This year for my very strange sheltering-in-place birthday celebration, I treated myself to a very real treat: locally made jigsaw puzzles and locally baked cookies! You can treat yourself to the same option if you live in Athens, by the way, through the collaboration between Very Good Puzzle and the subject of this week’s #MeatetarianEats post, Sun Cat Sweets!

Though I did purposely order a puzzle and cookie delivery combo, what I did not expect was how amazing these companies are! I made mention on the socials that this was my birthday treat to myself, and they sent me a birthday card, a second puzzle AND a knitting bag! OK, maybe they didn’t know I am weird and love using tote bags as knitting project bags, but still. I got a little emotional about the whole thing and it was the greatest surprise!
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But y’all aren’t here for the emotional gushing over puzzles, right? You’re here because this is a post about cookies. 

I honestly have no recollection of how I found out about Sun Cat Sweets other than one day randomly discovering them on Instagram. It’s a home bakery here in Athens. And fun fact, they will ship you a box of cookies if you live in Georgia or, if you ask nicely, the Eastern coast. I highly recommend this.

I’ve been procrastinating writing this for a full week now. It’s been A Long Week. A long two weeks, really. Two Thursdays ago I was helping set up a catering event for one of my restaurant partners and the event hosts brought in extra hand sanitizer to have in the banquet room. The next day all Hell broke loose and that’s about the time I started losing track of days.

Last Thursday was my birthday, and it was the strangest birthday I’ve ever … celebrated. I was panicking about my friends who were un- or under-employed now because of COVID-19. I was worried for the newest restaurant I do a bit of work with — they chose to close their doors due to the uncertainty. I was worried for my hair salon that I do occasional photography and graphics for, as they, too, shut down for the safety of their team and customers. I was worried, a little bit, for me too: What happens if my main restaurant accounts close?

So my 31st birthday was one I’d rather pretend not happened at all. And in times of stress, I tend to stress-eat. Not over-eat, per se, but when I’m stressed I specifically want comfort food. That’s something different to every person, but to me … it’s barbeque and French fries. Y’all knowI can eat some barbeque. And there’s only one place in Athens that has my comfort-style of sauce-drenched pulled pork on a fluffy white bread bun that’s served up with a side of hot, salty crinkly fries.

I’m talkin’ Butt Hutt, fam.

My history with Butt Hutt takes us back almost a decade, when this little BBQ shack opened up across the street from The Red & Black, where I basically lived my junior and senior years of college. When I wasn’t at a sorority event, I was there. In my cubicle. Usually writing or doing homework, or often bugging my co-workers and shaking the vending machine in the hopes it was lying about all the Mr. Pibb being gone … again.

We ate at Butt Hutt a lot. Jimmy John’s, my other now-comfort craving, was right next door. Those were the places we frequented, but Butt Hutt was locally owned and had an even bigger special place in my heart. I remember illegally running across Baxter Street with a paper bag of pulled pork in one hand and a giant Styrofoam cup of sweet tea in the other. I’ll never forget when Daniel, Carey (my editors at the time) and I went together and learned they changed their fries, which was a travesty they later fixed.

When I moved to Macon and later Atlanta and Sandy Springs, Butt Hutt was a constant food source I missed. Maybe it was so many memories made there; maybe it was the ‘que. But “the Hutt” was my Athens comfort food. 

These are strange, scary times. I don’t want to induce a panic and make folks think they need more toilet paper, but it’s a fact. Every single one of us faces uncertainty in some way or another, and if you already battle any sort of anxiety or mental sh*t it’s even worse. Add to that owning your own business and having not only your livelihood, but the lives and financial circumstances of your employees in your hands … hot damn, y’all. 

So it’s up to us. Those of us able to have an income still, we are the ones on whom it falls to do everything we can to lift up our small businesses. I encourage you to donate to fundraisers, community funds and nonprofits if you are able. Shop your favorite boutiques online. Purchase a gift certificate that you can redeem for your next hair appointment or brow wax. Find out which of your favorite places offer delivery or to-go services.
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Whatever you can do, do it local. Support these small businesses and restaurants now, because Lord knows I’m going to need some fun places to go eat at and write about when all this is said and done.

Kombucha, a probiotic fermented tea, has a distinctively tart taste. It contains a negligible amount of alcohol, and can be enjoyed alone or in cocktails and mocktails. The beverage isn’t new, but it’s only beginning to gain traction in the Classic City thanks to Erika Galloway and Jason Dean, co-founders of Figment.

“Budweiser is not like a pastry stout, and there’s that much variety in kombucha, too. Some are really crazy vinegary, some are super-carbonated, some are light, some are heavily flavored,” Dean said. 
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Figment kombucha is available by the glass or in growlers, which are a glass jug-style vessel. Unlike beer in growlers, live-cultured kombucha will continue to naturally carbonate inside the container, allowing it to stay crisp and drinkable longer.

after the beer brewery Dean originally planned to start.
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“It costs a lot less to get into kombucha. There’s a lot less barrier in entry into market. There’s a lot of potential there, so I thought it’d be better to go that direction than spend $2 million on a brewery that may or may not make it,” he said. “I just liked the fact that [Figment] is a name that’s kind of strange and doesn’t mean a whole lot to anyone specifically, and it’s kind of an ethereal word that anyone could bring their own meaning to.”

>> from figment of imagination to reality

Kombucha is fermented by a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast — also known as a SCOBY. SCOBYs tend to look like flat discs or mushrooms that take hold at the top of a container as the bacteria and yeast huddle together and create a physical form. The SCOBY, along with additional “starter liquid” that contains the bacteria and yeast, is added to water, sugar and tea to get the process going. When Galloway first became interested in kombucha, she read online that it was possible to purchase a container of GT’s plain kombucha, and as long as it had a small piece of SCOBY in the bottom, it could be cultivated into a larger colony. 

Galloway and Dean have produced starter liquid so strong that they no longer add the physical SCOBY to their brews. 

It takes anywhere from 10 to 30 days to finish a batch of kombucha, depending on the amount being produced. After a period of primary fermentation, where the unflavored tea reaches the appropriate sourness and yeast turns the sugar to alcohol, the SCOBY and starter are removed, and what’s left is flavored and undergoes a secondary fermentation process. During secondary fermentation, kombucha naturally carbonates itself as the bacteria digest the alcohol. Figment’s owners also chose to add additional carbonation at the end to ensure product consistency. All in all, brewing kombucha isn’t much different from brewing beer.

“It’s still the same principle and it’s based off of that because both [Dean] and I were into beer,” she said. “All the equipment that you use is the same as if you were brewing beer. We have to use a hot water pot, which is the hot liquor tank for boiling water. We steep, which is the same thing as using your mash tun with your grains. Then we add the additional sugar once you take the tea out and we cool it down, so you’re still chilling it like you would with beer, and then we go into fermentation.”
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Figment’s owners prefer to use a blend of black and green teas for their kombucha. Galloway said white tea also works well, but the main thing is to ensure the tea is caffeinated: “Your bacteria need the caffeine for an energy source.”

>> farm-fresh focus

Dean said Figment’s focus is on taking advantage of the seasons and fresh, local ingredients as often as possible.

“It’s going to be a little more time-intensive and expensive to use seasonal, local ingredients, but I think it’s better for the economy. It’s better for the farmers,” Dean said. “It’s going to taste better; it’s going to be more interesting. There’s a story behind it.”
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Farmers markets play an integral role in Figment’s business model. Not only are they a way to source raw materials, but the exposure there has been unparalleled. 

He wants to look at kombucha brewing more from a restaurant focus.

“I’m very influenced by kind of culinary things,” Dean said. “I like to think of brewing, even beer brewing, as it cooking. You’re thinking of ingredients and how those ingredients go together and not necessarily like, what’s going to sell or what are kind of popular flavors that everybody else is doing. I want to think of different things you don’t see on the shelf.”

The two found out the hard way that there are some flavors harder to capture than others. Ambrosia — coconut, pineapple and cherry — didn’t turn out so well, and neither did root beer.

“We thought we’d make a full-on natural one using the roots and trying to duplicate the flavor of root beer, but it just tasted like roots,” Dean said.
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Galloway agreed, saying it was one of those things you might taste and ask if there are supposed to be health benefits from.

allergies and treating vaginal and urinary tract infections.

However, NIH cautions, “benefits have not been conclusively demonstrated, and not all probiotics have the same effects.”

“There’s a lot of argument as to what exactly is probiotic and what these things are really doing inside your body and how they really work,” Dean said. “It’s just now, surprisingly, starting to be studied. This thing that has been done for thousands of years is still not fully scientifically understood, like, what does happen to kombucha in the actual gut and what’s specifically going on here? Right now we’re just still kind of going on anecdotal evidence that people feel better.”

The NIH piece goes on to say that “strong scientific evidence” to support probiotic use for most health conditions is lacking, and the US Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved any probiotics for preventing or treating health problems.

The first thing I saw on Instagram this morning was an on-point quote from fellow University of Georgia graduate Olori Swank, now a celebrity fashion stylist and entrepreneur: “Achieving your goals is a slow process; but quitting won’t speed it up.”

Yes. Let’s talk about that.

If you’ve been following me for any amount of time these past seven months, you may remember that in January, my skincare + cosmetics company announced an opportunity for consultants and directors to earn an all-expenses paid trip to Miami and Bahamas cruise. You may also recall that I really wanted to earn it. But on June 30, the last day to finish qualifications and get myself on the boat … I fell short.

And I fell short because I learned a really, really powerful lesson the hard way.

way I would ever achieve the goals I set was by doing the very thing I was refusing to do. I didn’t quit, exactly, but I definitely closed myself off to this side of the business. That was … selfish.

“Selfish? How is it selfish?” you may ask.

It’s selfish because of what I am able to do and accomplish with this as my full-time job. Yes, I knit and photograph and do some freelance storytelling work. But I have the flexibility to do those things because of what I have in my company. Most people who have full-time or side-jobs within the realm of direct sales (which is what my company is) or network marketing are the same way. They are able to have lives outside of the cubicles they are/were once chained to 40-plus hours a week because they took a chance on something crazy that they probably rolled their eyes about (like me!) and actually worked that opportunity until it paid them back tenfold. 

It’s selfish because when I quit/was fired from (still not sure) the job I had at a brewery, I was able to quickly cover my bills and rent by getting over myself and holding appointments. Again, there are actually quite a large number of people in companies with similar structures to mine that are doing this daily because they are working.

It’s selfish because I became so singularly focused on not being pushy, but needing to have the finances to pay my bills, that I chose to only make money instead of share the wealth.

At the end of the six-month qualification period to earn this cruise, I sold more than $10,000 retail value in skincare and makeup. Bills paid; rent paid; even able to stick some in savings and that kinda thing. Let me tell ya, that’s a load off my back and my mind! My customers who use our skincare look and feel fabulous and don’t have to wear makeup. My customers who use our makeup love their colors and are digging our new foundation especially. Oh, and lipstick. Always lipstick. 

But imagine if I’d taken the time to focus on sharing more about my company with those customers.

My customers who are on payment plans with me for their skincare … could have started their own business and gotten their skincare at a steep, 50 percent discount, not to mention they could have begun building a customer base of their own and started making profits. Those profits could go toward things like rent and bills, or a vacation for their family. One of my customers — who has the dang cutest house in Lexington! — dreams of owning a bakery one day. Even as a hobby consultant, I could have helped her strategize and make that happen. Another customer, who runs a daycare center in Athens, expressed to me once that she’d love to own a campground. 

It is crazy. 

But I did. I have. Team-building has been my biggest desire and biggest self-imposed struggle because I was too selfish to share. Too selfish to recognize potential in people and then tell them, “Hey Lisa, did you see my post last night about how my business covered my rent last month, and I did that by holding x-number of appointments in x-number of hours? I would love to help you and your husband buy that rental property on the lake by showing you how to do what I do.”

Maybe it’s not makeup or skincare you’re jazzed about, in which case my company may not be right for you. Perhaps it’s health and wellness; or fashion; or jewelry; or cleaning supplies. The Direct Sellers Association has a plethora of members and you can pull up any of their compensation plans and business models to find out more. It’s not for everyone, but I feel like a shabby friend and consultant for hiding my opportunity for so long.

In full transparency, the time is nigh for me to enter what we call “director in qualification,” or DIQ (pronounced dee-eye-queue, not like Dick Cheney) on Aug. 1. Selfishness in sharing stops here. I’m looking for at least five future consultants to work with me, whether it’s for that deep discount on their own skincare and makeup or for something bigger. I let the cruise sail on by because I ignored the process.

I’m not letting anything else do that again.

Sounds like how any good Southerner would order her hashbrowns at WaHo, doesn’t it? Well sheesh, now I’m hungry and it’s not even a #MeatetarianEats post!

Tonight I’m not writing about food. Instead, what I mean by scattered, smothered and covered is — and y’all get ready, because I don’t think I saw this one coming either — spiritually scattered, smothered and covered by the grace of a higher power. Now before y’all go and scatter yourselves because I’m writing a little church-y today, let me assure you I’m not going to try to convert you to anything. OK? OK.

I did recently start attending Cornerstone Church in Athens, Georgia, and though my reasons for doing so are mine alone, I will share that it’s been a really good experience thus far. I am a firm believer that an individual’s relationship with the higher power they believe in, if they believe in a higher power, doesn’t necessarily need to take place within the confines of a specific building with a steeple. That being said, it is nice to be in that environment once or twice a week.

I relate that back to my skincare + cosmetics business, and perhaps that’s why I needed it. In my company, we have two large business events and smaller weekly or bi-weekly local business meetings. Your success as a beauty consultant doesn’t require you to attend any of those, but when everyone is sobusy and there are so many distractions, it’s easy to re-enter life after the big events and forget everything you were so driven to do. Those more regular, smaller meetings to me are just as important as the big ones, because they remind me what I am working for. They keep me in the zone, so to speak. 

Right now my unit doesn’t have weekly meetings, and it is very easy to allow myself to get off-track. When I get off-track, I get moody and anxious and stressed and snappy. Combined with a season of life in which I am responsible for every penny I earn, it’s even more stressful when I am off-track! I feel this is why I was led to seeking an environment where I am reminded of what my purpose is.

This Sunday the lead pastor at Cornerstone discussed the Biblical book of Hosea, who was a minor prophet. At the time Hosea reportedly lived, the region known as Israel was in a bit of disrepair: people were worshipping idols, leading lives that were pretty shady, and God reached out to Hosea and told him that Hosea will now lead a life metaphoric of that of the process he’s about to undertake with Israel to wake them up. You’ll have to read the book and draw your own conclusions, but here’s what was spoken to me through the service and the subsequent reading in my own time afterward. 

Step 1: Scatter.
Yep. You see where this is going already, doncha! 

Before there’s any kind of spiritual awakening … I needed a reason to have a spiritual awakening. My life had to go all sorts of kerfluffle. Looking back, there’s been quite a few times of “scatter” since I began to realize what I ultimately desire and am ultimately appointed to do. There were breakups of relationships. There were difficulties in job settings. There were opportunities for me to seek better, higher, more! But I managed to um, usually not do any of those things. I would start to do them, then be tempted or distracted away.

Step 2: Smother.
So your life’s a shambles. You are THE definition of hot mess express and someone can just go ahead and order tickets to your sh*tshow, right? I definitely feel that way a lot, especially recently. One step forward, two steps back. I had (thankfully I can now use the past tense here!) a number of days where I was smothered in those feelings of anxiety and stress and lack that I mentioned before, because I was so scattered and all over the place. And so far from what I know I am supposed to be doing! 

Step 3: Cover.
This step is interactive. It requires you to pull your weight. Pastor Scott, talking on Sunday, mentioned that God’s love is forever if you choose to seek it. We do have free choice, but DANG if those first couple steps aren’t encouraging me to change my course!

If you’re cool hanging out in step two, feeling a little woeful and sorry for yourself and victimhood-y, hoping someone or something will come into your path and lift you out of your misery, that is your choice. Or say, maybe you’re not feeling like a victim, but perhaps you work your tail to the bone and are fiercely independent and think you can do it all by yourself, so you shut everything else out and become so caught up in busyness you forget why you’re busy in the first place … and then get overwhelmed and start questioning what the heck is happening. (Hi, hello, it’s me.)

But if you decide to sit down and have a little meeting with yourself about all those feelings and stress, and if you do believe in a higher power, there’s a chance you’ll be inclined to do what I did, which is finally accept that ol’ saying “I’m doing this FOR myself, but not BY myself.” When you do that, God does a little happy dance and suddenly he’s hanging out as your new partner. Covering you in love, in acceptance, in guidance. Like a therapist, but always there and it doesn’t matter whether or not your insurance covers it. Which is great, because mine does not!

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Y’all. It took me a LOOONG time to get here, and “here” is not the end point. I’ve got a lot more ground to cover. My smother phase lasted entirely too long because I rejected and resisted the concept that I needed a God-filled environment like Cornerstone. But the more weighty all the negativity got, and the more I seemed to dig myself deeper into a mental hole, the more I realized what I needed was a BIG change. A shock to my system. 

I’m as shocked as anyone that I decided to peep into a church setting. I’m grateful I listened to those little guiding whispers though, telling me to stop being stubborn and do what is right for my mental health, spiritual health and business health. Are you also feeling scattered or smothered? Overwhelmed, stressed, anxious and depressed? Then perhaps it’s time you explored options to shock your system, too.

As a child, I assumed this had some obscure reference to the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock. Like, these people escaped religious persecution, got on a boat called the Mayflower and in the month of April they weathered a lot of storms to land in North America. Not quite. I then figured the adage prophesized the month of April as the rainiest of the year, and thus all the flowers would bloom in May. This is probably closer to the actual origin of the saying.

Now at the ripe ol’ age of 30, I find “April showers bring May flowers” to have a different meaning. 

I was able to spend some time recently centering myself, which I am sure sounds hippie-dippie-trippy, but I’m being serious. March was, for whatever reason, not my best month in a lot of ways, particularly when it came to achieving some pretty lofty {but hear me, completely doable} goals in my skincare + cosmetics business. I had quite a few wins and high moments, but when March 31 rolled over to April 1 at midnight, I realized what Cinderella must have felt like as her glitter carriage morphed back into a pumpkin. On the plus side, I still had both shoes on my feet.

I digress.

Let me explain. You’ll typically be able to find a weekly or daily sudoku puzzle in your local newspaper. There are nine big squares of nine little squares each, and the goal is for each of your nine big squares, each row and each column to contain the numbers one through nine once each. For most of my life I never bothered to try because I told myself the story that “I am bad with numbers.” Granted, math is not my strong suit, especially in the realm of a classroom, but I didn’t know what I was talking about. I also, fun fact, spent about 15 years calling it “soduku,” pronounced like Count Dooku. So I extra was telling myself a story here.

Tonight as I did my “focus practice” as I’ve been calling it, I pulled out a recent puzzle from the local Athens independent newspaper, Flagpole. My method is to examine each square in detail and see, based on the numbers that are already put there, which numbers could be in that square. I do this for every open square. Then I go back through: Is there any square that could onlybe one number? Over and over again, then crossing out possibilities in other squares. 
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I’m sure someone out there has a different way to do sudoku, but this is my way and I’m cool with it, so calm yourselves. 

I fill one square in — yes! A win! Then spend a few minutes going back over the entire puzzle, looking for the next one. Crossing out the ones that won’t work. Back and forth, up and down, over and over until suddenly, YAAAS! All the pieces start coming together. One number goes in that clears four squares that clear six more and it keeps going and going until the puzzle is completed.  Such a feeling of accomplishment!

Isn’t it interesting how momentum builds, and then all of a sudden everything just comes together?

I could have easily put the puzzle away when it was frustrating. And trust me, when I have gone over rows and columns and squares and can’t seem to find either my error or the next clue, I want to ball the dang paper up and hurl it across the bathroom and open up a book. But because I focused, because I didn’t even let my very cute cats distract me, because I did the work to set the things up and I didn’t stop following up on my work until the thing was done, the thing got done. 

Y’all, I spent two straight days in March at a conference for my company and heard about a dozen entrepreneurs talk about building momentum, and it took a dang sudoku puzzle and a silly old wives tale to hit my mindshift. The teacher appears when the student is ready, amirite?

Last May through this March I was planting seeds. I wasn’t particularly focused about it all the time {hello, last August, October and this January and kind of March}, but I still trudged forward. And now that I’m aware of what a truly focused mindset looks like, I’m going to make it rain all over those seeds in April. That’s called momentum. 

And those showers? They’re going to bring May flowers.

Nathan Nelms came on board in 2017 after Jake Sapp, coordinator of program operations for ESP, contacted his parents about Nelms working with Java Joy.

“We did like a practice,” Nelms said. “We would like, fill the coffee filter thing an then we’ll have to pour the coffee powder stuff and then we’ll have to shake it a little bit and put it in the thing, and we’ll have to turn the coffee thing on and wait ‘til it says ‘ready to go.’”
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Going on two years later, Nelms and McCutcheon are experts at running the coffee maker and the coffee cart.

joyristas bring their coffee cart or coffee trailer to the business and serve complimentary cups of Jittery Joe’s, and plenty of complimentary hugs. Though many Athens-area businesses have hired Java Joy since 2016, the word is spreading.

“The coolest place is the downtown in Atlanta,” McCutcheon said of a recent event at Colony Square in Midtown. “We helped to do 500 muffins.”

Joyristas made about $100 each in tips that day, and celebrated a job well-done with lunch at Cracker Barrel.

“It’s better than [previous jobs] because you get to go out in the community and serve coffee and hang out with your friends,” Nelms said.

Graben said most of the time, the cart is wheeled into a business’ lobby, lounge or meeting room, but for this event, the trailer was on the street food truck style. She said this will be the first of several bookings at this locale as part of Java Joy’s new subscription program: companies that book at least four times in one year can receive a discounted rate. 
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“We’re really great at grand openings or holidays, parties where businesses are celebrating certain big events,” Graben said. “At the same time, we’re plugged into businesses on a weekly, monthly basis that just want us there simply for their staff.”

In the Classic City, Java Joy launched a new partnership with the YMCA on weekends inviting businesses to sponsor coffee, and joyristas now have the chance to work directly at the Jittery Joe’s roastery on Monday a month.

“YMCA is like, we do events with basketball games. People play games, and we serve coffee for them,” McCutcheon said.

Her work with Java Joy inspired McCutcheon to create her own business — Meg’s Mess. She said the name in part comes from the mess she tends to leave in the kitchen, like red velvet on her mom’s mixer after making a cake.

As for Nelms, he gets the most out of being hands-on.

“Nathan really enjoys the kind of behind-the-scenes aspect of it,” Graben said. “You don’t tell him what needs to be loaded, he just grabs the cambros and takes them to the van.”

The other barrier Java Joy’s staff hopes to lessen is interacting with adults of different abilities.
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“That’s an amazing thing to witness. Some people have hesitancies with interacting with people with disabilities, and they don’t know how to get past it,” Graben said. “You see someone taken aback at first … by the end of it they leave with the biggest smile on their face. That’s what’s so special about our brand. We meet you where you are and you end up having this experience you didn’t’ expect, and a lot of people’s lives are changed because of it.”

decide to stay in south Georgia instead of moving to Atlanta?
 
Sarah: Both mine and my husband’s families are from Turner County. I’m married to my high-school sweetheart. He’s the reason I love ag because he was president of the FFA when I was in high school — he taught me how to show sheep. When I graduated college, we moved back to Ashburn [Georgia] on purpose because we loved south Georgia. We knew we were going to have kids one day and we needed the support of our families with both of us working and traveling.
 
Atlanta is so busy and we’ve been used to this lifestyle pretty much our whole lives, except for college, and the traffic is a little crazy. Here I have all the perks of small town life, plus if I need to be in Atlanta, I can be there in two hours and 15 minutes. 
 
After 10 years in an office setting, what’s it been like adjusting to a home office?
 
When I started working from home, I said, “I’m going to get up every single day and get dressed as if I was going to be at an office.” That lasted about four months. It helps because I have a designated office in my house — there’s no television; the snacks are all downstairs, so it’s like I have to go and eat my lunch downstairs. And sometimes I get on a roll up here and work through lunch, so it’s nice to have that designated space.
 
I am the primary person who runs the kids to school in the morning. I have to put on … not pajamas, so that helps. I just feel like it jump-starts me to go ahead and have a shower in the morning even if I’m putting on jeans and something casual. 
 
The struggle to adapting to working from home, on a personal level, has been kind of tricky because I have to make plans to see people. It’s not just seeing them in the kitchen and heating up my lunch, it’s a lot more planning.

effort for are really important to keep up a good network. Setting aside time for a one-on-one conversation is important. Keeping those relationships fresh and active is important not only in our industry, but with people I went to high school with, too. They’re working, they have kids, they’re juggling all the things; it’s nice to have a sanity check.
 
You mentioned your email calendar and planner. Why are these the tools that work best for you?
 
When I graduated high school, I was such a technology nerd [my now-husband] bought me a Palm Pilot for college. Like, syllabus day was my favorite day in college because I would go ahead and put in deadlines and tests. That’s a personality thing — some people cannot live by a calendar. But with technology, we all walk around with a smart phone in our hand at all times. I can be driving down the road and tell Siri, “call the car dealership and set up that appointment,” or “put that reminder on for Tuesday morning” and it’ll pop up and remind me. 
 
I operate out of Outlook for work for my email system. That shows up on my native iPhone calendar, so that just works nicely. I also have a physical planner that I utilize because sometimes it’s nice just to have it in my hand. Once a week I’ll just double-check to make sure [an event] is in both places.
 
I use a planner that’s like a perpetual planner. So when the month goes by, I’ll stick the January tab in the back and add some more planner pages that have the week-at-a-time view. I always have a full 12 months. 
 
How do you set boundaries between work and home, especially since they’re in the same place?
 
I utilize the “do not disturb” feature on my iPhone and I have all of my notifications turned off for emails. If somebody texts me for work it’ll still pop up, but honestly a lot of times when it’s time to sit down and eat supper, all the cell phones are not in the kitchen. Personal phones, work phones, they’re put away because we only have a few hours at night.

drive themselves one day. If you’re fortunate like I am to have a mother and mother-in-law and sister to help fill in the gaps, that’s great. If not, have a reliable babysitter or friend. The kids need a break from us as well, and that alleviates that.
 
Women, especially women that work from home and are juggling all the things, just need to remind themselves to give themselves some grace. You really only have 100 percent of yourself, so unless you quit your job and not have a partner … you do have to balance it. So don’t hold yourself to an impossible standard. The same thing with maintaining friendships and if you’re in a religion. Just know what’s important, and make sure you’re giving what you want to it, but not letting it run you over.

While a college student at then-Augusta State University, management major Cole Watkins took a class that challenged him to create a business. Inspired by past times he’d taken his friends out kayaking, he conceptualized Cole Watkins Tours — now rated the No. 4 thing to do in Evans, Georgia, on TripAdvisor. 

At the time Cole Watkins Tours was in development, there was an outdoors store already in Evans that offered kayak rentals, but Watkins saw a need with his model and decided to fill it.
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“If you were done kayaking when Escape Outdoors closed, you had to bring it back the next day,” he said, adding that for some folks, that was fine, but it could be an inconvenience or deterrent to others. 

“With my company I didn’t want to have a storefront because that was going to cost money. I didn’t have money. What I wanted to do was start slowly building my inventory of kayaks,” Watkins said.
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When he started, Watkins had three kayaks in inventory — so he could take a husband and wife on a tour, but if they had a kid, one of the three had to sit out. 
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“Now I’m up to 19 kayaks. I don’t want to get any more than that,” he said.

now. I’m going to start it and I’m going to start making money year one,’” he said. “I didn’t show her up but like, why borrow if my plan doesn’t need it?”

His plan was voted top in the class, and several classmates were assigned to his team to put together the official business plan. That was about the time Watkins got serious about the potential Cole Watkins Tours had.

“I thought we could really make money with this. I got on Vistaprint to get business cards. When I tallied it up, it was $20. I was like, I don’t know if I want to spend $20. … For $20, I could get three or four drinks tonight at the bar. If I spend $20, will I make it back? So — ugh, click,” he said. “Then my first phone call came.”

Watkins’ first tour earned him $90. A portion of his profits went back into building up his kayak inventory, first getting to seven, then eight, then finally the 19 he has now. 

In addition to the exercise benefits of kayaking, getting out on the water is a good way to de-stress and explore the Augusta area. The routes offered by Cole Watkins Tours take paddlers through Savannah River tributary Betty’s Branch, down the Augusta Canal, to visit wild donkeys at Stallings Island or to a close-up visit to the J. Strom Thurmond Dam.
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“We’ve had kids as young as 1 in the kayaks with their parents and as old as, I didn’t ask, but upper 70s, maybe 80s. It’s not a hard thing to do. Augusta is a great spot to learn because there’s no crazy rapids. Most of the routes we offer are still or float downstream, like a lazy river,” Watkins said. 

types. Girls are way more balanced at kayaking. Their center of gravity is in their hips. Guys, especially muscled-up guys, are a little more wobbly,” Watkins said. “I was thinking [my first customer] was going to be fine in this kayak, and he fell in on a very cold 8 a.m. morning. My very first person I slid in tipped over.”
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Since then, he’s only had five or six paddlers take unintended dips in the water.

One of the plus-sides of business ownership is that at times when Watkins needed the extra income, he could make the decision and  give himself a raise.

“2016 is when I found out my son was coming, so I worked my butt off and had my best year yet. That’s all side money on the weekend,” Watkins said. “I put in a lot more hours. I was getting a lot more progressive at using money on Facebook to do group tours, even on weeknights. Normally when I got off work I go home. That year I was doing every Tuesday and Thursday [on the water], even Fridays. Anything I got, I accepted, and tried to make it work.”

Now that he’s both a husband and a father, and soon a father of two, Watkins dialed back how much he’s out on the water so he can spend more time with his family. He focuses a lot on rentals and tries to capitalize on having three waves of kayakers out each weekend day the business is open, and he reserves time to go on family vacations twice a year or so. 
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Since he is more selective now than in previous years, Watkins will refer kayakers to his competitors if the situation calls for it.

kayaks out on the water with an individual he only sort-of knew. “I took him out there and he gave me $25 each. I was like, ‘Shoot, I just made $50, which was a lot of money for me when I was 21. I didn’t have to do anything but pick it up. So my whole plan changed.”

Today, about 66 percent of his business comes from kayak rentals.
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“That was a thing that made me uncomfortable, but wound up being the best thing for this model,” he said.

​CRIST: When I was freelancing in grad school, I realized I was spending a lot of time on my couch, working in my pajamas and in my apartment. I found that pretty quickly after working in the newsroom environment for so many years, I was alone. My alternative or social outlet in Athens was going out to a bar and hanging out with people, and I realized I was doing that too much in the evening right around or after dinner. I had been thinking about ways to become more involved, and people would be like, “Get a hobby, Carolyn, go do some yoga or pick up some yarn and actually practice crocheting.”
 
[My best friend] was leaving her job and proposed the idea to me, and something about it just caught me. When I came back to town that summer we started launching the idea.
 
When y’all planned what would become Pixel & Ink, what was going through your mind about how to make this a reality?
 
Can we find a place to put a shop like this? What would the rent be like at a place where we’d put a shop like this? Can we afford the start-up cost?
 
What would you say are the biggest lessons you learned about starting and running a business? Are these things you’ll consider as you launch your new business?
 
I don’t necessarily advise it now, but we applied for a couple of business credit cards after we filed for our LLC. We didn’t necessarily create a great business plan — we didn’t do it the best way to do profit. 
 
I think, as much as people like to talk about how boring business plans are, how you don’t need to think too much, you just need to take action … it is still important to have a business plan in terms of planning the products and the prices; how many you need to make to be able to pay your bills, and not just pay your bills, but pay yourself a salary. We’ve always been able to pay the bills but not ourselves. And that doesn’t work. You can only go so far without seeing the fruits of your labor.
 
One of the things that always struck me about Pixel & Ink was how it scaled. For a couple years there, it was in small spaces, and then most recently in a three-story building that incorporated an art gallery and there were talks of adding another business partnership in the basement. Obviously your freelance writing courses and coaching are different, but how did you choose to make that scaling jump? How did you learn from that?
 
Be careful about scaling up when you’re ready to scale. We were at that point where we were like, “Well, should we just do printing? Should we get rid of some of the other editing-intensive, time-intensive services, or should we scale up like crazy, hire staff to boost revenue, open an art gallery and start custom framing?” That went really well, but I think we may have also let our overhead costs get to be too much. We hired three employees and we probably should have only hired one; maybe open our shop first and then open the gallery later. There’s so many variables. If you actually want to scale, scale carefully.
 
We saw that some of the things we had scaled weren’t sustainable, and we wanted to shore up some of the losses we were facing. One of the things that we did was change our hours so we could get more work done. We changed to appointment-only instead of retail. We were trying to focus our clientele on artists and people who were looking at custom framing versus someone who would go to Michael’s and want Michael’s pricing. 
 
Both you and your fellow co-owner went through some pretty serious life changes while Pixel & Ink was open. How did that lead you to decide this was the direction you wanted to take, especially once you found out your landlord was selling your building?
 
When we found out Saucehouse did want to move into the building early, we decided not to move a fifth time.
 
I was thinking more about journalism again. A year ago I really started listening to podcasts, reading blogs, watching waytoo many webinars to learn how to create an online business for Pixel & Ink. It was a locally based brick-and-mortar store. We were expanding our website for print and frame orders … we were going to develop these online resources for our customers and while I was kind of creating the ideas for Pixel & Ink’s resources, in my brain I was also creating, “What would I do as Carolyn Crist as a brand? What do I know? Freelance journalism.”

myself years ago from the start. I’m not doing this as a temporary thing. I’m taking this as a brand online as a way to teach people how to make freelancing, specifically freelance journalism, work for them.
 
We’re seeing more and more freelance and independent workers [see Crist’s TEDxUGA talk on this topic above]. I’m kind of building my own brand on that and give free information, but also have a video course. I’m also putting in personal training and coaching kind of offerings as well if people want me to help them create one-on-one plans of, “I have this dream publication, how do I pitch this,” or if they have specific questions.
 
In my cosmetics and skincare company, we hear a lot that there’s never a perfect time. Just, you know, do it and stop waiting. What was your impetus to decide January 2019 was when this would begin?
 
I really began dreaming about doing my own thing in September-October. The gradual pivots and transformations help you to plan. November was when we really knew about Saucehouse [buying the Pixel & Ink building], so sometimes outside influences will make you realize you will need to make some kind of change. We knew we’d have to move anyway no matter who bought the place. We were already kind of thinking about it. The more we were thinking, I just started planning. 
 
I didn’t really get it down on paper and organized and on a website and create all the email lists until the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I think the lesson there would be to give yourself time to de-clutter. You can’t cram too much into your brain. If you have outstanding orders or clients and projects, go ahead and wrap them up, take a little bit of a break for yourself and start getting your next thing going. 
 
It also helps that I need the money. Money’s a good motivator.
 
Earlier you mentioned that one of the reasons you jumped in on Pixel & Ink was to be inspired to maybe not wear your pajamas as work attire as often. Since you’re migrating back into a work-from-home environment pretty exclusively with this, plus your continued freelance writing, how will you avoid the pitfall of that pj comfort zone?
 
I feel like mental health-wise I’m in a better headspace. I’m going to focus on my physical health. When I am done with freelance by like 3, 4 or 5, I’ll go [to my gym] to get out. My brain just wants me to leave the house. It’s still the same reset.
 
And things like these where I have dinners and lunch and coffee meetings outside of the house. Now I can go and do something else the rest of the afternoon, but I feel like I went out. I’m sure as I get more into the year and there are several days in a row when I’m really stuck at home it’ll be tough, but I think … I’ve arrived back at the conclusion that I like working at home, so I’ll find strategies that make it OK.
 
Clearly you have the writing chops and a couple of degrees to prove you’re pretty good at what you do. But how do you come out and call yourself an expert on these topics, able to teach others?
 
It is a lot of mindset stuff. I have done it full-time and maybe I haven’t made a million dollars … but I have been able to live on it and work on another business while doing it. One of the key factors is, have people asked me my advice about it? Which is true. I’m not a 30-year journalist, but I can mentor others who are starting out.
 
Another aspect of it too, I’m so obsessed with this personally, in terms of buying transformational courses from other people. I realized there are some offerings with freelance journalism but they’re not quite what I want to offer. I was looking for it, so I might as well create it and see if others will buy it.