women-owned

Bees Motivate Gratitude and Giving

I’m into my fourth year of beekeeping and while I still consider myself a newbie, I do feel I’ve come a long way. For one—and an important one at that—I can now find the queen.

Finding the queen—or queenspotting, as they say—is huge in beekeeping. There are books on the subject, like this cool Where’s Waldo-style QueenSpotting, by Hilary Kearney, or #queenspotting challenges on Instagram. These are basically where I learned to spot my queens.

We all know how important the queen is. She’s the heart and soul of a honey bee colony after all, and because she’s the only one who lays fertilized eggs, she’s the prime indicator of its productivity. No queen, no colony.

But did you know the other bees are equally important?

A honey bee colony is a superorganism, meaning its three types of bees—workers, drones, and the queen—are dependent upon one another. Each engages in a specialized division of labor that selflessly supports the survival of the colony. We can liken this to Aristotle’s “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” but in plain, everyday speak, let’s just say honeybees work together for the good of all.

What great role models honey bees are for us humans!

A queen bee in her own right, this lovely lady walked ahead of me at an In Her Boots/Soil Sisters workshop. I love her message!

November is Gratitude Month and Giving Month

Inspired by my bees and in thankfulness for all my clients do for me, November is the month I pass it forward. Each year Adunate accepts two pro bono projects for greatly reduced or no cost. These are projects I strongly support and believe will positively impact God’s creation, his people, or his ministry.

My areas of focus include, but aren’t limited to:

  • Agriculture & Animals
  • Architecture
  • Arts
  • Children
  • Environment
  • Faith
  • History
  • Humanity
  • Food & Drink
  • Sustainability

If your caring organization needs creative support in the coming year, click here for an application. Then, to guarantee your project’s success, be sure to click here!

My deadline for submissions is December 31, 2019. I will let applicants know of my decision in January.

By the way, did you find the queen? Here she is, that royal lady!

5 Reasons Business Cards are Still Relevant

I just returned from the Women in Sustainable Ag Conference (WISA), followed by a glorious vacation. Now that I’m back, I’m cultivating relationships with all the wonderful people I met. The business cards I acquired make this an easy task.

Which leads me to ask, what do you think of business cards? Do you still use them?

In the Be a Better Self-Promoter workshop I presented, I specifically mentioned the importance of business cards. I greeted the attendees at the door with my card and asked them to leave theirs behind after the workshop. Even though some believe business cards are dead, here’s why I see lots of life in these small, printed exchanges of information.

1. Personal Touch

Yes, technology is all around us but there’s something truly personal about giving and receiving business cards. The tactile-ness of a card says you care enough to go the extra mile and give something of yourself. When receiving a business card and you take a moment’s pause to look at it—perhaps even comment on it—it says you care about the person doing the giving.

2. Tangible Expression of Your Business

When designed well and according to your brand, a business card speaks loudly of who you are. I had my cards printed on a heavier grade of linen stock and I love how it feels in my hand. A quality card reflects a quality business.

3. Physical Reminder of Who You Are

One of my attendees approached me afterward with a question on web design. She gave me her card and wrote her question on the back so I could respond later with more information. There’s no way I would have remembered otherwise.

4. Quick Exchange of Information

When attending events, conferences or meetings, there’s no quicker way to exchange information than business cards. Yes, you could get their email and type it into your phone, but that’s certainly not as fast. Plus you have to look away from the person to do so. How rude.

5. Opportunities for Repeated Connection

The more ways we can connect with people, the better relationships we can build with them. The physical act of exchanging business cards is a wonderful debut to digital followups in the future. Those followups then become a permanent way of managing contacts. Unless they’re exceptionally creative (I am a graphic designer, after all), I don’t keep my contact’s business cards. Instead, I make a digital input and have all the information I need right at my fingertips.

Need new business cards? I’d love to help you with a great design and advice on cost-effective printing. Drop me a line!

Expanding Our Octoberfest to Minnesota

We certainly love our local brews. However, a few weeks ago my husband received a birthday gift of assorted Oktoberfest beers from outside our WiscoBeer realm. They say it’s good to expand your thinking, so in preparation for our upcoming Octoberfest Brewery Tour we’re “working” to expand our palettes. Yes, sigh, it’s a tough, tough job.

This year we’re also expanding our brewery tour. In addition to our annual celebration of sipping and scenery, we’re including the Women In Sustainable Agriculture (WISA) Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota.

What a great conference this will be—fabulous women from across the country gathering to exchange ideas, find resources, and network. I’m super proud to be amongst them and presenting the workshop Be a Better Self-Promoter. Do join us!

But For Now, Let’s Talk Beer!

The Mississippi River region is truly glorious in October. After sampling the Twin Cities’ great selection of brews, we’re heading downstream to Fountain City, a cozy community nestled between the river and Wisconsin’s towering bluffs. Here we’re planning a few days of river exploration, state park hiking, and, of course, more sampling.

So Many to Sample

To the delight of beer enthusiasts everywhere, the number of craft breweries continues to grow. Each year as I plan our tour the number of venues seems to have doubled from the year before. Most interesting is the creative entrepreneurship of these small businesses; like, for example, the symbiotic partnership between taprooms and food trucks, which is a tasty win-win for breweries, food trucks and customers alike.

This all leaves us with a hardly-unfortunate dilemma: With so many breweries in Western Wisconsin/Eastern Minnesota, how does one choose? I’ve decided to prioritize our sampling to 1) interesting ambiance (I do like my historic architecture, you know) and 2) if the brewery was featured in Taproom Travelers videos (again, gotta love that creative entrepreneurship).

Promo of My Own

In the spirit of practicing what I’ll be preaching at the upcoming WISA Conference, may I present my 2019 Octoberfest Brewery Tour poster!

Each year as a personal exercise, I design a poster commemorating our tour (check out more of them here). This keeps me in touch with the industry and brings an added element of fun to our travels. Posters are great keepsakes for any event.

Perhaps you have an event you’d like to promote? Or maybe a new line of beverage you’d like to brand? Drop me a line!

Lots of Summer Ramblings: Strawberry Moon to Strawberry Festivals

Several years ago the bulb in our yard light burned out. It was one of those dawn-to-dusk lights set high on a line pole and even though my husband’s job is to regularly climb such poles, he just never got around to climbing ours.

At first, I’d go out at night and it seemed unnervingly dark. We don’t have immediate neighbors so nothing but the celestial sky lit our yard. Oh, but let me tell you, there’s no going back. The event of that burned-out bulb has totally heightened my appreciation of the night sky and I’m now a moon-gazing habitué.

Given that, here’s to a happy Strawberry Moon (Tuesday night) and upcoming Summer Solstice (Friday night). I love them both. With the full days of summer ahead, it’s a wonderful time of festivity and adventure.

Speaking of Strawberries…

They’re finally here! We live on a windy hill and it seems my patch is always a bit behind. But they’re here now and as delicious as ever. Just look at how red and juicy they are, unlike those so-called “strawberries” you find in the grocery store.

Hey folks, shop your local farmers! Eat real food!

Strawberry Festivals and More

One of my tastiest childhood memories is of a strawberry festival we attended while camping in northern Michigan. If I recall, it was a community church serving shortcake piled mile-high with strawberries and cream. Oh, so good!

Quite often such festivals are benefits for a specific cause (like these upcoming festivals here and here). Joining the celebration not only creates fun memories but also supports grassroots working together at its finest.

Food festivals have become one of the fastest growing forms of tourism and there’s a good reason why. They offer a sensory overload of the landscape, ethnicities, history, and food cultures of their given community.

Food lovers love food festivals; ask me how I know!

Which Leads Me To…

When it comes to festivals, I’m proud to help promote two Wisconsin biggies: The Soil Sisters in August and Fermentation Fest in October. These are annual celebrations that each draw thousands of people and have great social and economic impacts on their rural communities. Needless to say, a lot of organizing and marketing goes into these events.

Do you know of a festival looking to grow in its success? I’d love to help. Let’s talk about what makes a good festival and how to get the word out to all those fun-loving, destination travelers!

Wisconsin Women are Go-Getters

I’m always proud to be a Wisconsin woman. However, this month my heart swells even more as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Wisconsin’s ratification of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote. On June 10, 1919, Wisconsin—movin’ people that we are— was the first state to take such action. We even beat the U.S. Congress, which didn’t ratify the amendment until the next year.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has a great exhibit on display in our beautiful State Capitol Rotunda all the way through November. My pictures don’t do it justice so definitely take time to see it for yourselves.

Certainly, a tip of the hat is due to those progressive thinkers of Wisconsin’s legislature. But the real heroes are the women who fought more than 70 years to bring the 19th amendment to fruition, women like these Wisconsin demigoddesses.

Women’s rights groups began forming in Wisconsin in the 1860s and they rallied for an array of social reforms such as anti-slavery, temperance, education, health, and married women’s property rights. The Wisconsin Women’s Suffrage Association (WWSA) was started in 1869. Besides campaigning for suffrage, these ladies fought to improve public schools. By 1869 they were running for school boards and by 1886 women could vote for issues “pertaining to school matters,” according to the Wisconsin Women Suffrage in School Matters Referendum.

Notice a whole lot of nurturing going on here?

“Bitches get stuff done.” — Tina Fey

When women rise up, they by nature don’t do so with self-serving ambitions. If we examine the motives behind what some label as “women being bitches,” we see they’re most often raising their voices for the welfare of others; family, children, the sick, the poor. Even 19th-century women’s quest for rights to their property was done with their children in mind; to prevent a drunken husband from taking a mother’s earnings or to will a woman’s inherited land to her own children rather than those of her husband’s second wife. Sometimes women being bitchy is the only way people listen.

Today I’m admiring…

These days inspiring Wisconsin women continue to stand up for the good of others. I’m thinking of several in my world alone, caring women who have dedicated time out of their busy lives to basically make things better in Wisconsin. Women like:

Be a Wisconsin Woman

Wisconsin women are gutsy go-getters. They get things done. But really, you don’t have to live in my beloved Badger state to be so emboldened. Just get up and go wherever you are.

And don’t forget to vote!

Eshet Chayil

This past weekend I was saddened by the loss of Christian author Rachel Held Evans. Also known as RHE in the media world, her sudden death was brought on by what seemed only the flu and infection. Needless to say, it shocked a flock of people who followed her writing.

Even though I wasn’t always in complete ideological fellowship with Rachel, I still counted myself as one of her many fans. I’m of the conviction that no person, denomination or culture, no matter how learned, has all the answers on the Bible. None of us has the omniscience to fully understand the mind and workings of God, especially me.

Given that conviction, here are three of the many reasons I admired Rachel.

Doubts

“If your faith is so fragile it cannot handle questions, doubts, and honest inquiry, if it is so threatened by the full engagement of your heart & mind it runs from potential challenges, that’s not faith; it’s fear.” 
― Rachel Held Evans, Twitter

Everyone has questioned the Bible or their faith at one time or another (if you haven’t, you’re deceiving yourself and the truth is not within you:-). When writing of her faith journey, Rachel openly admitted her doubts, whether they were in God or in how people acted about God.

Knowing they’re not alone with their questions, and knowing there’s someone out there that doesn’t condemn them for their questions, has been inspiration for a lot of people. As one Amazon reviewer said in response to Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions, “This book brought me the hope to keep searching, to keep seeking God in the jungle of my doubts.”

Inclusiveness

“But the gospel doesn’t need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out. It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, ‘Welcome! There’s bread and wine. Come eat with us and talk.’ This isn’t a kingdom for the worthy; it’s a kingdom for the hungry.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

Perhaps Rachel’s most beloved attribute was her adamant insistence of God’s love for all people. She reminded us how those we often deem as unworthy have been made worthy by God’s grace.

Rachel refused to shy away from this conversation of inclusiveness. Even when those who opposed her became openly hostile, she carried on with graciousness and respect. Wow, what if the whole online community demonstrated such faith-based love!

Eshet Chayil (Woman of Valor)

“One of my goals after completing my year of biblical womanhood was to “take back” Proverbs 31 as a blessing, not a to-do list, by identifying and celebrating women of valor: women who are changing the world through daily acts of faithfulness, both in my life and around the world.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Blog

The Bible shares many accounts of women who were fierce and fearless, not only in the way they lived but also in their faith. Many people overlook these women in favor of more masculine heroes, but not Rachel. She promoted them as Women of Valor.

Rachel explained the cultural context behind Proverbs 31 and she encouraged today’s women with an enthusiastic “Eshet Chayil,” which is a traditional blessing of praise in the Jewish community based on these Proverbial verses.

Eshet Chayil. Isn’t this beautiful? I love it.

Eshet Chayil, Rachel Held Evans. Rest in the peace of God’s salvation!



Successful Entrepreneurship Takes a Village

What do FedEx, AirBnB, and Evernote have in common? We can all agree they are hugely successful companies. They’re also companies from which most of us benefit on a regular basis. Interestingly, all three also were once startups on the verge of collapse when they were saved by investors who cared enough to lend a hand. So when I heard one of my favorite specialty cheesemakers, Landmark Creamery, needed a hand, I immediately donated to Go Fund Me and I then went shopping for three of its cheeses.

Landmark Creamery is a labor of love for Anna Landmark and Anna Thomas Bates. Since 2014, “the Anna’s,” as they’re known, have been churning, and rubbing, and aging small batches of cheese made from local, small, family-owned dairy farms. You can find their products online, and at Madison area specialty stores, co-ops and restaurants. Two years ago they opened their own retail shop in the quaint village of Paoli, where they sell not only their own cheeses but also those of other Wisconsin cheesemakers. Coincidentally, in the next few weeks you can find them featured on PBS’s Wisconsin Foodie.

So, it seems Landmark Creamery has recently found itself in a bit of a bind. According to the Go Fund Me page, the ladies lost over 1,000 pounds of cheese after their cold storage company threw it out. The Anna’s had fallen behind on payments and owed the company $1,000. According to the page, they told the company owner they would pay as soon as possible, but the owner declared the space abandoned and threw away the cheese. The cheese, valued at $20,000, is a hand-crafted product needing six months to age, so it’s not easily replaced.

Seeing Both Sides of the Cheese Wheel

As a small business owner, I understand the importance of being paid. The storage facility provided a necessary service to Landmark Creamery and it was right to expect the agreed-upon compensation. You bet I’m all about responsibilities and holding up one’s end of the bargain.

But I also remember those startup days, struggling to succeed and stretching money to pay the bills. I appreciate all the help I received back then (my husband’s support was and still is a necessary component to me staying in business). I firmly believe when we uphold one another, we all stand stronger; that supportive action today generates positive reactions tomorrow. Kudos to the Culinary Ladies Collective for setting up the Go Fund Me for Landmark Creamery. This network of female chefs, food and beverage producers, growers and artisans is an example of how we go far when we go together.

I’m also a believer in communication. In Adunate’s 14-year running, I’ve only had a few clients fail to pay me on a timely basis. Those who respected me enough to talk to me about it are still my clients today. Those who ghosted me, well, you can bet I now refuse to work with them. According to the Go Fund Me page, Landmark Creamery had just made a payment on the balance and had communicated with the storage facility they would pay the rest as soon as possible. If this was the case, I just can’t see how destroying $20,000 of product for a $1,000 bill was beneficial to anyone, including the owner of the storage facility.

Be Part of the Village

Folks, if you’re a fan of small businesses and local foods, if you love Wisconsin specialty cheese, if you have a minute and a few extra dollars, please consider supporting Landmark Creamery. You may very well be benefiting more people than you know, not to mention keeping some fantastic cheese in production!


Where We Talk About Women and the Difficulties of Self-Promotion

My cousin JerriLynn is an amazing woman. When we were both barely into our 20s, she was an audacious entrepreneur with her own whole foods store. Since then she’s succeeded in a variety of ventures, always with moxie and always with finesse. These days she’s in real estate and even though I’m a Great Lake away from her Lansing, Michigan market, I love following her work.

I’m bragging about my cousin because just about the time Lisa Kivirist and I were taping our In Her Boots episode on the difficulties women have promoting themselves, JerriLynn’s quarterly newsletter came in the mail. I was blown away by how skillfully she announced her latest achievements, all the while keeping to her genuine and unpretentious self (and anyone who’s met JerriLynn knows this is who she truly is).

No matter what industry you’re in, tooting one’s horn is a necessary component of running your own business. It’s marketing, after all. Interestingly, many women think of self-promotion as a necessary evil. Maybe you do too? I admit I have to push myself, but I’ve also learned ways to make advocating my work easier and more authentic.

So here’s our In Her Boots, episode 60. Lisa and I share great first steps for telling your story and effectively promoting what you do. Listen up and then share your own ideas!