10th anniversary

Celebrating With Eco-Friendly Totes

Adunate's cotton tote

My tote bags are in!

Since it’s Adunate’s anniversary year, I wanted to do something special for the wonderful people with whom I’ve had the honor to work. Many of them are sustainably-minded, be it with the food they produce or the products they manufacture. I felt it important to give them something that fits well with their business mission and way of life.

Adunate's cotton tote

I’m excited by the quality of the bag. I wanted a heavy duty cotton and found just what I was looking for at Bagmasters (ask for Amber, she was super helpful).

Adunate's cotton tote

The bags are 14″ x 10.5″ and have a 5″ gusset for lots of spacious stuffing.

Adunate's cotton tote

The shoulder straps are sturdily sewn into an inside binding and just the right length for comfortable carrying…

Adunate's cotton tote…or hanging a display of Christmas greenery…

Adunate's cotton tote

…on a lovely old door.

Have a totin’ good Christmas everyone! It’s a glorious time of year!

 

 

Creative Minds Need Persistence Too

Adunate is celebrating 10 Years of being a creative business!

As Adunate wraps up its momentous 10th anniversary year, perhaps one thing most satisfying (amazing, actually) is that I’ve stuck with this creative business of mine for ten whole years! 

Yes, there’s the statistics factor: According to Business Journal, 50% of businesses fail in their first five years. But mostly it’s the focus factor, or lack thereof. Lest you think me flighty and irresponsible (I’m neither), let me explain the short attention span under which I and so many other creatives operate. We jokingly refer to it as a creative attention deficit disorder. Basically, our ever-curious minds impulsively dance from one interesting thing to another (and everything is interesting!) and it’s often hard to stay on task.

Some people consider creatives hard to live with (what, who me?). Others relate creative personality traits with ADHD. I like to focus on the positive aspects—things like independent thinking, openness to new ideas, versatility and adaptability, traits that Leslie Owen Wilson, Ed. D., lists in his article “Characteristics of Highly Creative Individuals.”

Hang in there!

Wilson also stresses the importance of persistency. Here he says, “One thing I would like to stress about thinking and creativity is that in order for creative ideas to become realities there is the necessary component of persistence.”

This, my dears, is what’s hard for us creative types. Sometimes Adunate gets boring. Many times it’s hard. Other times I feel like it’s going nowhere. But if I’ve learned anything in ten years, it’s to take pause for a breath and a prayer. I realize if I just hang in there, the flicker of enthusiasm will once again catch into an ongoing flame.

Hey, I’m hoping to hang in there for Adunate’s 20th!

 

Canning and Planning for the Upcoming Months

Homemade grape juiceIt’s Foodie Friday and we’ve been canning homemade grape juice. We use my mother’s recipe, hence every jar conjures up childhood memories of sweet, purple purity (unlike the artificial, high-fructose infiltrations we have today). I’ll share the recipe below, it’s super easy peasy. Anyway, we did 53 quarts and that means we can enjoy our little vineyard at least once a week for the next 12 months. That, my friends, is how I plan all my gardening and preservation.

I’ve also been planning ahead for Adunate. This is my 10th year in business and I want to do something equally sweet for my clients who’ve made ten years possible. I haven’t finalized my plans but I do know one thing, come this Christmas I’m not going to be rushing around at the last minute. With that in mind, this week I went to Ascentives‘ Customer Appreciation & Product Showcase. What fun! I came away with oodles of samples—gotta love those!—and some neat ideas.

Business owners, what are you doing for your clients this holiday season? Customers, what holiday gifts stand out as special to you? I’m brainstorming ideas, so please share!

In the meantime, here’s the juice recipe:

Homemade Grape Juice

This year we started using a refractometer to measure the brix (sugar content) of our grapes. It’s divine! This means I can take detailed record of brix levels and hopefully eliminate the uncertainty of how much sugar to add to the juice. Last weekend we picked our Concord grapes at 18 brix, Frontenac Gris at 22, and Marquette and Frontenac at 24. 

Per 1-quart jar:

  • 1-1/2 cups washed, de-stemmed grapes
  • 1/4 – 1/2 cups sugar (different grape varieties require different amounts, depending on their brix. I used 1/3 cup, plus or minus)
  • Boiling water

Fill each sanitized jar with grapes and sugar. Top off with boiling water. Skim off any floating whatevers (dried grapes, chaff and, yes, even a few tiny black bugs—this is homemade goodness, after all:-). Seal for canning and process 20 minutes in a boiling-water bath.

When it’s time to indulge, simply pour the juice through a strainer, discard the grapes, and enjoy your tasty nectar!

 

Wednesday Webs: Ag Day 2015

Ewe with baby lamb

I used to raise Corriedale sheep and at this time of year I really get to missing them. I miss being a farmer, albeit a pretend one, and I miss the nurturing coo a mama ewe gurgles over her new lamb.

Now, ten years into self-employment, let’s say I’m a farmer of a different kind—one of design and words. For farmers. This is fun too. Especially because I come across so many interesting people and places.

Here on the web:

Happy Ag Day! Thanks to our farmers!

 

Tolerating Ambiguity for National Entrepreneurship Week

snowshoeing with friends

This week is National Entrepreneurship Week and one of these 20 questions for entrepreneurial literacy is “What is ‘tolerance of ambiguity’ and why is it important to an entrepreneur?”

I admit I wasn’t sure what was meant by tolerance of ambiguity so I researched the phrase here, here, and here. Basically, as entrepreneurs we must be Walt Whitman-ish enough to go “conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways.”

Kind of like my friends and me when we snowshoe. Or not.

Okay, so you can see by our tracks, we trudge these trails quite regularly. We’re routine walking partners and we know exactly where we’re going. This may be the antithesis of ambiguity, but if you bear with me, I’ll eventually get to my point (which, my friends, is a tolerance of ambiguity).

mouse trail in the snow

My so-called exercise regiment reminds me of ten years ago when I contemplated the leap into self-employment. I specifically remember lunching with a veteran freelancer and asking her to describe a typical day in her life of self-employment.

Typical? Really, was I that naive?

Google “day in the life of a freelancer” and you’ll come up with hundreds of entrepreneurs sharing their day in hour-by-hour increments (mine isn’t that exciting, I’ll spare you). Let’s just say that generally an entrepreneur’s day is a lot like this path voles left in the snow. Unpredictable. Atypical. Seemingly without direction. There may be an element of routine, but more often than not something unexpected causes a deviation.

My pinch of routine comes early in the morning: Walking (or these days, snowshoeing), yoga or swimming. The woman above on the right? That’s Deb. She picks me up at 6:15 and we persevere into town to swim laps (our hair freezes afterward while we walk to the car). The woman on the left? Chris. She’s like a Bible concordance as we encourage one another in our faith.

And then there are my yoga peeps: Authentic, caring, energetic, with a positive zest for life. They have inquisitive minds and are receptive to new ideas. They’re physically strong, not by a stroke of luck, but because they take care of themselves. Together we share healthy food recipes and a confidence in our growing abilities.

So what do these people of my routine have to do with a tolerance of ambiguity?

Attitude, that’s what.

Go back to the words I use to describe my friends: Persevering, encouraging, energetic, positive, inquisitive, receptive, healthy, strong, confident, growing. These are qualities that enable us to deal with the daily unpredictable, to go forth in the great unknown, to tolerate the ambiguity.

These are qualities we especially need for the ambiguity of entrepreneurship.

Have a great National Entrepreneurship Week!

Meadow mouse trail in snow

 

 

Then and Now: 10 Years of Self Employment

Adunate Then and Now

Whoosh! How does ten years go by so fast? Scary fast.

A decade ago at this time I was losing interest in my day job, scouring want ads for something new and freelancing on the side. The something new never materialized but the side gigs multiplied. Thus began my adventure as a solo entrepreneur and my Adunate business. Ten years later, I’m still at it and celebrating a monumental anniversary. I am amazed. And very blessed!

So what’s been happening these past ten years? What was Adunate like then compared to now?

Technology

Remember Pagemaker? That was me ten years ago. I intentionally lag behind with technology updates but even so, back then my setup was decrepitly prehistoric. For my first 5-6 months, I used our family computer, a laborious Dell with a lunchbox-sized monitor. Before the year’s end, I celebrated self-employment with my first major purchases—an Apple Power Mac G5 with a 20-inch flat cinema display, Adobe Creative Suite 2, and Quickbooks for Mac 2006. These were huge investments for me. Huge!

Back then I had a cordless telephone with caller ID and answering machine, for which I paid extra usage fees each month. I also had a snazzy printer/fax machine. Receiving my first fax was terribly exciting, like, wow, I really am a business! Over the years I may have received ten faxes, at most, and when that cheapo machine broke, I replaced it with a simple desktop printer. Fax? Landline phone? Who clutters their desk with these anymore?

Nowadays I use an iMac with a 27-inch display, together with my old 20-incher because two displays are simply divine. I also use a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Sometimes I add an iPad or my iPhone. Seriously, there are times when I’m coding a responsive website and I surround myself with all of the above. At the same time. Technology is crazy!

My Office

My home office hasn’t changed much. To get me started, my wonder-woodworking husband crafted a large, L-shaped desk and built-in bookcases in a room all my own. It’s the dreamiest office ever and ten years later I still love it to pieces. I’ll have to give an online tour one of these days (after I refresh it with a needed coat of paint).

What has changed is where I work every day. Ten years ago the idea of office mobility was just beginning to emerge, but because I only had a desktop computer all my creative work was confined to my home office. As nice as it is, working from home can be isolating, especially if you live in a rural area as I do. Nowadays, I regularly head to Madison or Milwaukee and do a creative work day in highly public places. My office is extended to libraries, coffee shops, on the road…anywhere I can take my laptop. Talk about freedom—I adore this bohemian style of working!

Business Management

Oh boy, where do I start with this one? Nothing has changed infinitely more in ten years than the way we do business, solely because of what’s developed on the internet. Ten years ago I paid $288 annually for the most minuscule, ineffective Yellow Pages ad. I updated my skills at tech schools and networked at industry events, all of which were no less than 40-miles away and very expensive. Back then I wasn’t on Facebook or LinkedIn. Twitter was a sound birds make. Pinterest wasn’t even a word.

Nowadays I successfully market myself on a variety of social media. From my office. For free. Yes, there’s the cost of time, but since I love this part of my job I don’t really consider it a factor. The online network with whom I’ve connected is invaluable and the accessibility to knowledge is limitless.

We also have a host of online tools that we didn’t have ten years ago. Self-employment has become a work revolution and services like Skype, Evernote, Dropbox and a bounteous more are started every day to make managing a business easier and cheaper.

From Business to Lifestyle

Ten years ago I wanted to work from home. I wanted to create things of value and use my God-given skills to help others. And, of course, I wanted to make some money. I’ve accomplished all these goals.

Interestingly, my bar for success is somewhat different than it was a decade ago. Back then, my 10-year goals were to be making more money than I am now. I dreamed of a clientele with an impressive profile. I even toyed with the idea of becoming an agency with several employees. Now I know that’s not what I want at all.

Here’s why, at 10 years, I consider Adunate successful:

Each day I’m excited to get up and go to work. I have awesome clients who are cherished friends. My work and off-work hours have become harmoniously entwined for a more healthy and self-sufficient lifestyle, including regular exercise and raising organic food. Best of all, the flexibility of self-employment allows me to take a day off with my husband, have lunch with my kids, or babysit my granddaughter. I say, it can’t get better than this.

God has blessed me greatly with undeserved grace!

My New Year’s Resolution: Go Forth in 2015 (and Celebrate!)

Adunate's 10th Anniversary logo

Happy New Year everyone! After a nearly 2-week holiday hibernation, I’m back in the office and raring to go!

  • Office cleaned: Check.
  • Bookkeeping for 2014 closed: Check.
  • Client files appropriated (my fancy word for filed): Check.
  • New Year’s resolutions made: Check.
  • Business plan for 2015 complete: Check.

And 2015 is going to be a big year!

This year marks Adunate’s tenth year in business. Ten years! Really, where did the time go? It’s been a decade of creating, learning, growing and prospering. Best of all, it’s been ten years of working with the most fantastic clients!

I’m excited for 2015 and going forth to our next ten years together!