State of the Aster

Amanda Thomsen

I thought entrepreneurship would be more about ideas and meeting people, and less about unclogging the vacuum, to be honest. Is reality crashing my party? No, but I’m running out of certain kinds of steam, for real. It’s like when your popcorn popper overheats and shuts itself off for a bit and you’re not quite sure when it’s going to pop back on, but when it does it’s going to spray kernels all over your kitchen floor, and I’m the popcorn popper in this scenario. Relatable?

So far I’ve run several packed workshops, had busy days that were like being run through a pasta maker, brought my kid with me to work an untold amount of times and gone through two packages of meal replacement bars. I’m hoping my lack of steam will settle into being able to sit at my desk and do some accounting and other uninteresting busywork that needs to be done and I’ve been meaning to do, but have been way too jazzed. Most of it is human resources-related. Ouch.

My first employee quit before her first day (and I support her in a “working moms unite” way; it was too much for her) and my second employee is a 17-year-old orchid prodigy with endless energy who includes himself in all future plans for this place. He’s a gem and I bet I can get him to unclog the vacuum for me. I’m still looking for more employees and I thought this place would be so cool that everyone would want to work here (insert laugh track here).

I’ve learned that we hire employees to blame them for the things we screwed up ourselves. To clear up any moral gray area that creates, I’ve now hired an imaginary employee named Monica that I will blame for literally anything and everything. It’s a morale booster. “Sorry you couldn’t park closer. I told Monica not to park right in front of the shop!” “I’m sorry you had to wait. Monica called out of work today.”

Everyone is happier with a focal point for their ire and it’s just better karmically if it’s not even a real person. For the record, it became “Monica” when the wireless sales guy mentioned they had a business specialist that could help me with a vast amount of my problems and her name was Monica. My first thought was of a row of call center employees all going by “Monica,” somewhat like when you wait to see Tinker Bell at the Magic Kingdom and there are really six identical rooms of Tinker Bells and no one is the wiser. So “Monica” it is.

Did I mention I’m making a ton of money? I’m exceeding goals and I think that’s a large part of this whole finding myself in uncharted territory. I thought I’d be an absolute slow-going novelty to start out. My weird transition is about scaling up quickly, but not too quickly. Making money has so many strings attached to it I never conceived of. If I sell it, I just have to go get more stuff. Repeat for infinity.

And with the success comes the requests for donations, which is humorous in that I’m already busier than I can handle, so their requests that I give them something for free in order to promote myself makes this lifelong optimist instantly cynical with a sinister laugh. You want to mail out a coupon from my shop to promote your real estate business? MWUHAHAHAHAHA! HOW DOES THAT BEHOOVE ME?

In summation, we’ll break ground on my outdoor sales yard any day now, which frightens me and excites me. I’m in astronomical debt (but making gains every day), I’m all out of emotional endurance and I wouldn’t change a thing. Except for the clogged vacuum. GP

Amanda Thomsen is a funky, punky garden writer and author. Her blog is planted at KissMyAster.com and you can follow her on Facebook, Twitter AND Instagram @KissMyAster.