A newsletter, a book, and a very small consulting practice — for the small-business owner who is excited about what they're building, but not entirely sure what to do next.
Six years ago I signed a booth contract without reading the small print about the walk-through, the co-op fee, and what happens when the mall changes management. This is what I would tell my past self, if I had a way to send her a note that Sunday morning.
Clarity sessions are one-on-one, one hour, one focused thing. You bring the situation you've been turning over in your head. I bring twenty-five years of small businesses I've helped, run, or watched go sideways.
"Everything you wish someone had told you before you signed that first booth contract."
Six chapters, roughly one hundred pages. No fluff, no filler, no ten-year business school theory — just the specific, granular, dollar-and-cents advice for the person about to sign the lease, order the shelving, and put their savings on the line.
The desk, most Sundays
I have started, run, sold, closed, rescued, and reluctantly walked away from a lot of small businesses. Some of them mine. Most of them not. What I've learned is that the person who owns the business almost always already knows what they need to do. They just need someone to ask them the question in a way they can actually answer.
That's more or less what I do now. I also live in a rambling farmhouse called Purple Monkey Manor, where I sell odd things I make and find. That's a story for another Sunday.
Small-batch, hand-made, mildly weird. A shop that pays the electric bill at the farmhouse and lets me keep the barn.
