I had this idea to sell a book in multiple parts and build a whole experience around each part. I hadn’t seen anything quite like it, and at $55 a month, I was asking people to make a pretty significant commitment. I liked the idea, but I had no idea whether enough people would actually want it. Before I created anything, I ran some ads on Meta offering preorders to see if I could sell it. I ended up selling around 175 preorders in a month and a half. That gave me enough confidence to go all in and start building. For me, preorders were an early test of product-market fit: would someone spend money on this experience at the price I needed to charge? Getting those first orders helped me make that decision.

I’m building my team differently this time around. In my previous business, I put more weight on the strongest résumé and skills. Those still matter, but Everlore Hollow is a creative business, and I want people who understand who we’re creating for. Even if someone is helping with production or packing boxes, I want them to be a fantasy reader. It is one of two screening questions I have on Indeed. I want to look around the warehouse and see our customer working on the product. That goes beyond enjoying the same books. When I bring in a new product idea, I want honest reactions from people who would actually buy it. Having our audience involved in making the product gives us that feedback from the beginning. I’ve had a lot of success creating things for the people working on them, and I want to build that into the team as we grow. Besides, they also understand what the experience on the other looks like, and the importance of the little details.

Sorry for this but I have to share it didn’t share earlier I guess but here it is. I haven’t been on in a while dealing with nonsense family drama going through a divorce, father in law passed, family home sold due to father in law passing and ex’siblings forcing the sale at lot after then the trust mentioned. Father in law died in July was in trust 3 months before house could be listed house was listed and sold Labor Day weekend realtor did not care what trust said neither did the siblings which the brother in law is the head of the trust. My kids have lived here all their life my oldest is autistic and my second daughter is a bubble child with medical issues my son is off at college so he like whatever and my youngest daughter is trying but tuff on her to. Then due to my father in law being sick and my ptsd causing me to miss work lost my job so no income except for my va disability and the ex doesn’t work but expects me to give her money still since by law still married and her bf is on ssdi cause he’s have social anxiety aka laziness. Also I have to move this damn house by Tuesday or the cleaning company will throw everything out and the closing is on Friday. The wife last weekend totaled the car I gave her coming home from her bfs messed up her hand and back so no moving help there then on Friday night some jack ass hit my van that I was gonna use for the move because of the weather nope that’s probably totally as well I can’t catch a break. Can’t get legal aid cause I make to much on va disability to qualify plus she has them represented her so conflict of interest. I don’t have 5-11k for retainer fee. My wife is coming after my assets but told me I don’t get anything from the sale of the house idk what else to do then she wants alimony and whatever else she can get from me. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

One of the most useful parts of my day is to close out each evening by recording anything I need to remember going forward, and planning the next day. I created an AI assistant that I communicate with through Chat GPT. It has a ledger of everything I am working on, all of the tasks that need to get done and access to my calendar to time block for me, and present me with my ever growing to do list. The coolest part of the system is how my cofounder and I communicate when we have tasks from each other, keeping Cheyenne and me on the same page. We were starting to get in a habit of handing each other verbal post-it notes (in passing things like, can you send me the XYZ file when you get a chance). This became a huge problem of both of us forgetting things. The solution was using our AI assistants to add to each others' list. If Cheyenne needs me to print posters for an upcoming box, she can tell her assistant to add it to my list. I can do the same for something I need her to handle. When I do my closeout, my assistant pulls up my tasks, including anything she’s assigned me. We go through what got done, what’s still open, and what needs to happen tomorrow. I can also mention something we talked about that never made it onto the list. The setup is basically a shared business task list with a separate assistant for each of us. We keep our own conversations, personal tasks, and routines. That’s made the closeout more useful for me. Along with getting the day out of my head, it gives me a regular place to catch requests from her and make sure unfinished work carries forward.

I recently used Codex to turn a flat 2D image of a product I wanted to make into a 3D model. I had a drawing of this little moth that is specific to my business, and I wanted to turn that drawing into a 3D-printed character. I don't know how to design in the 3D space, but I did hear recently Codex added Blender, which is a free 3D software, to its plugins. Being able to hand it a picture and have it help build the actual thing opens up a lot of possibilities for product ideas. I gave it the image, explained what I wanted, and had it go into the 3D software and create the model. It was working directly in the software, which was pretty cool to watch. There’s still judgment involved in deciding how something flat should look from the sides and back, so having a clear idea of the finished product helps. I’ve been using Codex for a lot of business and software work, but this was a fun example of using it for physical product development too. Something that started as a picture became a model I could keep working with.