Things that you own end up owning you.
(newsletter sent out April 24th 2024)
I don’t know about you, but for me, this past week has been pretty transformative. Pivoting a business requires a little bit of bravery and a lot of inner work. That’s what the business assessment is for.
I used to build stuff. Furniture, props, stage decor, custom builds. This type of business requires a special kind of attention from each team member. Last week, while visiting the new owners of the machinery I used to have, I realized my attention was always in the wrong place. I was focusing on each project at hand while missing the bigger picture.
The intention, 7 years ago, was not to start a fabrication business. It was to build an interdisciplinary community of young creatives who wanted to build stuff. Physical or digital, that was less important. Or so I thought.
Acquiring means of production means accepting greater baseline monthly costs. Industrial space, electricity, tools, maintenance, manual labor. This brought me far from the path of building a community. I ended up preferring solitude out of exhaustion – which really wasn’t the point.
If you’re at the point in which you started fantasizing about moving to a cabin in the woods, I get it. I was there too. Then I read Gooseberries by Anthony Chekhov and realized I was just being dumb. I’ve strayed too far from what I originally wanted and was probably internalizing some shame or something similar.
Do you work for your business or does the business work for you?
This question fucked me up. The default mindset in owning any type of business is towards optimization, growth and the bottom line. However, some things aren’t supposed to be scalable.
Business Assessment Tool
If you feel your business is also in a transition phase, or you just want to conduct a simple professional life audit, I’ve put together a pdf file with journaling prompts – questions I had to answer in order to get a clearer view of what it is I want to achieve and what are some actionable steps.
Consider this a form of career spring cleaning. And remember what Michael Corleone said in the Godfather,
“It’s never just business. It’s always personal.”