My New Side Venture:
A Dream Come True in the Making?

↓
​

Hi Friend!

So, I was going to send you a letter about how much I'm failing at business right now and how ironic it is since I recently began developing a group course all about helping my fellow perfectionists discover how awesome failure actually is! (I mean, it is, but it's also, kinda not, too...)

And just to deepen the irony, I spent hours trying to write said letter with a level of perfectionistic fervor rarely seen outside of the wilds. The letter began to turn into a novel and it felt like it would kill me before I ever finished it. I finally had to set it down and walk away, accepting defeat.

So now you're not getting that letter... your getting this one, which I hope I can write fairly quickly and keep short and sweet for you.

Instead of writing about the lessons I've learned from allowing my perfectionism and misplaced focus to slow me down so much that I haven't made a dime from my business in over a month, I am now going to share something completly different with you. It's actually something that I'm cautiously optomistic and excited about!

Botanical Inks and a Big Dream...

I've been making botanical inks for a short while ever since I took a class in making natural paints and I've been wanting to develop a line of them to sell, but it just kept being pushed to the bottom of the to do list.
​
Then, when I got my para-educator job this January working with disabled young adults on life- and job-skills, I realized that I could be an ink making "job site" for them since I have my own business and the teacher was seeking more work experience opportunites for the students. It was a win-win!
​
We are still at the beginnings of product development. We are testing out different inks first. Then we will choose one ink to develop, brand, package, and sell.
​
My plan is to make only about twelve 1oz bottles at first and consign them somewhere locally. Hopefully, we will sell some bottles and then I will give back a percentage of the profits to our program. The rest will go towards the next batch of inks or other products and eventually towards building a brand that I hope will grow big enough to someday create dignified training and work and opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged people.
​
It's been a dream of mine for a long time to do something like this and it seems that I've been given a chance to start moving my vision along. I'm really grateful for that!

My Dream and How it Was Born...

I came up with this idea back in 2015 when I was attending Clark College under a Worker Retraining gran. One of my teachers took me and my dear friend Karen (RIP - love you forever), to Portland State University's Elevating Impact Summit where I learned about social entrepreneurship and was super inspired by people who had created incredible businesses intended to solve big and small problems and set a better standard for sustainability and fair-labor practices in business.

I knew after going to that summit that I wanted to be one of these "changemakers". Over these past eight years I have been imagining all manner of possibilities and collecting information and experiences that would enable me to eventually begin manifesting my dream.

While it is still emerging and forming, this is basicly the dream I have envisioned:

My social enterprise is a cooperative that aims to address the many social inequities and challenges experienced by disabled people and low-income, single parents like myself.

The goal is to help stabilize people, families, and communities by providing meaningful living wage jobs, job training, entrepreneurial incubation, coaching, and on-site childcare all within a trauma-informed framework of creative and innovative social change.

I image this business as being one part community maker-space, one part sustainable goods manufacturer, and one part advocate for better, more dignified opportunites for our most vulnerable community memebers.

Obviously, the end goal is to create a pretty big organization that can have big impact. But, for now, I'm happy to "prototype" my dream by creating a fun opportunity for my students to learn about the process of creating something to sell. Some of them want to have their own businesses someday, so I hope that this experience helps them take a small step closer to their own dreams of entrepreneurship.

So, yeah, I'm failing at my business right now... but... maybe I'm not?

Perhaps I just needed to fail forward enough to finally stumble upon something really worth fighting for. I don't know if this idea that I have will end up going anywhere, but I'm starting to see some real possibilities emerge and I'm not entirely sure that it's merely coincidental.

When I initially came up with my idea in 2015 there was something about it that just felt right - like I had just come upon a key that would unlock a door leading to directly to the path of the calling that I have walked with in my heart since I was a child.

It wasn't until this week that I really began to believe I could start making my way towards my dream right now. Over the years I kept telling myself that it was "too big" and that I "wasn't ready". Maybe some of that is true, but as everything else seems to keep crashing and burning around me despite my best efforts (thanks a lot perfectionism!), this thing seems to be a balm emerging out of the ashes, perfectly designed to protect me from the fires.

I'm not going to give up on my coaching and somatic teaching aspects of my business, but I have a feeling that my work with these kids and the botanical ink project might just have a way of building momentum that my other offerings might not. I'm really curious to see what develops over the next few weeks...

A Call for Help​
​
If you, or anyone you know, knows a thing or two about creating and scaling a social enterprise - especially getting funding for this kind of thing - would you please reach out to me? I would love to start putting together a more cohesive plan to start bringing my dream even further into reality.

Also, if you are at all inspired by my vision I would be deeply grateful if you considered donating to my GoFundMe campaign. The funding from that campaign will help me to stay in business even after my part-time para-educator job (sadly) ends in June. If I can stay in business through the summer, I will likely be able to keep developing these products and maybe even host some summer internships for my students!

I'm really excited to see where this take me and your support will definitely help me get there.

​

In deepest gratitude,

Nova
​

113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, Washington 98104-2205
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​