again yes um so my fifth
00:59:05.040or maybe sixth fabric collection is coming out um that's always in the works for like over a year
00:59:10.700So it takes, I think, 16 months from final sketches to ship date.
00:59:17.760And I've also been, and I haven't announced this fully on social media yet, but I've been working on a home collection.
00:59:25.540So licensing dried up for reasons partly having to do with the economy, partly having to do with tariffs, meaning there is not as much money to pay artists to do the work or pay us what we used to be paid.
00:59:39.200So I decided that since I have the know-how and the connections, I was going to design some work and have it made.
00:59:46.360And hopefully that will be here in time for Black Friday, which I don't believe in.
01:00:06.960And I hope that every listener to this show is not like an Instagram viewer and more like a small craft fair buyer and actually makes the purchase.