Hello from the trenches!

It's dark in here 🦇

Caught golden hour yesterday and watched the sunset with the sheep. 🐑

I woke up today, and every day for the last few weeks, with a sense of…dread. It might have to do with turning 36. I know, Little Miss Sunshine. I always get the birthday blues. October is such an emotionally-charged month because each year I scrupulously evaluate “where I am” in life in the days leading up to October 19th. I’ve never understood people who feel nothing but self-indulgent joy at themself and their #blessed life on their birthday. Let’s be real, you can’t trust those people.

Before you jump down my throat, “stop complaining about your life, you ARE blessed!” let me say, never say that word in my presence, thank you very much. I put “blessed” and “journey” in the same category of cheugy. Also, this isn’t filing complaints about where I am or where I am not in my life, it’s more an observation that the formula I was taught, and believed in earnest would work, is not a formula at all, much less an equation that leads to a logical conclusion.

These observations came in the form of hard truths. And I thought I’d share those with you today as a little peak into the trenches of first time foundry.

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Hard truth #1:

Am I little late to the game on this one? Yes, but here it is. You have to feed the beast if you’re going to have a shot at being successful. And by the beast(s) I mean Google, Meta and TikTok. And they are BEASTS. I keep trying to barter with myself. There are other ways to do this. I can grow an audience without throwing money at these dumb fucks. I can find a more genuine, organic path to growth.

Welp, turns out, not really. The world is going to hell in a hand basket, and with it, it’s taking all hopes of building a business and a community the old fashioned way. We’re left with an over-saturation of gratuitous self-promoters. And it’s never enough. We’re all just slaves to the algorithm. You have to sway it in your favor. Pay the piper.

Advertising has always been a thing, that’s obvious. But tech giants have businesses by the balls. It feels like the only way out is through. I was watching Mad Men recently and thinking, gosh, how I would love to be able to throw an ad in the paper or up on a billboard and call it a day. I know it wasn’t easy back then either, to say the least, but investing in marketing today is like trying to fill an Olympic size swimming pool that has a hole at the bottom. And to even get close, you have to have an Olympic size budget to boot. The thought of throwing money at Meta or any of the other goons makes me want to bathe with a blender. I suppose what I’m romanticizing are the pre-social media giant days. Social has both democratized building a business while simultaneously raising the cost of paying to play.

But alas, there is no escape. Unless of course I decide to move GP to my small town and sell locally only, which, doesn’t sound half bad to be honest, but that’s not in the game plan right now.

There are probably people screaming, I know someone who built a business with only 100 dollars and never had to pay for eyeballs! Good for you. Send me a fuckin email. I’d love to hear how they did it. LinkedIn is CRAWLING with people posting these stories. “Solopreneurs” (barf) who never hired a single person, did it all on their own, and built a seven-figure company with no more than a $1,000 bucks. Do you believe them?

If you do, let me know if you’re also the person who celebrates their own birthday with the zest and zeal of someone who has won the lottery (every year). We all know that girl who forces their celebratory “me” fest on their friends and family for a month-long extravaganza. This is often the same girl who gives entitled bride-to-be energy that I wrote about in my ultra-spicy post Class is in Session: Etiquette in 2024.

Don’t be a Ramona

Even worse, there are so many non-businesses posing as legitimate businesses out there that it becomes hard to tell the difference. But I’m going to save that topic for a later post.

This is fun. Are we having fun? ᵔᴗᵔ

Hard truth #2

Integrity doesn’t mean shit in business. This is a tough one to swallow, and to be honest I haven’t fully accepted it as a truth just yet. But it’s knocking at my door. Since starting down this road, I’ve encountered dozens, DOZENS, of what could only be referred to as swindlers. They don’t have the experience, expertise, or guarantees of ROI to take your money, but they’ll take it nonetheless. Now personally, I could never charge someone for a service that I knew I couldn’t deliver on. To me, that’s just embarrassing. But to many (too many), it’s just another day at the office. Everyone is in a mad dash to the success finish line. Whether it’s money or notoriety they’re after, they’re willing to lie, steal, and cheat to get there, and they rush the process. I’m sorry, but you simply cannot say you are an expert in “x” if you only just started doing it a year ago. That’s like someone saying “I’m an orthopedic surgeon, I just started med school last year. Let me operate on you.” Fuck outta here.

I’ll also throw this in there - because this post isn’t spicy enough - that if you are claiming to be an expert at something and you’re still in your 20s… you are probably not. I would not get a face lift from a 28 year old surgeon. Unless you are Simone Biles or some other insane athlete, you need more time on this earth before you can call yourself an expert in anything.

This is what your 20s is about

To be clear, I’ll never give up my integrity in the way I do business, but there is a level of reckoning with the fact that plenty of other people have, and will, and I need to be more diligent about protecting myself. Every founder feels bamboozled now and again, especially when it’s your first rodeo, but the goal is to make it far less often.

Now for things that actually make me feel empowered to make better decisions

Here are some notes I’ve taken lately that really put things into perspective and are helping me to make better business decisions. Shout out to my mentor

Azora Zoe Paknad

for her no-bs approach to business. Check out her Substack First Rodeo on her experience building and subsequently shuttering a company, and now she’s got a lot to say about the experience. In her words, “nobody talks about the ugly parts of this weird little whirlpool of entrepreneurial mythology and the cult of “building a brand.”” Most recently I took a lot from her post The 6 Things I’d Do Differently as a Founder.

Okay, here they are:

• Kill your darlings. Just because I am emotionally and/or financially devoted to a particular product or idea does not mean that’s what everyone else - customers or potential customers - will attach to. For me, this frame of thought has surfaced at least one darling I need to kill so I can move on.

• Stop everything else and talk to your customers. It sounds obvious, but when you’re building something, you get pulled in so many directions that even important things fall by the wayside. I’m turning this ship around and dedicating time to connecting with and learning from my customers.

• Leverage “I” instead of “we.” It’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling like all of my marketing emails, newsletters, IG posts, have to come from “we,” as in, “we, the company of Good Psyche.” But actually, I’m realizing the benefit in the authenticity of sending from “I.” Hey, it’s me, Trish. It feels more personal for the customer because it is! I’m the one writing it and speaking directly to them, and I think people appreciate hearing from the founder like that. It’s accountability.

Anyways, that’s all my tired brain can think of for now. Check on your founder friends. Make sure they are feeding themselves, bathing regularly, exercising, getting some sunlight on their skin. You know, the basics.

You could be anywhere right now and you’re here ♡︎ Thank you for reading. You clearly have good taste.

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