The pandemic made me an entrepreneur
This whole pandemic thing has been going on for 172 days… read that again. One hundred and seventy-two days. A lot of relationships don’t even last that long, and here we are, over 4,000 hours in and it’s still going STRONG. How many minutes is that, you ask? 247,680, but we’re not staying on track and it doesn’t really matter.
That’s over 14,860,800 seconds.
Anyway, the real reason we’re here. The pandemic made me an entrepreneur.
So, backstory. I’m a writer. A novelist and sr. copywriter, to be exact. When we first got into this I was doing my sr. copywriting day job, but also re-editing my first published novel, Gripped, to re-release. I did it. Edited the entire book, designed a new cover (left), and put it back out into print. Then, I went to work on my next book, a religious satire called Oxygen (currently about 160 pages in on that lil’ gem), but I kept thinking about going into business for myself. Asking, what I could do that would use my skill set, make people happy, and allow me to set it up and forget about it?
I kept thinking about doing more work and freelancing at more places as a copywriter. Living that “hustle life.” But what would that do in the long run, other than take up more time? And another reason that I wanted to start the business to begin with was because my fiance is pregnant. Having a little boy in December. *cheers from the crowd* thank you, thank you! How would working non-stop help me spend time with her and my little boy? Answer: it wouldn’t. So with some more thought, I decided on a t-shirt business.
I looked up the best options for fulfillment, shipping, design, the best options for a storefront, website, and came up with a name that made sense to me, The Casual Cult. To see what it’s all about, head to the website’s who we are section. I decided that the shirts would all be black because let’s be honest, black shirts are the only shirts in our wardrobes these days, and set the pricing of most of the shirts between $11-15 and sweatshirts (like the one to the left) at $25.
Now, I guess the definition of an entrepreneur is, “a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so,” but that’s not why I’m saying the pandemic made me an entrepreneur. And to be honest, there are zero financial risks in my little operation so far. I’m not saying the first few sales made me feel like an entrepreneur. What makes me an entrepreneur is the fact that every night before I go to bed and every morning when I wake up, I want to work on The Casual Cult. I want to write new ideas, release new products, figure out ways to advertise it all. This “casual cult” is showing me what the entrepreneurship bug is all about because it sank its teeth into the back of my neck and won’t let go.
Look at the time, it’s 11:32 pm right now. My girl is asleep next to me and I’m writing down my thoughts on this whole thing. Do any of you feel like this? Are you consumed by it? Are you angry at yourself about last night when you had an idea for a shirt and didn’t write it down? I knew I should have. It was a good idea and it was lost to the night.
Anyway, I’m going to keep working on it every day until it’s my only means of income… that and writing novels of course. In the meantime, go check out the site, I feel like there’s going to be a few new shirts tonight.
