This past month I committed to figuring out how to bring Mandatory Fun sticker production in house. And when I made this goal, I had no idea the amount of trial and error / heartache it would involve.
It’s a lot – shout out Shipmate Stickers for some behind the scenes moral support.
Definitely have a ways to go still, to fully master the hundreds of dollars worth of machinery that now lives in my house, but the main point is that I kicked off the month with the goal to release one new sticker on the website and that happened.
High but attainable, style.
RECAPPING JANUARY 2025
January sucked weather wise, if I’m being honest. There was a huge snow storm followed by a once-a-decade cold front that turned everything into unmeltable ice for like three weeks where I live.
It’s over, who cares.
Project productivity wise, I made a lot of progress this month to be happy about. Here are the highlights:
Operations
- 6 new stickers dropped on the website
- 3 totally new designs
- 1 “ad” designed in Canva and posted on Instagram
Marketing
Just checked and the Instagram account has 47 net new followers.
I get that this is a vanity metric but I like following it because one of the outputs of this project that is important to me is to build a sense of community.
Bonus Learning – This month I found out that commenting on other mil-meme account posts gets followers as well. This was fun to learn because I am now able to justify talking shit in other peoples’ comment sections.
Revenue
All that and exactly $0 in revenue generated…
“Slow month,” but to be fair to myself – I have been slow-rolling promotion because I am still getting comfortable with the production process, specifically with the cutting machine.
FUTURE CONTENT IDEAS
Based on how difficult it has been to print stickers to my exacting standards, I think I want to write a post that captures ALL of the lessons learned during the transition to do-it-myself, with the hardware I purchased.
And on that note, I have also thought about documenting more aspects of the business and operations side of this project, in total, as a humble contribution back to the Management Dept at the Zoo and every fellow management major that has come before and after me…
I get that this can be looked at as “just a side project” or “a joke, ”but I have worked in startup companies for almost 15 years and the cool part about this project is that it contains EVERY aspect of a startup business.
And I get to do it all.
The main difference is that I am financing it with a limited budget, so it’s small. However, the benefit of bootstrapping a hobby business is that it bestows me the power to set the definition of success for this project and the timeline to get there…
As it stands, I’d like this project to generate revenue that can be used to build the community and finance other projects that I am working on – and I plan to be transparent as that idea continues to evolve.
All I got this month – thanks for reading…
