#i know these are ugly. i know. it was an uphill battle and my skills are limited but i tried

[platoapproved]

armand + low light shots in the louvre

[magicman111]

A Moth to a Flame - Chapter Three

Plumes of thick smoke billowed above the guard tower, blotting out the dusk sky with an ugly, brown smog. Burning red embers danced and flickered in the air, a single stray spark singeing Sasha’s right cheek.

Two girls stood, a dirt clod’s throw apart from each other. They stared each other down. The squeaky toy and Grime were already engaging in a battle of their own, leaving the two former friends alone on that tower. It did little to make the tension any less palpable.

Anne held her sword firmly in both hands, and the rage-filled scowl etched on her face made it clear she was itching for an excuse to ream the blade through her ex bestie’s chest cavity. The sheer hatred boiling inside her veins could not be overstated. Sasha, however, was a different story. She remained cool and kept both open palms raised, a sign of her peaceful intentions. Already a hard sell considering less than an hour ago, she’d ordered her flunkies to lock her and her family up in the dungeon after using and backstabbing her for the fifteen thousandth time.

She knew perfectly well what was at stake here. She knew the consequences not for them, but for this entire world if she failed. Convincing Anne to believe her now was going to be an uphill battle and the rematch she’d spent months prior fantasising about now seemed inevitable.

The irony surrounding both those things was not lost on her.

“Anne, I need you to listen to me!” she shouted over the hot gusts of wind whipping her face. “There’s something wrong with this Andrias guy! We should—”

Anne was having absolutely none of it. “You expect me to believe you?!” she asked her incredulously. “After all the lying and manipulating you’ve done?!” Sliding the sword back into its sheath, she turned her back on her in disgust. “Sorry, Sasha, but you’re out of chances.”

Why didn’t she take a photo? This would’ve been so much easier if she’d just thought to take a stupid photo! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Or maybe if she’d given Anne any reason to trust her.

The gates were now drawing close to slamming completely shut as Anne resumed pushing the lever. If Sasha squandered any more precious time, their fast-approaching army would be locked outside the city. She felt her twin swords weigh heavily on her hips; the tips of fingers twitched.

Whelp, in for a penny, in for a pound. She took a deep breath.

“I think Marcy’s in on it.”

“Yeah yeah!” scoffed Anne. “Blah blah bla—what?”

It was a hail mary that paid off. Anne froze in place and glared back at Sasha as if she’d caught her in the act of stomping on Domino’s tail.

“What... what did you say?” she asked, her voice fittingly ice-cold.

“Anne, look... I get it, okay?” Sasha gutsily stepped forward, closing the gap between them. They still had a glimmer of hope in ending this without a fight, so she knew she had to cobble her thoughts together and choose her next words carefully. “You don’t trust me a-and I don’t blame you, but I swear I’m telling you the truth. Grime and I found these—these weird pictures hidden in the throne room. They... one of them was showing the king with the music box. Th-then there was also something about Marcy’s family, I... I don’t know exactly what it all means...”

Amazing how they’d spent the past months going on wild adventures, escaping dozens of near-death experiences with the many monsters infesting the place, yet this was the one thing she struggled to make sound plausible. Of all the times for that natural charisma and confidence to falter. The way Anne was looking at her like she’d sprouted a third arm out her forehead told her it was going about as well as expected.

“All I know is we shouldn’t be giving either of them the Box. Not right now.” She finally lowered her hands back to her sides, adding, “Just come back to the throne room with me and I promise I’ll show you everything.”

A silence fell over the guard tower, punctuated only by the th-thunk of hundreds of armoured boots rising in the distance.

Now the ball was back in Anne’s court. She’d been rendered speechless by everything she’d been told. All she could do was stare the other girl square in the eyes. Dumbstruck.

Relief washed over Sasha as the tension appeared to simmer down, to the point she felt confident enough to move in closer, stopping when they were only feet apart. Tentatively, she reached out and brushed her fingers against her friend’s knuckles.

“Anne. Please.”

This snapped Anne out of her stupor. Reacting as if she’d been touched by something filthy, she broke her hand away from hers. Her expression turned on a dime from bewilderment to one of unadulterated hatred.

“... how dare you.”

Instead of withdrawing herself, Anne shoved Sasha away so violently it nearly sent her off her feet.

“I cannot believe I almost fell for that again! I mean, wow! Seriously, Sasha?! You’re gonna try and save your skin by throwing Marcy under the bus?! HOW DARE YOU!!”

Another jab to the breastplate silenced Sasha before she could respond. Anne was advancing on her dangerously, every step she took forcing her to back up. The only other instance she’d legit felt intimidated by her was back when she’d stood up to her at Toad Tower and even then, a secret part of Sasha was also impressed.

Now she’d touched upon what was already a frayed, raw nerve and it was scary.

“Let me tell ya something, Sash!” yelled Anne. A third strike nearly caught Sasha in the throat. “Marcy’s been more of a friend to me than you ever have! Marcy hasn’t lied to me! She hasn’t pushed me around! And she definitely hasn’t tried to kill my family! Unlike YOU!” She gripped the hilt of her sword, the menace in her eyes daring her to give her a reason. “She’s not only a real friend, she’s my best friend! And so help me, if you ever talk about her like that again, I will personally stick this thing right in your—”

The sounds of stomping boots and clattering armour had grown so loud they became impossible to ignore. Anne looked to her left to witness the sea of helmeted toads congregating outside the city walls.

How could she have let herself get distracted? They were coming. They were practically here.

“You were right; I am better off without you.” She hissed at her with so much venom it practically poured over her lips. “We both are.”

With that parting diss, Anne sprinted back to the lever. She had a job to do and she’d wasted way too much time and oxygen on this cretin already.

Sasha was left standing there stricken, feet glued to the floor. Anne might as well have slapped her across the face to achieve the same effect.

A determined scowl of her own soon spread across her features. You can’t say she hadn’t tried.

She drew the twin swords from her belt and assumed her dueling position.

“Anne, I can’t let you close that gate!”

“Oh yeah...?”

Anne roared, leaping through the air, sword unsheathed and aimed at Sasha’s head.

“JUST TRY TO STOP ME!”

Any swordsman worth their salt should know better than to leave themselves exposed like Anne just did. Sasha had a clear open to cut her in two instead of blocking her strike with both swords if she had so chosen.

To Anne’s credit, she wasn’t nearly as foolhardy as she had been when she first arrived in Amphibia. Right now, however, as they flew around the tower and did battle with the ferocity of dueling birds of prey, Sasha could plainly see it was Anne’s anger guiding her sword.

Anne was hostile, her moves unpredictable. Toad Tower didn’t have nothin’ on this. She wasn’t an exceptionally skilled fighter, neither of them realistically could be when you consider they’d both only first taken up the sword months ago. Still, there was underlying talent between them, and in Anne’s case, hers was currently being amplified by a seemingly bottomless well of passionate fury, which encouraged every last nerve to screw her courage to the sticking place.

She was actively going for the kill.

Narrowly dodging a plunge from her sword and, holding both her own in one hand, Sasha reached the other between Anne’s arms to grip her by the shoulder.

“Anne, stop this!” she begged through gritted teeth. “Marcy—”

“SHUT YOUR LYING MOUTH!!”

Anne freed herself by kicking Sasha in the chest with her socked foot. The collision of her unprotected sole against the metal breastplate hurt like all get out, but she wasn’t going to allow a trivial thing like pain stop her from taking a fatal swing at her opponent’s golden head.

Cat-like reflexes were what saved Sasha from getting scalped. If there was any hope in her mind that Anne couldn still be reasoned with, it was surely dashed now.

None of the paths leading out of this graceful dance of death were great. Simply keeping up her defenses and waging a war of attrition until Anne’s wild attacks inevitably tired her out wasn’t going to work. Whatever it was fueling Anne’s rampage, she didn’t look to be running out of it any time soon. Every parry, thrust and dodge drained a little bit more of Sasha’s stamina. She couldn’t keep this up for much longer.

Frog knows she couldn’t rely on those toads to drag their warty butts through the stinking gate already!

Unless she was able to disarm Anne and fast, the only other option was to meet her viciousness in kind with expectedly grime results. Her training with Grime had taught her that every sword fight was already a potential life or death situation, regardless if you lacked the intent to harm, but however much they’d literally been at each other’s throats, Sasha was not prepared to have Anne’s blood on her hands.

An idea hit just as she arched her back away from a swing that easily could’ve taken her head off. Muscle tissue developed over years of cheerleader practice kicked into gear and in those vital seconds, Sasha flawlessly pulled off a handstand and kicked the sword out of Anne’s hand. The blade plummeted to the city streets below.

That should have been the end of it. With her opponent disarmed, Sasha felt the adrenaline rush sustaining her crash. Her lungs were on fire. Pink and Green suddenly felt ten times heavier in her damp palms. She truly couldn’t have gone on a moment longer.

Unfortunately, Anne was nowhere near spent. In an act of near superman-levels of varsity athleticism, slid behind Sasha, grabbed the hem of her cape and jumped over her head.

Before Sasha was able to register what in the ever-lovin’ Frog just happened, Anne had already tied the cape over her eyes. She barely even had a chance to flail like a dizzy ballerina when Anne’s fist smashed her in the face!

It was a blow powerful enough to send her spinning across the tower. She landed flat on her face, not an ounce of strength left in her muscles to pick herself back up. It was miraculous she didn’t black out then and there.

All that happened around her next was a mad din of noise. She made out the slam of what must have been Anne finally closing the gate. Then someone somewhere sounded a horn, followed by a voice she dreaded to hear more than anything else.

“Royal Newt Guard! Assemble!”

Oh Frog! They’d already freed the king! Anne must’ve sent the rest of her frog family or worse, Marcy to free him from his cell. She’d been so focused on stopping Anne, she didn’t even factor in what the others were doing.

Anne’s smug tone reached her ears, “End of the line, Sash.”

Sasha crawled up to the ledge on her belly. She tore the cape off her head, scattering it to the wind.

What she saw only confirmed her worst fears. Sprig standing atop a knocked out Grime on the roof below. Newt guards were rounding up her soldiers left and right; the tadpole’s giant robot was holding a bunch of them in its mechanical arms.

Then she saw her, a perky smile plastered on her face, shooting a ‘mission accomplished’ thumbs up at Anne.

“Oh no.”

[aislingeu]

hello!! i’m kq ( aka kelsey quinn! ) i’m twenty five, livin in the est, usin she / her pronouns!! much like the good buddy who turned me on to this rp, i don’t know a ton about percy jackson!! but mythology was one of the few subjects that held my attention in school, so i hoe i have a good handle on it! :D for now, i manage a comic book store from thursdays - sundays, so i’m scarce those times but i’m usually on discord!!

⟨ ABIGAIL COWEN. CIS FEMALE. SHE / HER ⟩ though the mist might prevent some from seeing it, AISLING DUNN is actually a descendant of H Y P N O S. it’s still a question of whether or not the TWENTY-THREE year old PAINTING MAJOR from DUBLIN, IRELAND has taken after their godly parent completely, but the demigod is still known to be quite CLEVER & COARSE.

this got way longer than i intended im so sorry... 

𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃

she was born on march 12th, 1997 to a pair of irish musicians ( conor and dierdre dunn ) and, unwittingly, one greek god ( hypnos ) in dublin, ireland. her parents met and married shortly after her conception and neither of them suspected that conor wasn’t aisling’s father, until she was claimed.

as an only child, her parents didn’t have much to compare her too in terms of overall strangeness. for years, they wrote off her abilities as kids just sayin’ the darndest things. they remained blissfully unaware of the impact of their daughter’s words, rolling their eyes fondly, when she told them about the man in the cave, who came to her in dreams. they smiled and laughed, when she strangers at the supermarket that she thought erwin was a fine name to give a teddy bear, no matter what anyone else said. how were they to know that she was unearthing the fond childhood memories that passersby had almost forgotten? 

when she enrolled in primary school, they realized that she was... strange, if not special. she was recognized as a bit of a space case, often staring at nothing in particular, while her teacher droned on. her worksheets were seldom turned in complete. instead, aisling began gifting poorly drawn family portraits on the blank sides of her papers, likenesses plucked from the memories she explored when her mind wandered, in class.

eventually, after her skill had developed and people stopped writing off the stick figures as ‘coincidentally accurate’, people began to truly take notice. they speculated that she was a medium, silently communing with the dead and painting their pictures as she did. how else could she know what her art teacher’s late father looked like? and what color tie he always liked to wear? she had to be a psychic. recipients of her art were always so focused on their perception of the little girl with the gift of sight that they hardly even realized what she had tweaked, brightening up their darkest memories, just so they wouldn’t have to hurt anymore. she hardly even realized, herself.

without a reason to believe otherwise, she told the man in her dreams that she was a psychic, but he knew differently. he told her that that wasn’t so. she was special, yes, but not in the ways that the world thought her to be. hypnos let her in on the secret he’d been keeping for the past twelve years and, just like that, aisling could make sense of herself. once she knew the truth, she chased sleep. she spent as much time as she could, communicating with the one person who understood who she was. he saw her hunger for belonging and pointed her in the direction of the camp nearest to her hometown.

after a summer away, she came home faced with a challenge in morality that she’d never considered, as a child. she came home to a world where she could no longer fit. her party tricks had lost their luster the moment she realized that true value of a memory, however sad, was worth far more than the cheap smiles that her alterations had afforded. with that realization, her art took a darker turn. unable to shift the memories she saw into the light, they haunted her. she now saw their fears and heartbreaks for what they were: unchangeable. and, now, they lived within her, too. putting them to paper was the only way to get them out. but, pieces like those weren’t the kind that could be sent home to mom and dad. pieces like those were the kind that got her meetings with guidance counselors and haunted, fleeting looks from those whose memories she’d never meant to disturb. after a year of that, aisling went back to camp, full time.

once she was a year round resident of the camp, she found herself more comfortable around people who understood; there was nothing she had to hide, among those who were like her. each one of them was fighting an uphill battle of their own. they didn’t have to hide it. even if she never allowed herself to get too close, aisling never felt all that far away, at camp.

at eonia, aisling spends most of her days painting, sleeping, or working. raised by a pair of mortal musicians, finding a job at fireside records felt like a natural progression. where her godly parent thrives in silence, she finds her comfort in noise. it’s easier to block out the things she doesn’t need to see when there’s something immediate for her to focus on. at the other end of that spectrum, aisling finds her mind most open in visual arts club, trying to keep her other creative skills sharp, while she keeps her primary focus on painting. in search of inspiration, her mind reaches out in tendrils, dipping into another’s until she finds something she can work with. she only needs to leave the room before they’ve realized what she’s borrowed. 

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

aisling is a naturally empathetic person, always wishing she could do more to help those around her. unfortunately, she knows that she can’t always honor that instinct. her abilities and self-imposed limitations have left her with a hardened exterior that isn’t easy to break through. those who pass through her walls see a softer side: a steadfast friend, always there to put a peaceful end to their sleepless nights or calm their worst nightmares, with a gentle run of her fingers through their hair. but sometimes, she’ll wall herself away from even those she’s closest to after she finds herself in the middle of a particularly harrowing memory. because of this, maintaining close bonds for long is a difficult thing. given her propensity for accidentally rifling through the fondest and most fearsome parts of peoples’ pasts, she’s been known cut them out of her life when she sees something that she has the urge to alter.

𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒

MEMORY RETRIEVAL — for as long as she could remember, aisling knew things that she shouldn’t. at first, her parents just dismissed her gift as imagination and observation combining in a perfect, creepy storm. it wasn’t until she started attending school, picked up her finger paints, and started to draw out moments from the pasts of strangers that people started to truly take notice. sloppy scenes from the librarian’s wedding day graduated into well sketched portraits of her bus driver’s dalmatians. she liked to take those happy moments, immortalize them in art, and hand them off to the owners of the memories. she liked to make people smile. sometimes, she took that a step further. too young to see the value in sadness, aisling would tweak the memories that were harder to bear; even if she couldn’t bring someone happiness in the present, she hoped she could bring them comfort in the future. it wasn’t until she was claimed that aisling saw the flaws in her intervention. it wasn’t until she was taught the consequences that she knew she had to stop. although the memories came to her unbidden, they didn’t belong to her and she had no right to change them. instead of focusing on the alteration of memories, aisling opted to try to learn how to shut them out. like her other powers, though, there’s a direct correlation between her emotional state and her ability to keep a wall up. when she’s feeling something strongly or hasn’t gotten enough sleep, she sees things that she doesn’t mean to.

HYPNOKINESIS — you are getting very sleepy… what proved to be a fun tool at sleepovers had more practical applications than aisling knew possible. the skill of inducing sleep was easy enough to come by and influencing dreams was as simple as altering memories. and while ( without intending to ) she’d been known to cause visions when tensions ran high, refining those visions into ones that took the shapes she wanted them to took practice. even more difficult than that was learning to astral project, but that became a necessity, coming hand-in-hand with building her mental walls. when the uninvited memories start to weigh on her, she’s learned that it’s best to remove herself from the immediate vicinity. even if she’s only technically leaving in her head. 

OTHER ABILITIES — ( levitation ) a skill she only possesses in sleep, predominantly when her dreams are eliciting strong emotions. ( seeing the gods in dreams ) this is how she formed and maintained a relationship with her father, despite her parents being unaware of their daughter’s godly lineage. on occasion, she’ll encounter gods that she’s less familiar with and, in most of those cases, she’s been known to force herself awake.

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

there are so many cool, fun things runnin through my brain right now!! i think it would be lovely for her to have forged a friendship with an insomniac or maybe someone prone to nightmares that she could help! and those fun customer service relationships with record store regulars!! or maybe a former friend or significant other, who aisling left behind? maybe even altering their memory slightly, if the parting of ways was ugly! who knows! the possibilities are endless!! and i’m always up to hearing other peoples’ ideas because the Sweet Lord knows i am not the most imaginative person in any given room!!!

thank u for reading ilu!!! 

[culturaldorksist]

to love me

It is Class Eleven. We are in a small, cramped makeshift classroom because our usual room is being fumigated for bed bugs. I am in a complicated relationship with a girl, who I like desperately and cloyingly as I tend to do and who doesn’t, I think, feel the same way about me. She calls me over to help her with understanding something from the textbook and looks at me for a while as I gesticulate to try and explain. “You know,” she says. “There’s something about the way your hands move. It just…feels really gay, sometimes.”

This happened five years ago.

-

A body, like being, is a little complicated to explain. For Descartes, who I immediately admired for breaking everything down and building it all back up again, there are three substances in the world: there is God who is unknowable but creates and sustains all things, there is mind, the attribute of which is thought and there is body, the attribute of which is extension. For him to prove that the body is distinct from the mind is a long, uphill battle but it is one he fights tooth and nail, even if it doesn’t make sense. The word soul flits in, eventually. There has to be something, something other than a bag of bones that will ultimately rise to the heavens or sink beneath the sea.

-

I remember playing a lot of imaginary games when I was a child. I remember being a cook, a soldier, a spy, an explorer, a villain. These were malleable times and not a lot was required to entertain myself. I didn’t really need props or costumes. In a pinch, I could curl up on the sofa with my eyes closed and imagine all sorts of things. I have been trying to remember what I thought about my own body. I don’t remember thinking about it very much. This never fails to make me nostalgic.

I also don’t remember when I began to eat so much. I always ate fast, never savouring anything. Food was a comforting thing to work my way through as I did something else. It made me feel distracted and safe. By the time I was twelve, I was fat.

I remember looking at myself in the bathroom once, at the swell of my stomach that distended even at the sides and the loose flabs of my cheeks and chest. Rolls of fat would bounce distinctly from my body as I jumped a few times, like a soul. I don’t remember if I was disgusted just yet but I wasn’t happy.

-

For the Christians, there is no rationalising about the soul. It obviously exists. Everything about the body is mired in a materiality that is not only temporary but malignant and hostile. Material existence for the Christian is a wasteland we deserve for the sinners we are where every little shred of beauty is grace: a free gift from God. Every flower, every tree.

And beautiful people? They were gifts to be given to each other, I supposed. Do not covet your neighbour’s house.

For the Christian, self hatred is a given. It is a more honest position to be in than those who have been blinded by common grace. If we see ourselves as ugly, our bodies and our surroundings, we can see the absolute necessity of giving ourselves to Christ who will take us to a new world where all things are beautiful.

This calls for a different kind of self love. A love we give ourselves through Christ. The only reason we love ourselves now is to be because Christ loves us, a love that is absolute and unconditional and, according to the Christian, the only love that is true.

-

When I was eight or nine, everyone around me transitioned from playing the sorts of games I liked, like tag or hide-and-seek, to the sorts of games I found out I wasn’t particularly good at, like football and cricket. I couldn’t coordinate my movements with what I needed to do and what I was seeing, I was slow and not particularly graceful and on top of everything, I wasn’t particularly interested. It didn’t seem fun.

I wasn’t bullied for this, not by that group of friends. But a very pragmatic system came into being. I was made to be goalie whenever possible but when everyone wanted a real game, they’d make me the referee or the umpire. I won a football through a lucky draw and it was the best one in the colony. They had to call me. I had to go. I realised very soon that being a referee was consolation. I leaned against the wall and watched. I remember wanting to cry, sometimes.

Once, for losing an eraser or something, my father told me I wasn’t to go down and play for a week. Everyone came up to the house to find out why I wasn’t there. My father explained to them and I listened from my door. “Oh,” one of them said. “Can we have the ball, then?”

-

I really hit it off with someone I matched with on Bumble. We couldn’t stop talking. She’d send me little photos from her day: oranges in the sunshine, flowers, trees and other things like that. We met soon and only ordered drinks because neither of us was very hungry and we talked for a good couple of hours. I dropped her off where she needed to go and went back thinking things went fabulously.

She became terse after that, responding almost monosyllabically. I dropped it almost immediately, not wanting to be annoying. It had to be because of my body. She had to have been absolutely disappointed by it.

-

If there is mind and body, thought and extension, I am absolutely assured about my mind. I have never been nervous about my ability to speak and write coherently, lucidly and on my best days, beautifully. I am confident in being able to be witty and appropriate. I have never been assured about my body. The best I’ve been able to hope for is that I am somehow just impressive enough on all the other counts for my body to be tolerated. For it to be ignored. For a ‘yes, but he’s alright, all things considered’.

-

It is Class Eight and a free period. Most of the class is empty, for some reason or the other, except for a small group of people. I am reading a book and occasionally participating in whatever conversation they’re having. One of them from across the room suddenly says “David, walk from here to the front of the room and back.”

I ask why.

“Just do it, you’ll see.” I look around. I haven’t been paying attention to the conversation for a while. Everyone is watching me, smiling.

I slowly get up and comply. They laugh and nod. “See, I told you,” she says. “He walks funny.”

They make me run as well, which is even funnier. I cannot for the life of me remember why I submitted to this, why this was something I was willing to do.

“It’s his hands as well, he’s so weird with them.”

-

The problem with the love of Jesus is that it is generalised. You are encouraged to reach out to Him with your specific problems through prayer and he responds through what you read from a collection of different literature, the latest of which was written two-thousand years ago by a Jewish man addressing a number of churches in what is modern-day Turkey. You can rest assured in Jesus’ unconditional love for you but He cannot delight in your condition.

He cannot admire your arms, the way you walk, the way you speak. But to seek this sort of admiration is shallow. It is, in the words of C.S. Lewis, ‘like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea’.

So you’re stuck.

-

Once in school, a friend of mine from band was telling me that I should practice more. “See, we’re not like those other guys. We’re ugly. If we don’t have skills we can’t depend on them to want us around for any other reason.” I wanted to tell him I never thought he was ugly. I didn’t. I agreed. I thought maybe he needed me to, that If I excluded myself from the class he so casually put us in, that he placed himself so absolutely into, that it would break him.

In the end, when I went home, I believed I was ugly too.

-

In college, the girl I was dating once complimented my t-shirt. “You have nice arms,” she said, and then moved on to something else.

That was two years ago. Sometimes, when I want to cry, I hold on to that memory and it makes things better.

-

Objectivity and subjectivity are important parts of this discussion. I’m sure philosophers have a lot to say about aesthetics but it is too difficult and cyclical to read through all of that. And people in science are just philosophers who’ve prohibited themselves from talking about souls. So, they give me heuristics I can actually use.

There is a golden ratio, apparently, that makes things beautiful. Things like pinecones and paintings and faces.

And the cold logic of it makes sense. A lean body, a pared down one, one not burdened by excess, one that is strong and capable is obviously an attractive one. This must be objectively true.

But there are so many other things I tend to like. The curve of someone’s neck, their arms in the sun,  their teeth, their cheeks. These bodies may not fit any sort of objective mold, they may all even be different. But I like them and am attracted to them. Can I believe that this might extend back to me too?

The problem, then, is one of empathy. Do other people think the same way I think? What is going on inside your head?

-

In college, the girl I was dating once told me: “You know, there’s a lot of things you can fix if you tried?”

“Fix?”

“Yeah, like your weird walk and your posture and things like that. I’m sure if you think about it you can do it properly.”

She has never met the group of people from Class Eight who told me the same thing. She doesn’t even know they exist.  So, this thing about my walk, it must be an objectively true thing.

This was two years ago.

-

Along with how a body looks comes what a body does: presentation. The way you hold your hands akimbo, the way you tilt to the side, the way you use gestures, the way you walk. Masculinity is essentially a bar to jump over: one that requires you to pare down anything that might portray weakness. Because, weakness is feminine and the farther you get from the edge of the binary the lower you’ve cleared the bar.

Gender is woven almost inextricably with sexual orientation. Heterosexuality is only permitted to those who do not deviate from the edge of the binary. To be homosexual is to be like a woman: weak.

I am so tired and I just want to be. My presentation has not been a conscious effort towards anything. I don’t know what it means that ‘a lot of the things I do seem really gay’. Harry Styles helped me massively. To see him with nailpolish, floral shirts and fishnets on while still being allowed to be attracted to and, almost essentially, being attractive to women reassured me. I want to dress like that sometimes. I want to be like that sometimes.

I don’t know if I’m allowed to be while still being straight. I don’t know what that makes me.

-

Empathy is complicated for people with self and body image problems. The things that plague me, the little lines of speech, the looks, being beaten up, being bullied, might seem almost incomprehensibly trivial to someone else. It’s not easy to explain whyI remember these things from as long as eight years ago and why they still haunt me. It is even often more difficult for people with body image problems of their own.

I have heard other people’s stories about their self-image and done the same thing. ‘That’s not so bad,’ I’ve thought. It is almost impossible to understand.

-

Every romantic rejection of me becomes about my body or my presentation, in my head. The way I deal with these rejections is by working wherever bodies are needed. Wherever they’ll have me.

I’m not like other guys. I’m ugly. If I don’t have skills, I can’t depend on them to want me around for any other reason.

After my breakup in college, I took up key roles in three different events that all stacked on top of each other. I was supposed to be in four places on the same day at the same hour. I nearly collapsed from exhaustion.

After that Bumble date, I took up work I didn’t need to take up, stayed longer than what I knew was healthy for me and contracted some sort of stomach infection that put me down for nearly a week.  

-

Photographs of myself terrify me. I cannot believe I look like that. That I am that big. When I look at my friends and then at myself, I am disgusted. From an odd angle, every once in a while, I think I look alright. I look passable. I put those up on every online platform and I hope for the best.

I was once on my way from my room to the bathroom. “Please put a shirt on,” a friend who I dearly love said. “Your tits are disgusting.”

In print, as words on a screen, this is shocking. As a lived experience, it is not. It is the sort of thing men say to each other.

-

Last week, I moved into a room where there is a full length mirror. It is the first full length mirror I have had the liberty to be naked in front of. I like the way my legs curve upwards into my back and how my hips dip into my stomach. In the early sunlight, I am proportionate.

This is trivial. It is, after all, just a man looking into a mirror. This is also earth shattering.

Last week, I made a tweet about wanting to wear nail polish in college. In a world where a global pandemic is baying at the doors and where human rights violations abound in every city, a heterosexual man wanting to put nail polish on and expressing this is trivial. It is also earth shattering.

-

I once complimented my mother on the dress she was wearing. I told her it looked great on her. I don’t know why, I just did. I saw her face change, I saw her smile and she told me her day was made. I don’t know if she was telling the truth. But I do know she has struggled with diet, weight-loss and cravings for a long time. It was an easy thing to say but it was also not prompted. She did not ask me for a compliment. It was freely given, like grace, like all the beautiful things in the world. And so, it mattered.

Maybe, if we work very hard, there’ll be a world where compliments between men, where validation and acceptance is normal. Maybe we can break everything down and build everything back up again. It’s only bodies, after all.

-

I am thirteen and lying in bed next to my father. It is the afternoon. He is asking me what is happening in school and I tell him about all the different activities that are happening.

“You should try theatre,” he says.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because you’re tall and handsome and you have a great voice and they need people like that for theatre.” He turns away and falls asleep.

That was eight years ago.

[littlebabycrybtch]

im sorry but sometimes it is so see through that you fake and corrupt ‘pro recovery’ people are literally just so frustrated and annoyed with nd people and thats all your mindset revolves around. like you’ll throw one or two fucking random self care tips at us and we’ll rightfully say ‘that doesnt work for me’ and yall instantly go on these absolutely unnecessary and brutal TANGENTS you were saving up abt how we’re ‘’’’wallowing’’’’ and that therapy takes ~Actual Effort~ so if ur special universal tips arent working for us we’re ‘’’being difficult’’’ and ‘’’’lazy’’’’ and ‘’’’hurting ourselves’’’’’ like. idk man sure i am sorry i cant ‘take a shower to feel better’ bc my symptoms make the task more stressful actually and take away from my other more necessary tasks, im sorry i forget to take my vitamins and drink enough water bc i just dont feel a difference anymore, im sorry i rely on medication instead of therapy bc therapists also teach me things that dont seem to work, except im trying, which means no matter how hard i might seem to be failing, i am ‘pro recovery’. idc how the fuck it Looks to you personally, i deserve your support. and i shouldnt Feel the Need to apologize to a stranger who claims to be my ally for experiencing mental illness symptoms and not being able to immediately correct them ! if i could do that i wouldnt be mentally ill !! i especially should not be made to feel ashamed to even Talk about my struggles just bc i know yall will try to put a bandaid on it and then guilt me when i say it didnt work. smfh like. ur children. sometimes things just have deeper rooted problems and u dont have to take it personally that you specifically cannot cure me. 

ik it blows ur fucking goddamn mind but yes actually some people just Do really struggle to shower, to drink water, to take their meds, as in it takes actual personal efforts for them it wouldnt take for you and they have to work harder than you to accomplish them, and there are in fact some things nd people personally Cannot do and will Never be able to do without going backwards and sacrificing their happiness and quality of life exhausting themselves for an unattainable goal. only they know their limit, and pushing yourself past your limit is unarguably damaging. this ugly ass assumption you cannot be happy enough while still ‘allowing yourself’ to experience some symptoms... the idea that its just laziness and ‘anti recovery’ to openly struggle with what you view as the ‘easy’ or ‘beginning’ steps of recovery... is an inherently ableist and Harmful mindset you are all falling victim to and fucking over this community with. to be perfectly frank you are not ‘pro recovery’ when you demonize and shame people who are not ready for recovery. bc that doesnt do anything to help them recover. its genuinely just your excuse to hate and bash ‘severely’ nd people bc ur uncomfortable with them and wanna claim theyre doing it on purpose so you feel rightfully angry abt it. when you throw tantrums over us Being Mentally Ill and not ALREADY recovered like good boys or w/e all you are is pro nd people conforming to your standard of functioning and shutting the fuck up abt their actual identity and symptoms and experiences until they reach that level when ur comfy listening to them again. you’re pro neurotypical people, or those pretending to be for your comfort. its literally starting to border on an eugenics attitude by claiming the only healthy end goal is to be virtually indistinguishable from a neurotypical and match their functioning as best as possible. not all nd people Can do that, would be Happier doing that rather than accommodating their issues in other ways, and nor should that be the default goal to push on all nd people. also a lot of the shit yall push at us for even nts dont always conform to, so why is it us being made to walk on eggshells? why when i skip a shower am i evil and destructive but nt bob can go a week without one and no one bats an eye or they just joke about it???

lbr recovery doesnt look the same from person to person, you cant apply one broad standard like this, not to mention its not always an uphill battle, which doesnt just mean; ‘oops i relapsed :(((’. it means breakdowns, it means self harm, it means slacking off, failing hygiene, forgetting things, missing things, bad behavior, risky behavior, things that are Going to inconvenience you. and the second you forget that or decide to no longer care about those people, when you decide to have a baseline where you stop respecting or supporting nds for not trying hard enough to be like you, when you Drop them until they meet your standards as if they arent still nd people who need you on a basic level, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE A FUCKING NEUROTYPICAL WHO DOESNT HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHERRY PICK AT US LIKE THAT (!), is when you have inverted and ruined your own fucking cause by corrupting it with selfish conformist ableism. 

tldr i understand why statements like ‘just go to therapy’ ‘thanks im cured’ would frustrate you, but i also VERY MUCH understand and NEED for you people to TRY and understand why mentally struggling people would be adverse to going to therapy, and not bc they goddamn hate recovery and wanna be sad forever or w/e strawman youve come up with, but bc of their issues which are valid and Can hinder these types of decisions and even affect how much aid these coping skills actually provide, and they dont deserve your fucking Unbridled Malice and Shame over it bc they are not literally trying to be more mentally ill. its simply a symptom and consequence of their already existing mental illness. like i really... cannot fathom the level of disconnect you must be on with nd politics to take that and assume they are truly just rejecting the possibility of happiness for the sake of being unhappy. i truly think if you cant wrap your head around ‘mentally ill people, whos minds are literally experiencing sickness, are not always rational or able to help themselves, or sometimes it only appears that way and they just know better abt it than you do’ you just. arent even an ally. you’re an ableist in activists clothing. people struggling with the concept of recovery arent inherently ‘anti recovery’, yall are honestly just really fucking BAD at how you push for recovery bc most of you dont know shit and are just mean and wanna whine abt nds to be quite blunt with u lol. the whole ‘tough love’ mindset is Bullshit ok it isnt real your love doesnt have to be tough and callous and come with conditions you just wanna be abrasive to validate ur judgement and then excuse it as secretly helpful, just be supportive and 📣 LISTEN 📣 to us or get the fuck out honestly bc u arent helping anyone with what this shit has unfortunately become

[theexistentiallyqueer]

Okay so I’ve been thinking about that really bad Hot Take that’s been circulating about fanfiction. And it’s been kind of simmering in me. The root of the problem with it isn’t so much that it diminishes the quality of fanfiction so much as the way it characterizes two completely different genres of media.

Preface: at no point is this ever, ever, ever a diatribe or condemnation against fanart or the work fanartists put into their work. This is about the value that is ascribed to visual art vs the value ascribed to literary art. I am trying to talk specifically about the denigration of literary art in fandom spaces and the way it’s been recently, in a very popular tumblr post, martyred at the expense of queer and disabled writers and writers of color.

Fanart (as a collective genre, according to that post) - Good, artistically-driven, pure, wholesome. Fanartists draw for the sake of becoming better artists, and every work a fanartist draws or creates is made with the goal of becoming a better artist. Fanartists never draw anything that is base, silly, shippy, or smutty; if there is pornographic art, it isn’t pornographic but Erotica. There is no such thing as low- or middling-quality art, because all artists are striving to sharpen their skills and become better artists, and there are no fanartists who draw just for fun or shits and giggles. Fanartists achieve fame purely on the merit of their own artistic ability. There’s no room to criticize fanartists who attempt to cis-wash trans (or trans pesenting) characters, or fanartists who blatantly, frequently, and with frankly no impunity (as their art is reblogged, and reblogged, and reblogged) whitewash characters of color.

Fanfiction (as a collective genre, according to that post) - Smutty, ship-fodder, audience-pleasing trash. Fanfic writers write for the sake of expressing their inner boners or enacting their internal fantasies. No fanfic writers seek a sense of growth in their writing or work to improve their writing in any way. The only reason any works of fanfiction are popular is because they cater to the readership’s base instincts, and the True Authors, the Really Daring authors who write Real Literary Content, are cast the wayside.

It’s such a two-dimensional view of the situation--and it doesn’t even take into account edited content, such as gifsets, which makes up a huge portion of fandom content and has been a type of content, along with fanart, that fanfic writers have long voiced their (our) upset about getting more active & polarized attention than written works. It presents this dichotic view of fanart good/fanfiction bad. Which is also incredibly ugly and disturbing when you consider the fact that fanfiction is the earliest form of curated fan content, and fanfiction itself is inherently transformative in a way that fanart and edits are not, because fanwork in general, and and fanfiction in particular, is inherently in and of itself the public (fans) themselves overriding the corporate-owned landscape with their subversive interpretations.

Like, I have seen not-good fanart. I have seen bland, unimpressive, generic fanart. There is fanart from artists who don’t have their own unique sense of style. Fanart from artists who are just starting out and haven’t developed their skills yet. Fanart from artists who draw as a hobby, and damn they may be good, but they don’t give a fuck about contributing to The Body of Artistry because they have bills to pay and career interests outside of art, and damn, they’d really rather draw these two characters making out, or blushing at each other, or straight-up fucking, than they would create something of Great Artistic Importance. That art gets so many notes. It is liked and reblogged and shared.

And that’s all valid, because art ISN’T A COMPETITIVE SPORT. I embrace fanartists who draw just because they want to, because they don’t care about quality or artistic ideals or whatever, and just want to draw someone being happy, or sad, or angry, or getting dicked down, or whatever!!! It doesn’t matter. Draw because you want to draw. Because your art is an expression of yourself that speaks of your experiences and transgresses the definitions of the world you’ve been told to adhere to. You make art for yourself, to say fuck the system!!!! We’re just the lucky souls who get to appreciate it afterwards.

The complaints that come from fanfic writers--and yes!!! I am one, so proceed with the accusations of butthurt--are that fanart and edits get more social media attention (in the forms of likes, reblogs, retweets, shares, etc.) than fanfic does.

And it’s a valid complaint! It isn’t rooted in some alien reality that fanfiction is inherently more base and less artistic than fanart. I’ve seen some pretty aesthetically displeasing fanart get a high reblog count. And I’ve seen some incredible works of literary attention get no recs, no likes, no comments. I’ve seen works of middling writers who have a lot of fucking talent and show it in their work, and yeah maybe they write porn, but their prose SINGS, and no one comments, no one shares it, no one makes their love of it public the same way they do the fanart, the same way they do the edits and the gifsets.

It’s rooted in two things:

1. Literature (which fanfiction is a subgenre of) takes time to appreciate. You can look at a piece of art and reblog it without thinking about it. It could be a work on par with the Mona Lisa, and you could still look at it without any aesthetic or artistic sense and say, “Hey, that looks pretty.” But you can’t read without thinking; reading is an active mental pursuit you have to engage with. (If you try to pull out Twilight on this point to fight me, I’ll fight you back. I’ve actively read Twilight. Even reading awful literature takes effort; arguably it takes more effort than reading something good).

2. Literature is hard to market with words, because when you’re trying to encourage other people to read it, you have to use even more words. You have to use words to convince someone to read even more words! Some fanartists draw comics or fanart inspired by fanfiction--I love those artists and they do more for us than they could possibly know--but for the most part, you can’t use visuals to show someone why they should invest their time in reading a thing. And unlike fanart--when it’s a tribute, when it’s a showcase of the character’s or characters’ canonical attributes--fanfiction can’t be green-stamped by creators, because fanfiction is inherently built in narrative, and canon-compliant or not, that opens the legal owners of the property up to legal disputes.

So much easier, then, to focus on fanart, which distribution and publishing companies love because they see free advertising in sharing it, to complain that fanfiction is a dispirited genre of unartistic creators who just want to read the queer version of a bodice-ripper.

And then we get to the question of: why is the bodice ripper so bad? Are you willing to critique Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski with the same derision you have for queer writers? Are you going to hold the wish-fulfillment fantasies and introspective examinations of sexuality in relation to gender, race, class, and physical ability written by writers expressing their own experiences as inherently debauched and debased because pornographic fanfiction is popular, but not hold George R R Martin to the same standard? Are you going to criticize the prejudices and disparities and biases in publishing that prevent marginalized writers from being able to break into the industry? 

Are you ready to combat the enduring popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is overwhelmingly a series of heroism tales about shitty and mediocre white men?

Are you going to take aim at HBO for taking a fantasy series that, while still written by a sexist author who has a disturbing fixation on female sexuality has uplifted its female characters as heroes in their own right, and then drove it into the dirt to end on a note with the male “hero” murdering his female lover, an abuse survivor, after engaging her in an intimate kiss?

Did you take issue with the streaming blockbuster Stranger Things only confirming a character as canonically gay--after planning to have her be a straight romantic option for a major character--because the actress is the one who repeatedly badgered the showrunners about how she didn’t feel her character fit that role?

Are you invested in the fact that video games continue to be majority white, majority male, majority able-bodied, and majority inaccessible to disabled gamers?

You want to complain about fanfiction having too much porn and somehow that deligitimizes fanfiction as a genre as a whole?

Fuck off. There are hundreds, thousands even more likely, of other authors of equal skill to you or greater, who are struggling to have their works recognized in fandoms that don’t want to put the effort in to reading them, the effort into sharing and appreciating them. It’s harder to make someone care about a fanfic. You can reblog a fanart, and your followers will see the art itself right away. If you reblog fanfic, they have to make the conscious choice to engage with it. And none of that is your fault, because you can’t control how other people engage with fan content, but you can advocate, vocally, for the fair and equal respect for fanfiction and fan-written content. You can remind people, again and again, how fanfic writers do so much for so little.

But you want to come into my house and compare fanart to fanficton and claim one is inherently better? You’re the Banksy to my Catherynne L Valente, to my N.K. Jemisin, to my Seanan McGuire.

Start understanding the system is built against us all and start understanding why your battle is uphill. What’s oppressing your creative success is a white, straight, cis monopoly on what the good story, what the correct story is, limiting your options, tying you to a narrative you don’t belong to. Queerness and marginalization exist beyond what’s depicted in mainstream media, and fans expressing that through their own written content?

That’s us taking back the corporate-owned narrative for ourselves. It’s self-liberation through the written word. And yeah, some of it is porn.

It’s porn when it’s a drawing too.

[julesandemotions]

Hi (insert name here...for privacy reasons),

I know you said to never reach out to you again, to let you go, to never try to contact you. And I’ve respected that. It’s been difficult, but I respect you enough to give you that space for some time. In that time I’ve done my own soul searching, my own self reflection. It’s amazing what time away from something that was all consuming does for a person. I forgot the world. I forgot myself. All I had was my anxiety and this desperate need to hold on to your friendship, because I valued it so much. And I still value it. Because you were there in my darkest of times. You listened to me when I admitted things I was ashamed to admit to the rest of the world. You were a listening ear when that was all I needed, someone to listen, to hear my pain.

I will be grateful for that. Always. I know I wasn’t easy. I apologize for that. I let my anxiety overwhelm everything, including our relationship. It’s hard to explain, what anxiety is like, to someone who doesn’t have it like I do. It’s just this constant voice in your head blaming you, guilting you, tearing you down. And the thing is? You can’t get away from it. You can’t cut ties with it and move on. It’s there. It’s always a part of you and always will be. Medicine, coping skills, therapy, it’s all to soften that voice, to control it, even though it can never be cured. It’s a constant uphill battle, especially with depression pops up and rears its ugly head to make everything that much worse.

And you were there. When my anxiety was the loudest voice, screaming me into submission, and when my depression was there as well, gripping me by my ankles so I couldn’t even flee from my anxiety when I wanted to. They teamed up against me, beating me down, beating me down, beating me down. I was my own worst enemy. I was the culprit, the person who made me feel the worst. And that is something I’ll always deal with. Something we all deal with, it’s just to a different extreme for me and others dealing with this.

We both said some hurtful things when we were upset. And I am truly sorry for anything I ever said or did that hurt you. I never wanted it to. I never sought to make you feel upset or angry. I’m sorry for my actions when I let my anxiety win. I’ve been learning when to stop, when to pause, when to just fucking breathe and let things go. I’m learning that my constant doubt that everyone hates me, everyone wants to get rid of me, I have no friends, that that voice is a liar. It’s a voice I developed as a child, a way to cope with the outside world, with the things I couldn’t control. Because if I couldn’t control the world, I COULD control myself. So I shut myself up and shut everyone out. And for so long that was how I lived.

Until you came along. A presence that I felt connected to, who was there during the hardest years of my life. It’s a shame you were there only for the hard times, making it difficult to see who I can be when anxiety doesn’t win. I’m sorry for letting my troubles cloud our friendship. Although I know this fall out wasn’t all on me, I do understand I played a role. I’ve always understood that. I suppose that’s the one good thing about anxiety, isn’t it? That you know you fuck up sometimes. It’s just the bad thing that anxiety makes it feel like the end of the world when you do. Makes you think everything that follows will be a fuck up too.

This time away from you, from our friendship, opened my eyes to so many things. It allowed me to see myself for who I am, someone who forgives, someone who understands, someone who can see how someone’s pain can cloud their judgement, can make them do and act in a way that isn’t necessarily them. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to see all sides. And even now, even when I’m one that is impacted, I see both sides. Which is why throughout it all, I kept telling everyone...that you are a good person. That you helped me when I needed a friend the most. That you were there. We all have our flaws, but your strengths and good always outweighed any frustration you felt towards me at times. Because that good and help you offered me...meant the entire world to me. And it always will.

I hold no blame for either of us anymore. I blamed myself entirely for it at the beginning. But it’s easier now to understand, things just happen sometimes. Sure we had our roles in this, but that doesn’t mean there is blame. I forgive you for any hurtful words you said when you were upset, and I forgive myself for allowing my anxiety to win. We are human. We are flawed. Perfection is not achievable, even when you wish it could be.

I don’t wish anxiety on anyone. If I could, I’d cure myself in an instant. Because it turns you into someone you don’t know, someone you want to get away from but can’t. And yet I also can see how anxiety has made me who I am as well, for the good. It’s helped me be compassionate, empathetic, understanding, to anyone struggling, anyone going through pain and trauma. It opened my heart up.

You were there for me when my anxiety made it feel like no one was. And I will always love you for that. Always. And I hope one day you can take part in the good my life has to offer as well. Because things are going better. My head is on straighter than it has been in a while. And if there’s any way to repay you for all you’ve done for me, it would be to allow you into my life again, to not be consumed my anxiety with me, but to see my growth, my beauty, to meet me for who I can be, and always was.

I’d love to be able to chat again. I’d love to start over, to have a discussion now that we’ve both cooled off. And if you don’t want to...I understand that too. I wish you the best life possible either way. Because you made my life feel worth it when I needed it most. You made me see all the strength I have in me to keep going, to keep surviving, and to come out of it all a better person.

I love you.

[thanidiel]

Choices

Prompt 11: World Building, First Person What if World of Warcraft took a different turn with its inspiration? What if the game was actually based entirely around science fantasy, particularly cyberpunk? I was a cheesy bitch and did The Modern AU(™). For a long piece, use what skills you’ve learned and practiced to narrate AS your character in this different world.

What would their occupation be? What is the world like? Factions? Races? Conflicts? Try to write about a normal or abnormal day for your character in this world—is their name different too? Write in your character’s perspective, and take on a very in-depth look of a different personality and worldview.

[I was very cheesy and went balls deep into a Modern AU story to exercise a more modern narrative style. Lots of references to others and events from World of Warcraft roleplay or Thanidiel’s background, try to catch them all. alsoimsorrythiswassolong.

Mentions: @jessipalooza @stormandozone @captainswingbeard @azriah @immunologist @kinari ]

“Alright, alright. Just, shut the fuck up for, like, I don’t know, an hour. Ethan, cradle your beer, you’re good at that. Elena… I don’t gotta tell you shit.

Let’s start with… the beginning.

So, let’s just get this shit out of the way. Auberry, up in Fresno County, California. Small-time fucking town. My dad was a new recruit to the police department, there. First-generation son to some Lithuanians that couldn’t read shit for English. My mom is a Mono Indian, from the Big Sandy Rancheria next door.

1990, Dad knocked her up when she was in town. I was the result, that she passed right back to Dad. Grew up happy without her, ran around just fine with myself, my Staffordshire, Ted, and all of the neighborhood backdoors left open. Grandparents were out of the picture by then, and Dad had shit hours, so it was up to the Abuelas and Grandma Sallys. Suited all of us just fine.

One day, Dad gets shot up breaking up a domestic dispute. I was six. And as much as we all want to think about those crazy stories up on Reddit and Facebook, no one fucking walks away from a hunting rifle. His coworkers stopped by, took me to the tribe headquarters in town to figure out what to do with me. Off to Big Sandy they sent my ass. I hear the Grandma next to us took Ted.

As much as I want to say things got more chill from there, it didn’t. See, my mom was half-white, already. Mix that with some straight-out-of-Europe dude, and you get a blue-eyed blonde haired kid running around with the Mono. Mom didn’t want me either, and she made that damned clear to the elders, so I was back to being a community effort on a new Grandma’s sofa.

Bless Grandma, she tried. Fed me. Taught me a handful of Monachi. Taught me how to fucking read and write English. Driving, eventually. Hooked me up with a new dog too when I got there, Tamuapaya, albino-assed thing. All of the good parental shit you’re supposed to do, with everything she had.

I ended up as black of a sheep as it gets, though. Scraped with the other kids whenever we crossed each other, dogs got in on it too. Adults couldn’t fucking stand me outside of Grandma ‘cause I didn’t think they deserved anything but lip. And, let me just say, it’s fucking awkward when you realize you’re a fag, hours out from a real city. I was never really accepted with them outside of cook-outs, but that was when you had to take everyone registered in the tribe.

Eventually, I get old enough to start itching to work. So I start the uphill battle of doing the most shit possible small-jobs for the most shit payout for these folk, and as you two know, I am stubborn as fucking shit about my work. So I did every bit of work they pissed at me, with fucking excellence.

Then that got too small when I was like, fifteen, and wanted some real fucking cash. The other black sheep got me then, and let me know it was easy money running drugs between us, peeps at the Casino, Auberry, and Fresno. Next thing I know, I’m sitting in a truck bed heading to Fres’ at 1 A.M. in the morning to pick up with them.

Didn’t take long for Grandma to figure out I wasn’t running off to catch friends at Auberry. She switched me more times than I can remember to try to beat it out of me. Didn’t work, and she didn’t have any full-on proof to get others in it, either - hid the FUCK out of the cash and what we were distributing.

So, eventually, I’m like… seventeen? And I’m passing crack to this military guy visiting relatives in Auberry and wanted some fun up by the Casino. And when he puts the cash in my hand and I put the bag in his, he doesn’t tell me to fuck off. He gives me a good look, asks how old I am, I tell him, and he asks me what the fuck am I going to do out here for another seventy years. I don’t even get to answer when he tells me I should get the fuck out of here, go talk to a recruiter at Fres’.

That got me thinking, so a year later, I’ve found all of my documents and shit in Grandma’s house. I have a pile of cash. And I want to get the fuck out of this shithole. I stuff it all into my backpack, I go with the boys to Fres’. I dump off all of my shit into Christian’s bag; free myself of it. I take a bus to get my ass right to the opposite end of the city. Spend my night in a homeless shelter with my backpack underneath my shirt and sweater, my arms wrapped around it, sleeping on my stomache, and a switch under the extra jacket I was using a pillow.

Next day, I get a free gym trial. I shower and make myself look as respectable as I need. After that, I open up a Bank of America and drop the eight-k. I had into my first savings. I keep three-hundred on me, I grab some Burger King, and I make my way to the Army recruiter.

Guy helps me get set up because it’s like the third time in my life I’ve done paperwork excluding the bank, which did like… everything, for me. After that, it’s floating between the shelter, gym, and getting odd jobs helping at taquerias and panaderias, with their dishes or pushing garbage and carts around for a month. Taking all of those damned test and then waiting for them to process. Grabbed an iPhone 3G during the wait, that was pretty cool.

Fort Jackson for a year, as it goes. Nothing significant in the grand scheme of things; shit was fresh hell, but nothing I couldn’t handle. For the most part. Met Casey there. My age. Actually graduated H.S., attending community nearby for sports medicine. It would still be another two years before fags could be open in the military, but we… got together. When we could. You could—… it was dating. We started dating when I was in B.C.T. And made it work after that.

After basic, I get hauled off all over the place. Okinawa, Hawaii, Ansbach. Mid-2011, they let us be out and loud in the U.S. military. Bad move for my career, but, first thing I did when I took my leave is fuck Casey and ask her to marry me. No ring or any big romantic gesture, we didn’t work like that. She said, yeah, sure. The process went underway, it’s all done by the time I’m heading back to like, Fort Irwin.

We’re separated for a while, then, like, she graduated, because she was a lot fucking smarter than me. And she started living with me on base. Which is fucking awesome. It’s not what I asked for, because she had all of this potential to work with back at home. But, hey, she wanted to travel too. We had our years, we were fucking twenty-years old. I let her come.

So we fucked around in South Korea, Alaska, Italy, it’s almost a blur after everything. Eventually, I get put out in Camp K.A.I.A. in Afghanistan. She’s back in Kansas, ‘cause, naturally, they’re hesitant on letting me drag a U.S. civy out there of all bases. It’s seven months into my deployment, she wants to visit and I let her.

April 28th, 2014. I took her out, a bit south of the airport in city proper for a meal, in the early morning. We were eating lamb korma with turnips— I still can’t fucking handle smelling and eating lamb. Or any soft fucking food: deuces to mashed potatoes and bolognese. God.

So we were eating—… we were eating that. And there was an airplane with a fucked engine that had been making its way towards the airport. It didn’t get close to the runaway. It veered and dropped, right into the city. The wing went right through our building.

I was sitting northward. She was sitting southward. My mind slowed down time, and I watched the way all of this debris and broken cable and a fucking airplane slammed into her back. She hits the table and it’s shooting off. All I see is blood and curry everywhere, then it hits me, too.

I wake up in the hospital two days later. My head feels like shit because my brain got ping-ponged. A sheet of metal opened up my torso from collar to hip, and a piece of flying drywall smashed my right cheek and orbital socket. They couldn’t save the eye. The ceiling falling after meant some heavy shit landed onto my left hand. They couldn’t save that either. And they couldn’t save Casey. She died on contact.

—I’m fine, by the way. Just pass over the whiskey. I’m not finished.

Cutting that long story of recovery short, I stabilize. They get to Landstuhl in Germany. Eventually, I end up back in the States. Sans eye and hand. A little ugly, now, too. Medical discharge. Sucks, but I’m hooked up with a nice prosthetic, at the least. That all takes about eight months to wrap up - not a lot of interest in keeping an uneducated, handless, soldier around.

And, you know, that’s where you come in, Ethan. I don’t think Elena knows this part about us, so bear with me. Ethan, here, was my Sergeant for a damned while. His ass phased out in ‘13. We always got along great, he kept up with us babies even when he was out. Group texts were a great invention; Snapchat groups even better. Now we both get to see all of the stupid shit the rest of those idiots are doing on deployment.

Ethan is basically like my fucking dad. So when fates aligned and I was in the Brooklyn military hospital, he started driving down from his apartment in the city, seeing me about once a week on his weekends. Then, when I was out, he offered me a place to stay, no costs. Naturally, I fucking took it. The last thing I was going to do now that I was out, was gonna walk my ass back to the Mono in that Cali shithole. Not fucking smart to be alone after the shit that had happened.

And, honestly? It worked really well. I used the time he’d be gone with his job at the nearby library to do… basically all of the adult shit I didn’t do in the military. Got my license, borrowing the car from his coworker and our close friend, Esther (nice girl, did volleyball and track for high-school and college, then decided she liked things quiet). Took the bus to therapy with a guy through the V.A., ‘till I grabbed a beat up 2009 Chevy truck from Craigslist. Eventually, started classes for a G.E.D. too. Collected my military checks, saved it all and got pocket-money with a part-time at some flower hippy’s cafe—and, you know, I never realized how fucking hard it is to make legit money in the ‘real world’ until then. Ethan, you’re a fucking saint. Like, three-hundred or whatever a week? Chump ass change compared to when I bounced with the kids in Fres’.

All of that good shit. Plus, it was nice that we both had a drinking buddy. And we both had a way of navigating each other’s bullshit well. Like, Elena, you just heard my wife-story. And you’ve heard about the fire, too. It’s not the fucking same, but it worked out that we had about an inkling of what to do when the other dude’s fucked up.

Eventually, it’s the day for appointment hell. Check up, physical therapy, actual therapy, then likely, a stop by the pharmacist. It’s like, early ‘16, at this point. And before we even get started, the doctor sits me down. Starts talking about this experimental stem-cell research, for organ implantation. Taylor says it’s not at a complex enough stage to restore my hand, but my eye and facial scars would be within the window of possibility. Gives me a card for a Brianna Lalwani-Jindal if I’m interested in volunteering for it.

I get through the day. I finally catch a meal at Jersey Mike’s, and after me and Ethan talk about it over some Coors, like if I wanna do it and how it feels fucking weird, to like, erase what happened to Casey through this, I say, sure, I’ll call. It’s like, eight P.M. She answers like four seconds before it just shoots to her voicemail. The bitch fucking slurs out like she snorted too much Vico, “—yeah, I know I’m fucking late, I’ll be there, I prooomise.”

So me and Ethan pick our jaws off the floor hearing this shit and I’m like, “Nah, Tony Dawson. Doctor Taylor Woodson at the Brooklyn V.A. Hospital referred me to you, about your research trials with the organ implantation. Lalwani?”

There’s a gasp, a lot of shuffling, and a lot of me and Ethan passing around another beer can between us. Then she really starts spilling and it becomes a game of my fucking brain trying to comprehend this Indian accent mixed with that lightspeed fucking way people from those big cities talk, like “Oh shit, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, you’ve got me. Where do you live? What are you missing? When can I meet you? Tomorrow?”

So I tell her about my fucked-up face, but really, I want to know what the fuck I just got myself into with this chick. I don’t get the chance, she blurts out over me, “Sounds great! EYE will see you later, Tony. Tomorrow. Four P.M., Just… show back at the Hospital. We’ll find a vacant office. Ciao.” Then the fucker hangs up. Eventually, we decide that I should probably text the number back, at least. My ‘See you then.’ gets back a kissy-face and ‘I like coffee.’ Subtle.

A vanilla latte and unsweetened black tea, fifteen minutes of us wandering the Hospital, thirty minutes of her talking my ear off about a bunch of medical-scientific garbage, then five minutes of us filling out all of the paperwork, and I was Bri’s new, shiny, case study.

Skipping over all of the shit she ran my face through, we’ll sum it up as: I need contacts and I fucking hate it, but she did what she set out to do. The meetings themselves, were more interesting. I don’t know if she like, fucking sensed that I’d let her get away with her shit. But I’m going to assume that, since she still has her fucking job.

It got unprofessional, pretty fast. Like, beyond what she already hit me with. I’m not sure what got into me, honestly. I hadn’t even considered another girl since the crash. But I spent our introductions looking at her like a piece of meat whenever her back was turned. First real meeting, she’s prodding me about all of my personal interests and shit in some fucked small talk, starting to get into my dating life. I take a risk and just drop straight out that I dig chicks.

She gets a bit quiet, which doesn’t make much of a difference because it’s clear already that she’s a fucking loudmouth. But she gets curious, and keeps looking at me after that the whole time I’m there. Then the meeting after that, we ended up on some fucking talk about blindfolds for some reason, and let me just say that she got a little too into that before we started talking about how, like, I needed to turn down my drinking.

So the whole time I’m letting her and the other doctors Frankenstein my face, there is sexual tension to cut with at every goddamned interaction to be had. It never gets anywhere, because neither of us are fucking stupid. But, just, Jesus Christ.

Cut to a year later at the end of 2016. My face is put back together. Getting used to fucking contacts, getting used to checking my emails for interview requests out of the wazoo for five-hundred documentaries and news sites, after her team’s paper on me came out. By all accounts, I’m looking good and so is the implant. She’s onto new volunteers, my appointments are getting passed to another doctor on her team and stretched out to semi-annuals. That should be the end of the story.

But, uh, couldn’t get her out of my head, frankly. Not for a lack of trying, either. By now, I was really amping the weights at gym to try to get my energy out. Quit the hippy cafe and lined up a new job in armed security. Did my registration for online classes at the community, for a Statistics program. Eventually, it’s like, I don’t know, two months, after the last time I saw her. Ethan drags me out to a bar. Ethan fucks off. I meet a girl, some rich one, named Valencia. We get to talking, for like, fifteen minutes. Next thing I know, I’m texting Ethan I’ll show up later and I spent the night at her place.

It’s fucking great, Valencia’s fucking great. But I’m texting Bri the next afternoon at Starbucks that I want to see her that goddamned night. She shoots me the address of another bar, says to bring friends. Naturally, that means I tag in Ethan and Esther. We show up, she has good ol’ Elena here.

Everyone clicks just like that. And that’s fucking great. Lots of material to work through, especially when Bri started going on about how she and Elena met; some wild case when she was a med. student and the Roma communities in the whole state were having outbreaks. Apparently Elena helped with her outreach a lot, a sort of guide between worlds. Then the two quiet girls started going on about their herb gardens, not to even mention all of the stupid military stories me and Ethan had. We hung out for a long ass while. Eventually, we’re all back at Bri’s place. And our BOI Ethan, here, finally communicates what’s up to you and Esther. So Esther ‘takes you two out to for fast food’ and out of our hairs.

Shit takes even shorter than Valencia. Bri locks the door, we fuck. Then I wake up in the morning, wake her up for another fuck. We sleep around, get some take-out for a late… brunch… hang out, I end up taking her with me to that huge football party Tim was hosting and meeting up with the whole friend group. Then it’s just straight back to her place for a repeat performance.

So, basically, it went from zero to like we had always been fucking dating. I practically moved in with her after the first two weeks. I know all of my stuff ended up in there by the fourth month. Then we put me on the lease entirely sometime during the seventh month when she was renewing it. It all flowed natural as shit too, I didn’t even know how ‘fast’ we were going ‘till about the third time I was throwing shit I needed into boxes to toss at Bri’s and Ethan called me the fuck out when he asked: I just said it’s convenient with how much closer to work she is.

And I know a lot of people were, and still do, giving me shit about it, or just about the whole relationship in general. Apparently we talk too hard at each other and act too casual for it to be serious. Looks like some sorta fling, especially considering our ‘differences’ as people put it. You know, racist people, or people who think I’m fucking stupid ‘cause I got a gun in the drawer.

But lemme just say that I think it takes some real fucking balls in a person, where the first time she ever woke up to me having a PTSD episode, is to slide her ass out of bed, rummage through my coat for my medication, and slap my benzos in front of me with leftover tea and a Crunch bar. All without a single word. It takes real balls, any other person, after getting that from her, is just a discount bitch.

It’s not all her pampering me, either. I realized quick she’s a ‘talker’ with her research. If she isn’t with one of us, she’s locked in the bedroom with a stack of journal articles and a Macbook talking off Luke’s ears like he can fucking bark back. So I started reading everything she had and really going over her team’s paper on me, plus whatever the fuck else her scholar databases had, and a lot of Dictionary.com. And, one weekend, she’s complaining to me over coffee and tea about her shit, I pop that shit right back at her, her jaw drops, she probably shits herself a little. And, from then on, I’m her new interactive rubber duck. And people think I’m fucking dumb.

I mean, not to mention all of the random shit I pay for that bitch, with all of the money I’ve been getting lately between disability, financial aid, and work.

So, we’re basically to the present now. There isn’t much detail to fill in after that besides that life is pretty fucking great and Bri is pretty fucking great, from then to now, the middle of Year of Our Lord, 2018. Which takes us to the crux of this whole ass speech I’ve been going on.

Now you two know my life-story. What I wanna know, now that we’re all open and drunk here, is your fucking thoughts on if I’d be making the best, or the worst, decision of my life if I asked her to hitch with me. I’ll be fucking real; I don’t fucking know what it’s like to make a good choice besides like, I don’t know, where to buy my graphics cards.”

I watch the two shitfaces in front of me process what the fuck I just said. Elena brightens like the Irish daisy she is, pressing her hands together, abso-fucking-lutely wiggling in her seat. Her purple scarf slides off the back of the chair in the process. Ethan is still stretched out across the whole damned table like he’s gonna pass out, with the dopiest smile stretching across his face, but as usual, he’s the ‘loud’ one of the two and starts to talk over Elena’s vague ‘Oh… oh…!’

“Dude? That’s… that’s great. That’s really fucking great. I… Man. Fucking, just fucking go for—”

“So are we just a homeless shelter now, or like, is this a reverse Alcoholics Anonymous?” The door slams shut, Luke is rushing off of the couch, and all four of us are just JEERING (barking) Bri’s name back at her, like it makes it fucking better that these idiots are still in the apartment.

“I was thinking homeless shelter and giving them the living room.”

“Cool. Maybe the floor’ll delay Ethan breaking his back another day.”

“Hey… hey, man. I ain’t that old.”

“Oh! Don’t say that - what if it does happen?”

Twiddle Gray and Twiddle Orange are both looking at me funny right now, considering what was cut into, and Bri is starting to pick that up as she’s putting her keys and shit away.

“So! What were you all talking about? Are you finally leaving me?”

“Food, actually. We were thinking that Himalayan place you like. They can eat the basic bitch shit, I was gonna grab us fried okra and tandoori.”

“I hope you aren’t expecting me to pick my ass up from the couch, now. That shit, ain’t happening. Long day working with by-the-book dunderfucks.”

The Twiddles give each a look, then, and then Ethan launches in.

“Nah… naaaaah. You know what? You sit there. You hang out. The three of us will walk down, sober up.”

“With how you made my fucking apartment smell, not sure if that’s gonna happen. But ‘kay. Have fun, leave me all alone. After I just came back from work. A l o n e.”

The three of us are already draining our waters and grabbing our jackets and wallets. I push Elena towards the door and Ethan is right after her as I shoot back at her,

“Shut the fuck up, you whiny bitch. Thirty minutes. You’d be spending it ignoring us and doing your shitty Buzzfeed quizzes anyway.”

“I mean - you’re right. But you’re still leaving me alone. Shit friends. Shit girlfriend,” she sighs, “What a shit life.”

Elena is the one pushing me through the door now by my arm, forcing me and Ethan’s fat asses into the hallway as she tries to assure Bri.

“It’ll be fast! I love you!” 

“Awh. That’s cute.”

The door slams shut.

[tarnishedhalo]

Ugh Hunter & Riley for that broship meme :D

This Meme|Always Accepting

♡ send me a ship and i’ll tell you…♡

when they go camping, who reads the map wrong and gets them lost:

There’s that moment between sleep and wakefulness at 0:400 hrs that has Riley alternately praying for death and wondering who the fuck would call him at this hour. He gropes in the dark before Johnny Cash can wake his sleeping girlfriend. Unlocking his phone and blearily checking the number, he stifles a curse and carefully sits up.

Much as he hates to, he doesn’t try to get his legs under himself so to speak and instead settles in the one piece of furniture he hates, before pushing himself into the next room.

Calls the number back, and just…listens. There’s a few ‘uh-huhs’ and ‘affirmatives’ in there. But for as little noise as he makes, she wakes up anyway.

“Andrew?” And God, how he’s going miss waking up next to that sleep-rumpled voice of hers. “Andy, what’s wrong?”“Hey, Accoushla,” he says and awkwardly invites her to sit in his lap. He hates himself for what he’s about to say, how easily the lie comes. “So…ah… that was my Uncle Phil. He’s sending someone over to pick me up. I guess my cousin Hunter went on a camping trip and my uncle’s worried because he hasn’t heard from him in a few days. Asked me to go check on him up at the family cabin. I’d invite you to go, but with Noah….well. Ya know. Also, cell reception up there’s kind of shitty, so if you don’t hear from me while I’m gone, know I’ll be missing you.”

“Of course. Family’s important.” She runs her fingers through his hair and kisses his brow. Doesn’t even ask why she’s never heard of either man before.

“To me he is.”

who would be a king/queen and who would be a knight:

“Listen – strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the mas-”“Shut up, mate.”

Riley grins. “-masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony.”

The side-glance Hunter throws his way would have peeled paint. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, his knee is bouncing and his expression is inscrutable, even to Riley in the dim lights. His mind is on the mission and he’s taking it far more seriously than Andy feels is necessary. And that’s really where the two men are vastly different. Hunter’s usually all charm and tired smiles and Riley’s usually the one whose interest in things only extends as far as the bottom of his glass.

But at 35,000 the Brit becomes all business. Maybe it’s the mission, maybe it’s that he doesn’t like flying. Riley doesn’t really know and he’s trying to make light of the situation. He can do this all day, after all and maybe his mood is boosted because they are flying.

“….I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!”

Hunter tries to shoulder-chuck him but the harness keeps him in place and gives him only so much room. “You really are an arsehole, aren’t you.”“Yeah. But what does that make you?”Hunter grins. “I am Arthur. King of the Britains.”

who is the superhero and who is the sidekick:

“45.” Hunter sat on the ground, knees raised to his chest and arms loosely hugging them, hands wrapped around a water bottle.“47.” Riley raised a brow, still laying on his back, staring up at the ceiling.“First two didn’t count.”“Even so…it’s a tie.”And so it went. Mile for mile they ran. Full battle-rattle. Later, they’d say uphill both ways. Their shot patterns were identical. Riley edged the Brit out on the buddy-carry… “If you didn’t weigh the same as a mini-Cooper…”But Hunter took the belly crawl. “S’cheatin’ that is. I’m a half leg down.”“Still lost.”

A week later, they’re at the bar and still trying to work out which one of them was harder-core. They’d moved from PT to other skills, trivia to board games but the games, however competitive they were, came out in a dead heat.“You two still at this?” Brian asks as he takes the third seat. “Bitches, please. We all know…I’m Batman, Junior here is Robin and you, Drewski….lets just call you Alfred.”Beth cleared her throat, setting down a tray of Irish nachos.In unison, they all agreed on one thing. “Poison Ivy.”

who enjoys watching romanic comedies more and who would rather watch bee movie™ on repeat:

“This? Again?”“Fuck you. It’s my favourite movie.”Hunter’s just about to give him another ration of shit when certain things come to his attention. Specifically, the way Riley’s sitting. There’s a cushion at the small of his back, and his leg is bent at an odd angle. The planes of his face are hard and a little waxen and his eyes are dilated in such a specific way that Hunter knows he’s a little high. There’s also the fact that his friend’s gaze can’t seem to track anything, which is ridiculous.

It’s pain and on nights like these, no sleep will be had and nothing will mollify the ache in Riley’s bones. So Hunter does the only thing he can do. He helps himself in the kitchen and makes a batch of curry-dusted popcorn. Sits down on the couch and makes himself comfortable.

He sets the bowl between them within easy reach and takes the offered bottle of beer. “Ta. Really was Kilmer’s defining role, wasn’t it?”“You’re still not my Hungarian devil.”“A fact I will just have to live with.”

who prefers puppies and who prefers kittens:

Hunter watches Riley through the window, specifically how he takes the fall and lands on his side, football tucked into his side as he curls around it almost protectively. Noah’s standing over his father in triumph at having tackled the man’s long legs. A golden retriever puppy dances and gambols around them, barking a little high-pitched sound more ears and enthusiasm than real grace. Of the boy and the puppy, Hunter’s sure they’ll grow into their paws. And something bittersweet creeps up on him. He’d wondered, once upon a time, what kind of father he’d have made. And he comforts himself by saying he’d have been shite at it, and is glad that he and Bobbi didn’t have that as a bone of contention between them.He’s not sure how long he was standing there, or what the expression was on his face because the glass doesn’t reflect it or because he just hadn’t noticed but eventually an arm slips around his waist and a slender, long fingered hand curls around his bicep.“You should go out there and save my husband. He looks like he needs all the help he can get.” 

He looks down and smiles, maybe wistfully, at Seren. “Yeah?”Riley’s wife smiles back, her expression soft. “Yeah. Besides, what’s a friendly tag game without Uncle Hunter evening the score?”“I can’t be held responsible if I make him look bad.”“And that’s exactly why I’m sending you into the backyard. Knock a little wind out of his sails. You going to stay for dinner?”“I’d love to, but my cat gets rather angry when I’m late.”

who knits the ugly sweater for the other:

“Put it the fuck on and try to look happy.”

“But…look at it, Who does she think I am, Captain Britain?!”“She went through a lot of trouble to make it for you.”Anyone else, and the jumper would have gone straight into the donation bin where others of its kind often went to die a lonely, second-hand death. The too-bright green for the tree made his eyes ache, and the lines of the Union Jack behind it were just a little off kilter. And where did she even find tinsel yarn?“You owe me one, Riley.”“I always do. But at least it spares her feelings.”Anyone else but Beth and he wouldn’t have cared so much. “Next year, it’s going to be Mexico and not New York.”“You keep saying that. Maybe some day it’ll be true.”

which one can cook and which one can’t even make a bowl of cereal:It’s certainly not that Hunter couldn’t cook, if he wanted to. He just didn’t have the time and inclination that Riley seems to have. And it gets the other up and out of his whiskey-fog for an hour, sometimes more. And if it satisfies some need to treat him like a stray, then…there’s worse things to be.

[onlinemarketinghelp]

Here’s to the Crazy Ones: How These Two Friends Built a Business No One Expected https://ift.tt/37lpa49

“When we started doing $1,000 days, I’m sitting around with all these guys at work and I’m just thinking, ‘My life is about to change, and I can’t even tell anybody.’”

When Rodney Zachariuk and Kory Szostak started their ecommerce business, nobody knew. Even as the months ticked by and their sales continued to climb, they kept it to themselves. 

“We didn’t want to be looked down upon,” says Kory. “We just didn’t need the negativity associated around trying to break away from the norm, which is commonplace where we’re from.”

That feeling – the one that others around you won’t support your ideas or approve of you carving your own path – is not fiction. It’s reality. And entrepreneurs experience it all the time. 

From Apple to Warby Parker, the entrepreneurs behind some of the most daring businesses were often fighting to get others to believe in what they were doing.

When Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk first began pitching the idea of Airbnb to investors, they were laughed out of the room. “Everyone thought that they were completely crazy; no one thought this was a good idea,” says Leigh Gallagher, author of The Airbnb Story. 

Ecommerce entrepreneurs, and especially those who build their businesses with the dropshipping business model, face the same uphill battle. 

The people around them don’t even understand how their businesses work, let alone believe it’s possible to be successful doing it. 

But the ones who succeed, like Rodney and Kory, are the ones who forge ahead anyway. They’re the ones who take a chance on starting a business built on a model their parents have never heard of. They’re the ones who have the courage to stray off the traditional path that funnels you from school to college, then into a 9-5 job. They’re the ones that have the audacity to redefine their careers and their future. 

The story of Rodney and Kory’s climb to success is full of the types of situations usually reserved for television scripts. There’s a chance meeting in Central America that plants the seed, and a car accident that caused Rodney to question his future. There’s a meteoric rise to the top, followed by a catastrophic collapse. There’s the months spent hiding their business from family and friends, and the moment they knew that this was about to change their lives. 

Let’s start at the beginning. 

L-R: Rodney Zachariuk and Kory Szostak

  You Make Money Selling Mugs Online?

Looking back, Rodney and Kory might have ended up somewhere very different if it wasn’t for a chance encounter in the back of a cab in Costa Rica. 

It was mid-2017, and the pair had been traveling together for two weeks. Kory had left a few days earlier, and now with the trip wrapping up, Rodney was on his way back to the airport to board a plane back home to Vancouver. 

On his way to the airport, he agreed to share a cab with a stranger. As they drove, the two got chatting. 

“He started talking about what I now know is dropshipping, but I didn’t really know what it was at the time,” says Rodney. “He was saying he was selling mugs online, and I was kind of confused, I was like, ‘You just make money traveling… and you sell mugs online?’”

Sure, the concept was puzzling, but Rodney was intrigued. He began scribbling down notes in his phone. 

The idea was buzzing around in his head for a few days after getting home, then life went on and the notes he’d copied down were left on his phone untouched. 

You Guys Took My Credit Card Information?

A few months later when Kory came across an article mentioning dropshipping, he called up Rodney. Memories of the guy in Costa Rica came back, and Rodney agreed to try it out. 

They both quickly fell into an obsession with learning how to run a dropshipping business. They devoured hours of videos detailing store setup, product selection, and budgeting advice.

They were leveling up their skills, but they still weren’t sure if anything they’d learned about setting up a website would work in real life. So they decided to test it. 

Just before Christmas in 2017, their friends were planning a bar crawl. Being Christmas and all, the event demanded that everyone come dressed in a santa suit.

The pair spotted their opportunity. They whipped up a Christmas-themed Shopify store, and filled it with ugly Christmas sweaters and santa suits they sourced from dropshipping suppliers. 

Casually, they mentioned the site to their friends. 

“We told them we found a really cheap website that they could buy their suits from,” Kory says. “We just wanted to see if we could make it all work and make it seem like a legit website. Lo and behold, one of them bought one.” 

“In the end, we sold them so cheaply we didn’t make any money, we lost money,” Rodney adds, laughing. 

Months later, they revealed to their friend that it was their store he had bought his suit from. “It all kind of clicked for him, and he’s like, ‘Holy shit, you guys took my credit card information? I bought this Santa suit from you?!’”

Pranks aside, the success of the santa store proved something serious for both of them. This thing works. 

Getting Serious: The Testing Phase

In the months that followed, Rodney and Kory packed up and set off on a five-month trip around Asia. As they traveled, they kept meeting digital nomads – those location-independent people who can live anywhere, work anywhere. They were drawn to the idea that they could make their work fit around their travel plans, and not the other way around. 

They were excited to dip their toes into the world of online business, so they set up several Instagram accounts around potential business ideas. They had an account for basketball lovers, one promoting jewelry, one for fake house plants, another for tech gadgets, and one for holiday accessories. Their final account was dedicated to fantasy gaming. 

As they traveled, they continued to post new content to the accounts, and watched as they began to slowly grow in popularity. 

But before they knew it, their trip was over. They returned home to Vancouver, got full-time jobs, and found themselves settling back into their normal lives. Kory found a sales role in a tech company, and Rodney began working in construction while studying for his real estate license.

At night they’d work together on the Instagram accounts, taking notice of which niches seemed to attract the most attention and engagement. 

The fantasy gaming account started to pull ahead, gathering followers quickly. By September they were up to almost 4,000 followers. They noticed the sense of community that began to build on their account, where users would leave long streams of comments under their posts, chatting back and forth. 

Off the back of the Instagram success, in September they decided to take their next step forward. They began building out a Shopify store around the fantasy gaming niche, filling it with mugs, pins and apparel related to the fantasy gaming world. Then they began testing the reception to different products with their Instagram audience. Their followers quickly responded. 

A Close Call Makes Rodney Question His Future

October 30, 2018, is a day that Rodney remembers well. It had been raining that day, and he was working alongside three colleagues at a construction site. They heard a noise and turned quickly to see what was happening. Moments before, a speeding car came flying around the corner, colliding with a Corvette that was passing by. The road was wet, and the force of the impact sent the Corvette barrelling toward where Rodney and the three others were standing. 

Suddenly, with the sound of the metal car body crumpling around an immovable object, the Corvette came to a stop. The arm of a piece of heavy machinery had been resting on the road next to the workers. The Corvette collided with the arm, shielding the Rodney and the workers from the impact. 

“This was pretty traumatizing,” Rodney says. “It really made me realize that I needed to start doing something more fulfilling with my life.”

Kicking Things Off on Black Friday

While Rodney’s day job was serving up near-death experiences, their fledgling business was beginning to grow. They were making a few sales here and there, all from organic Instagram traffic. Then in mid-November they decided to step it up. 

It was just before Black Friday, and they knew that people would be in the mood to shop. If there ever was a time to test the validity of their business, it was now.

They knew they needed to stand out on Black Friday weekend, so they searched around for an idea. That’s when they came up with the mystery pack. 

The mystery pack contained a mix of some of their most popular low-ticket products, bundled together for a discounted price. 

And really, the idea couldn’t have been a better fit for their audience. Their customers lived for games, and the mystery pack was a little game in itself. Want to know what you’ll get? You’ll have to play the game (and buy the pack) to find out. 

As you might have already guessed, the mystery packs were a hit. 

“They loved it,” Kory says, grinning. 

The store made over $3,000 revenue that weekend, all without spending a cent on advertising. 

Audiences for a fantasy niche store are lovers of dragons, wolves and medieval magic. Fill your store with products featuring mythical creatures and black magic, and try creating a character for your brand that fits within that world. Talk in your audience’s language, and you’ll win their hearts. 

On Facebook, you could try targeting your audience around Game of Thrones, Final Fantasy or Lord of the Rings fans. 

Fantasy Niche Product Ideas

  Stepping Into the Unknown

By now, Rodney and Kory were pouring every spare moment they had into the business. Late into the night they’d be tweaking their website, sourcing new products, and honing their advertising skills. The weekend became precious, the only part of the week where they could dedicate two days of interrupted time into their business.  

And when Monday morning rolled around, Rodney would head back to his construction job, and Kory would head into the office, and spend the day making sales for someone else. 

Kory had been in his tech sales job for three months and was coming up to the end of his probation period. He would soon be offered a permanent position with benefits.

Despite what seemed like an obvious choice, Kory knew that it didn’t feel right to stay on. He’d never seen himself working a desk job, and this taste of it made it clear to him it wasn’t where he needed to be. 

Plus, even though it was early days, he sensed that the business had potential. If only he was able to dedicate more of his time to it, he felt like he could turn it into something big. And he couldn’t get that idea out of his head. 

So just as he was about to be offered a permanent role, Kory announced he was quitting. He waved goodbye to the stable paycheck, and stepped into the unknown.

To make matters more complicated, Kory had just moved out of his parents’ home and into his own apartment, with its own rent to pay.

“I was like, ‘This is great. I have no job now and I just moved in here,’” says Kory, laughing.

The new-apartment-with-no-job situation was something Kory sensed that his parents would not approve of, so he decided to keep it a secret. 

“I didn’t tell my parents [that I had quit] for their sake, as this would have gone against everything they ever taught me. I knew this would sound like the stupidest decision of my life,” he says. 

Both Rodney and Kory’s parents didn’t even know they had started a business together, so how could he begin to explain that he’d quit his job to pursue it? 

Keeping the lie alive was hard work. 

One Friday, Kory invited his parents and grandmother out for lunch, forgetting it was a day he’d normally be working. 

When they began to wonder how he was able to have enough time to meet them in the middle of the day on a workday, he quickly made up an excuse about being allowed to leave early. 

“But I had quit my job at that point, and I was lying to them the whole time at the table, trying to just not say anything.”

The Happy Holiday Season

With Kory now working full-time on the business, things really kicked off. The Christmas season was rapidly approaching, and they wanted to capture as much of the shopping spirit as possible.

They began running Facebook advertisements, which allowed them to reach a much wider audience outside of their Instagram following. 

The mystery packs continued to be a hit. As they pumped more money into ads, their revenue began to skyrocket.

“Christmas was insane,” says Kory. “We jumped from about $3,000 in November to $75,000 the next month.”

Rodney was still working full-time, but had moved into office work as the result of a back injury. The change of work gave him a lot of time to reflect on what he wanted for his life, and what he needed to do to get there. But as he became increasingly disconnected from his day job, things with the business began to get more exciting. 

“I was at work and the Shopify ping was just going off like crazy,” he says. “I would look at my phone, I’m like, ‘Oh my God. We just sold $200-$300.’ And I couldn’t tell anybody what was happening.”

So as things were ramping up with the business, Rodney knew the time had come.

“My contract was up for renewal soon and I had to make a decision. I decided that for the sake of my body’s wellbeing, my mental health, and the business, it was time that I went all in.”

Just before Christmas, Rodney stepped out of his job and into the business full-time.

“Mom, I’m an Entrepreneur.”

Christmas had passed and the pair were closing in on $75,000 revenue that month. They knew it was time to tell their parents.

Kory remembers their reaction, “They didn’t know what to say. They were just so confused.”

“It’s a hard concept to explain to them,” adds Rodney. “My parents are pretty old school. So, they were like, ‘What? You’re selling these products and you don’t even touch them? You don’t even hold the products?’”

And it wasn’t just the complexities of the dropshipping business model that confused them, it was the fact that they’d given up such solid jobs to pursue it. 

“They were like, ‘Why would you give up this job where you make really good money, are getting benefits, and where you can move up the ladder?’” Kory says.

“I’m pretty sure they thought I was selling drugs, or something,” laughs Rodney. 

In the end, the pair accepted the fact that their parents probably wouldn’t get it. They pushed ahead regardless.

Everything That Goes Up…

With the calendar flipping over to a new year, and with the weight of their secret lifted from their shoulders, the pair went into January with full force.

The shopping mood of the holiday season seemed to continue, and they watched as their revenue numbers climbed up and up.

Most of their products were priced under $10, with an average sale bringing them $12 in revenue. They were processing up to 1,000 orders a day, and were trying their best to keep on top of all the order fulfillment and customer service requests that came along with that.

By the end of January, they’d had their best month yet. They looked at their sales dashboard and saw that big, shiny number staring back at them. They had made over $100,000 USD. 

With January over, they began planning for an even bigger February. While they were increasing their advertising spend and preparing for the extra workload, suppliers in China began to closing up their businesses and heading home for the Chinese New Year holidays. 

“When Chinese New Year came… everything just came crumbling down,” says Kory.

What’s the Deal with Chinese New Year?

Each year in late January to mid February, people in China celebrate Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival. On average, suppliers take two weeks off to spend time with their family and friends. This is comparable to people taking extra time off during the holiday season (Christmas and New Years) in North America. Operations of their business will generally pause during this time, so you’ll need to plan to switch suppliers or pause advertising for a short period. 

Read more about Chinese New Year. 

“We were in Hawaii, when we realized and then we were like, ‘Oh my God…’ We were doing close to 1,000 orders a day at this time, and we didn’t realize that there was a month delay with orders being sent. We were just like, ‘Oh my God, how are we gonna fulfill all these orders?’”

For weeks, they faced a tidal wave of customer service emails. People wanted to know where their package was, after it had been delayed for so long. They’d spend hours answering their requests, late into the night.

“We still have nightmares with page upon page of emails saying, ‘Why hasn’t my order shipped yet?’” says Kory. 

Time for a Reboot

When the dust settled from the Chinese New Year disaster, they began to evaluate their approach. There had to be a better way, one that could keep them growing, but avoid being crushed under the weight of hundreds of orders per day.

“We scrapped everything at that point, except for our Instagram. We bought a pro-theme on Shopify because we needed a refresh. Then we started moving into higher-ticket items, but with a lower order volume. We couldn’t keep up,” says Kory. 

Since then, they’ve hired a content writer who regularly publishes blog posts, helping to drive traffic and build a sense of community on their website. 

They’ve also teamed up with a fantasy gaming podcast, and work to cross-promote each other through social media, newsletters, and within the podcast episodes. 

“We’ve grown quite substantially online. Now we’re just trying to maintain that. We’ve realized what we’re selling now is more of a brand. It’s not just like a hot product,” says Kory.

“Over the course of the last two months we’ve just been slowly testing new things. We’re just trying to prepare and get ahead of the game for Christmas time, because we know what a crazy time of the year it is now. We want to be ready, because we were so unprepared for Christmas last year.”

Turns Out, the Future Looks Bright

For two people who started with no business experience, it’s been an uphill struggle the whole time. They learned it all themselves, every step of the way. Sometimes it was a battle, fought over long days and late nights crouched over their laptops.

In the end, they wouldn’t trade even their worst moments. “It was literally trial and error the whole time,” says Kory. “But then you look back on it and you’re like, ‘Wow. Look how far we’ve come from when we started.’ It’s beautiful.”

And their families? They’re slowly coming around to the idea that despite what they expected, things have worked out. 

Rodney recalls trying to convince his grandmother that everything would be okay. 

“Trying to explain the business to my grandma, there’s no chance I can explain to her what I’m doing,” he says. “She’s like, ‘Why would you quit your job? Do you need money?’ And I’m like, ‘No no no!’”

“I finally took her out for dinner last week, and she kind of started to realize, ‘Okay. He’s not struggling now.’”

Kory’s family has come around too, embracing his new ambitions. “They finally realized six months later, we’re still doing this. We’re paying rent for the apartment, surviving, and not asking for money from them. So they’re finally thinking, ‘Okay. You know what? They’re actually doing something serious.’” 

In late February they launched another business, Kenekt Marketing. Now they’re leveraging everything they’ve learned from their ecommerce experience to help local businesses build up their digital marketing strategies. “Both businesses are such great opportunities. But we’re trying to slowly build them both up at the same time,” says Kory. 

For anyone teetering on the edge, unsure if they’re ready to start, Rodney and Kory have one piece of advice.

“Honestly it’s never gonna be the right time to start. You just have to be willing to make sacrifices, like giving up going to the gym or yoga, or seeing your friends after work. It might be waking up early or not taking a lunch break at work and working on it. You have to make the time, because no one else will and no one’s gonna push you to start.”

How They Built Their Business: 4 Lessons to Take Away

Now comes the real down and dirty part where we pick apart Rodney and Kory’s business strategy. We drill down on some of their best tactics, discuss their shift in strategy, and break apart the most important lessons they’ve learned along the way. 

In this section, we’ll be covering:

Using Instagram to test product niches

Their low-ticket to high-ticket product strategy

Lessons they learned about pricing strategies

Figuring out Facebook advertising

Let’s get into it.

Use Instagram to Test Product Niches

Before they’d even started their store, Rodney and Kory were thinking about the smartest, most cost-effective way to go about taking that first step. 

So many dropshippers find themselves in the same situation. If they’re playing with a small budget, they look for ways to drive traffic for free, or stretch their budget further.

They might spend time on Reddit or Facebook groups, dropping in links to their store to drive traffic. They might opt to use influencer marketing before jumping into ads. They might try testing products using just $10 a day on Facebook ads. Some of these low cost tactics work well, but some of them can be difficult to pull off. 

So if you don’t have much cash to spare and are looking for a way to get things off the ground, follow Rodney and Kory’s example.

Test your product niches using Instagram. 

“We did our research and knew the horror stories of testing advertising on Facebook and how much money can be lost in the process. So we created several Instagram profiles in different niches to test audience engagement,” Kory says. 

They started off with Instagram accounts built around basketball, jewelry, tech gadgets, holiday accessories, fake house plants, and fantasy gaming. As they grew the accounts with organic content, they paid close attention to which audiences responded most strongly. 

Rodney explains their strategy: “Essentially, we wanted people to stay on our Instagram page as long as possible. We wanted them to go to our Instagram page and just continually scroll. So we tried to build a community around it.”

Even once it became clear that their fantasy gaming account was surging ahead, they didn’t jump immediately into paid advertising. They used their Instagram audience to test different products, to see which ones people were most excited about. From that, they were able to determine which products were worth putting money behind. 

Their paid advertising chops have increased significantly since the beginning, but they still rely on organic Instagram content to drive free traffic to their store.

“A lot of our sales come through Facebook ads, but the organic Instagram content is almost like the engine in the background, just continually churning,” says Rodney.  

The Low-Ticket to High-Ticket Strategy

When they started out, Rodney and Kory stocked their store with low-cost items. They figured, the cheaper a product is, the faster it would sell. 

And for the most part, they were right. 

They were able to generate thousands of orders of low-cost items over the holiday season, but that came with a price. They were swamped with the extra work that was required to fulfill and manage customer service requests for that many orders. 

After Chinese New Year sent everything crumbling down, they redefined their approach and switched to higher-ticket items. It was through this that they were able to reduce their workload, and increase their margins. 

It might have happened by accident, but turns out this approach is a pretty good strategy. 

By focusing on low-ticket items at the beginning, they were able to draw in a huge amount of visitors to their site. Some of those visitors were just browsing, others added to cart, and a lot of them made a purchase. 

In the background, as visitors came streaming into their store in search of low-cost items, the Facebook pixel was working away, gathering data and refining its classification of the ideal buyer for their store. The more data it gathered, the smarter it got at knowing who to target with advertisements. 

So by the time they were ready to switch their store to focusing on higher-ticket items, they had already refined their targeting to attract the perfect customer. They were also able to grow their email list to over 40,000 subscribers, allowing them to tap into another free marketing channel. 

The Psychology of Pricing

As a customer, when it comes to understanding price – from knowing if you’re about to snag a deal or are getting ripped off – there’s a lot going on in your head that you probably don’t realize.

As a marketer, it’s your job to try to understand what’s going on inside your customers’ heads. 

Would a customer be more tempted by a $10 product with free shipping, or a $8 product with $2 shipping? 

When Rodney and Kory started out, they wanted to make the price of the product seem as attractive as possible, so they hid their costs in the shipping price. But they ran into a problem. 

“We realized if they’re ordering more, we were actually making less,” says Rodney.

Imagine this. You’re selling a product for $5, plus $5 for shipping. The product costs you $4 to buy from the supplier, and you pay your supplier $2 to ship the product to your customers.

So if you sell one product, you’ll make $10 revenue, and $6 of that goes to your supplier. 

You’ve made $4 profit. 

But what if someone wants to buy 10 of them? Now, you’re getting $50 for the product, and $5 for the shipping, so $55 in revenue. 

This time, the product costs you $40 and $2 for shipping again. For ten times the amount of product, you’ve only made $13 in profit.

Ouch. 

Since then, they’ve switched strategies. They now offer free shipping over $50 (more on that below) and make sure the cost of the product is covered by the product price, plus a healthy margin.

But Rodney and Kory don’t have a blanket rule for pricing their products. They’ve learned through trial and error that each product needs to be thought about individually. 

“We sell a bunch of items in our store, probably close to a hundred by now. But each one has its own pricing strategy that works for it,” says Rodney. 

Certain products can be sold for a higher price with better margins, which gives them the flexibility to offer them with discounts. They could add the products to their spin-a-wheel app with a deep discount, or offer them at a cheaper price as part of a bundle. 

  “People love to think that they’re getting a deal,” says Rodney. 

The pair also realized the psychological significance of setting a threshold for free shipping. They implemented a “free shipping over $50” rule in an attempt to increase their average order value. 

They created bundled items of related products and small add-ons to upsell people. Like the chewing gum that sits next to the register in the supermarket, shoppers found it easy to toss a few smaller items into their cart so they could claim the free shipping offer. 

“We saw a huge increase in our average order value, which was massive. I think our average order value before that was $12-14, and now it’s about $35-40,” says Rodney. 

With higher average orders, they were able to pour the profits back into advertising to quickly grow the business. 

“The margins you make on an order like that – you don’t have to hold your breath until you make your next sale,” says Kory.

Facebook Ads: You’ve Got to Go Your Own Way

Rodney and Kory were both complete beginners when they first stepped into the world of online advertising, and as Kory puts it, “We got our asses kicked with Facebook.”

“We had zero clue how to do anything with ads when we first started,” says Rodney. “On Instagram we were just using the promote button, which we realized is not good, you shouldn’t be doing that. We were just pumping money into that with no real targeting.”

At the beginning, things looked like they were working. They were making sales, and money was appearing in their bank account. But they weren’t paying attention to the finer details. 

“We were just pumping more money into it thinking it’s working,” says Kory. “Then we realized that we needed to set up set rules to kill off certain ads that aren’t performing well.”

They started to look closely at their return on ad spend (ROAS), which tells you how much you’re getting back for the amount of money you’re putting in. “We didn’t even know what ROAS was for the longest time,” says Kory, laughing. 

Along with this, they also worked to refine their design and copywriting skills, so they could start creating ads that looked like the type of ad they might be tempted to click on themselves. 

“We started to become better with Photoshop, and slowly tailored it to get it to the quality that we wanted. We kind of became obsessed with it,” says Kory. “We started to get really good at learning what the algorithm wants to see in the ads, so we’d have a better chance of getting approved, or being shown.” 

But even as they began to master Facebook advertising, they often found that the strategies shared in video tutorials or articles didn’t always work for them. 

“There’s a lot of free information out there about Facebook ads,” says Rodney. “It’s a great start, but unless you’re selling or mimicking exactly what that person in the video or the blog is talking about, it’s only relevant to your store to a certain extent. That was one of the issues we found.”

“We figured, we need to learn the base idea of how it works. We’ll just get a general understanding of how the strategy works, then we’ll need to tailor it to our store,” says Kory. 

And in the end, they’ve found that most of their success comes down to good old fashioned trial and error. 

“We’re still always testing new ideas,” says Kory. “Whenever we find a new product, we’re thinking about something we’ve learned from the past in terms of branding it or putting it out there. What do we think is going to work the best for this product? And then if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, we try something else.”

Want to Learn More?

How to Start a Dropshipping Business in 2019

20+ Trending Products to Sell in 2019

The Ultimate Shopify Dropshipping Guide

The One Product Store: This Entrepreneur’s Simple Formula for Success

The post Here’s to the Crazy Ones: How These Two Friends Built a Business No One Expected appeared first on Oberlo.

from Oberlo

“When we started doing $1,000 days, I’m sitting around with all these guys at work and I’m just thinking, ‘My life is about to change, and I can’t even tell anybody.’”

When Rodney Zachariuk and Kory Szostak started their ecommerce business, nobody knew. Even as the months ticked by and their sales continued to climb, they kept it to themselves. 

“We didn’t want to be looked down upon,” says Kory. “We just didn’t need the negativity associated around trying to break away from the norm, which is commonplace where we’re from.”

That feeling – the one that others around you won’t support your ideas or approve of you carving your own path – is not fiction. It’s reality. And entrepreneurs experience it all the time. 

From Apple to Warby Parker, the entrepreneurs behind some of the most daring businesses were often fighting to get others to believe in what they were doing.

When Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk first began pitching the idea of Airbnb to investors, they were laughed out of the room. “Everyone thought that they were completely crazy; no one thought this was a good idea,” says Leigh Gallagher, author of The Airbnb Story. 

Ecommerce entrepreneurs, and especially those who build their businesses with the dropshipping business model, face the same uphill battle. 

The people around them don’t even understand how their businesses work, let alone believe it’s possible to be successful doing it. 

But the ones who succeed, like Rodney and Kory, are the ones who forge ahead anyway. They’re the ones who take a chance on starting a business built on a model their parents have never heard of. They’re the ones who have the courage to stray off the traditional path that funnels you from school to college, then into a 9-5 job. They’re the ones that have the audacity to redefine their careers and their future. 

The story of Rodney and Kory’s climb to success is full of the types of situations usually reserved for television scripts. There’s a chance meeting in Central America that plants the seed, and a car accident that caused Rodney to question his future. There’s a meteoric rise to the top, followed by a catastrophic collapse. There’s the months spent hiding their business from family and friends, and the moment they knew that this was about to change their lives. 

Let’s start at the beginning. 

L-R: Rodney Zachariuk and Kory Szostak

  You Make Money Selling Mugs Online?

Looking back, Rodney and Kory might have ended up somewhere very different if it wasn’t for a chance encounter in the back of a cab in Costa Rica. 

It was mid-2017, and the pair had been traveling together for two weeks. Kory had left a few days earlier, and now with the trip wrapping up, Rodney was on his way back to the airport to board a plane back home to Vancouver. 

On his way to the airport, he agreed to share a cab with a stranger. As they drove, the two got chatting. 

“He started talking about what I now know is dropshipping, but I didn’t really know what it was at the time,” says Rodney. “He was saying he was selling mugs online, and I was kind of confused, I was like, ‘You just make money traveling… and you sell mugs online?’”

Sure, the concept was puzzling, but Rodney was intrigued. He began scribbling down notes in his phone. 

The idea was buzzing around in his head for a few days after getting home, then life went on and the notes he’d copied down were left on his phone untouched. 

You Guys Took My Credit Card Information?

A few months later when Kory came across an article mentioning dropshipping, he called up Rodney. Memories of the guy in Costa Rica came back, and Rodney agreed to try it out. 

They both quickly fell into an obsession with learning how to run a dropshipping business. They devoured hours of videos detailing store setup, product selection, and budgeting advice.

They were leveling up their skills, but they still weren’t sure if anything they’d learned about setting up a website would work in real life. So they decided to test it. 

Just before Christmas in 2017, their friends were planning a bar crawl. Being Christmas and all, the event demanded that everyone come dressed in a santa suit.

The pair spotted their opportunity. They whipped up a Christmas-themed Shopify store, and filled it with ugly Christmas sweaters and santa suits they sourced from dropshipping suppliers. 

Casually, they mentioned the site to their friends. 

“We told them we found a really cheap website that they could buy their suits from,” Kory says. “We just wanted to see if we could make it all work and make it seem like a legit website. Lo and behold, one of them bought one.” 

“In the end, we sold them so cheaply we didn’t make any money, we lost money,” Rodney adds, laughing. 

Months later, they revealed to their friend that it was their store he had bought his suit from. “It all kind of clicked for him, and he’s like, ‘Holy shit, you guys took my credit card information? I bought this Santa suit from you?!’”

Pranks aside, the success of the santa store proved something serious for both of them. This thing works. 

Getting Serious: The Testing Phase

In the months that followed, Rodney and Kory packed up and set off on a five-month trip around Asia. As they traveled, they kept meeting digital nomads – those location-independent people who can live anywhere, work anywhere. They were drawn to the idea that they could make their work fit around their travel plans, and not the other way around. 

They were excited to dip their toes into the world of online business, so they set up several Instagram accounts around potential business ideas. They had an account for basketball lovers, one promoting jewelry, one for fake house plants, another for tech gadgets, and one for holiday accessories. Their final account was dedicated to fantasy gaming. 

As they traveled, they continued to post new content to the accounts, and watched as they began to slowly grow in popularity. 

But before they knew it, their trip was over. They returned home to Vancouver, got full-time jobs, and found themselves settling back into their normal lives. Kory found a sales role in a tech company, and Rodney began working in construction while studying for his real estate license.

At night they’d work together on the Instagram accounts, taking notice of which niches seemed to attract the most attention and engagement. 

The fantasy gaming account started to pull ahead, gathering followers quickly. By September they were up to almost 4,000 followers. They noticed the sense of community that began to build on their account, where users would leave long streams of comments under their posts, chatting back and forth. 

Off the back of the Instagram success, in September they decided to take their next step forward. They began building out a Shopify store around the fantasy gaming niche, filling it with mugs, pins and apparel related to the fantasy gaming world. Then they began testing the reception to different products with their Instagram audience. Their followers quickly responded. 

A Close Call Makes Rodney Question His Future

October 30, 2018, is a day that Rodney remembers well. It had been raining that day, and he was working alongside three colleagues at a construction site. They heard a noise and turned quickly to see what was happening. Moments before, a speeding car came flying around the corner, colliding with a Corvette that was passing by. The road was wet, and the force of the impact sent the Corvette barrelling toward where Rodney and the three others were standing. 

Suddenly, with the sound of the metal car body crumpling around an immovable object, the Corvette came to a stop. The arm of a piece of heavy machinery had been resting on the road next to the workers. The Corvette collided with the arm, shielding the Rodney and the workers from the impact. 

“This was pretty traumatizing,” Rodney says. “It really made me realize that I needed to start doing something more fulfilling with my life.”

Kicking Things Off on Black Friday

While Rodney’s day job was serving up near-death experiences, their fledgling business was beginning to grow. They were making a few sales here and there, all from organic Instagram traffic. Then in mid-November they decided to step it up. 

It was just before Black Friday, and they knew that people would be in the mood to shop. If there ever was a time to test the validity of their business, it was now.

They knew they needed to stand out on Black Friday weekend, so they searched around for an idea. That’s when they came up with the mystery pack. 

The mystery pack contained a mix of some of their most popular low-ticket products, bundled together for a discounted price. 

And really, the idea couldn’t have been a better fit for their audience. Their customers lived for games, and the mystery pack was a little game in itself. Want to know what you’ll get? You’ll have to play the game (and buy the pack) to find out. 

As you might have already guessed, the mystery packs were a hit. 

“They loved it,” Kory says, grinning. 

The store made over $3,000 revenue that weekend, all without spending a cent on advertising. 

Audiences for a fantasy niche store are lovers of dragons, wolves and medieval magic. Fill your store with products featuring mythical creatures and black magic, and try creating a character for your brand that fits within that world. Talk in your audience’s language, and you’ll win their hearts. 

On Facebook, you could try targeting your audience around Game of Thrones, Final Fantasy or Lord of the Rings fans. 

Fantasy Niche Product Ideas

  Stepping Into the Unknown

By now, Rodney and Kory were pouring every spare moment they had into the business. Late into the night they’d be tweaking their website, sourcing new products, and honing their advertising skills. The weekend became precious, the only part of the week where they could dedicate two days of interrupted time into their business.  

And when Monday morning rolled around, Rodney would head back to his construction job, and Kory would head into the office, and spend the day making sales for someone else. 

Kory had been in his tech sales job for three months and was coming up to the end of his probation period. He would soon be offered a permanent position with benefits.

Despite what seemed like an obvious choice, Kory knew that it didn’t feel right to stay on. He’d never seen himself working a desk job, and this taste of it made it clear to him it wasn’t where he needed to be. 

Plus, even though it was early days, he sensed that the business had potential. If only he was able to dedicate more of his time to it, he felt like he could turn it into something big. And he couldn’t get that idea out of his head. 

So just as he was about to be offered a permanent role, Kory announced he was quitting. He waved goodbye to the stable paycheck, and stepped into the unknown.

To make matters more complicated, Kory had just moved out of his parents’ home and into his own apartment, with its own rent to pay.

“I was like, ‘This is great. I have no job now and I just moved in here,’” says Kory, laughing.

The new-apartment-with-no-job situation was something Kory sensed that his parents would not approve of, so he decided to keep it a secret. 

“I didn’t tell my parents [that I had quit] for their sake, as this would have gone against everything they ever taught me. I knew this would sound like the stupidest decision of my life,” he says. 

Both Rodney and Kory’s parents didn’t even know they had started a business together, so how could he begin to explain that he’d quit his job to pursue it? 

Keeping the lie alive was hard work. 

One Friday, Kory invited his parents and grandmother out for lunch, forgetting it was a day he’d normally be working. 

When they began to wonder how he was able to have enough time to meet them in the middle of the day on a workday, he quickly made up an excuse about being allowed to leave early. 

“But I had quit my job at that point, and I was lying to them the whole time at the table, trying to just not say anything.”

The Happy Holiday Season

With Kory now working full-time on the business, things really kicked off. The Christmas season was rapidly approaching, and they wanted to capture as much of the shopping spirit as possible.

They began running Facebook advertisements, which allowed them to reach a much wider audience outside of their Instagram following. 

The mystery packs continued to be a hit. As they pumped more money into ads, their revenue began to skyrocket.

“Christmas was insane,” says Kory. “We jumped from about $3,000 in November to $75,000 the next month.”

Rodney was still working full-time, but had moved into office work as the result of a back injury. The change of work gave him a lot of time to reflect on what he wanted for his life, and what he needed to do to get there. But as he became increasingly disconnected from his day job, things with the business began to get more exciting. 

“I was at work and the Shopify ping was just going off like crazy,” he says. “I would look at my phone, I’m like, ‘Oh my God. We just sold $200-$300.’ And I couldn’t tell anybody what was happening.”

So as things were ramping up with the business, Rodney knew the time had come.

“My contract was up for renewal soon and I had to make a decision. I decided that for the sake of my body’s wellbeing, my mental health, and the business, it was time that I went all in.”

Just before Christmas, Rodney stepped out of his job and into the business full-time.

“Mom, I’m an Entrepreneur.”

Christmas had passed and the pair were closing in on $75,000 revenue that month. They knew it was time to tell their parents.

Kory remembers their reaction, “They didn’t know what to say. They were just so confused.”

“It’s a hard concept to explain to them,” adds Rodney. “My parents are pretty old school. So, they were like, ‘What? You’re selling these products and you don’t even touch them? You don’t even hold the products?’”

And it wasn’t just the complexities of the dropshipping business model that confused them, it was the fact that they’d given up such solid jobs to pursue it. 

“They were like, ‘Why would you give up this job where you make really good money, are getting benefits, and where you can move up the ladder?’” Kory says.

“I’m pretty sure they thought I was selling drugs, or something,” laughs Rodney. 

In the end, the pair accepted the fact that their parents probably wouldn’t get it. They pushed ahead regardless.

Everything That Goes Up…

With the calendar flipping over to a new year, and with the weight of their secret lifted from their shoulders, the pair went into January with full force.

The shopping mood of the holiday season seemed to continue, and they watched as their revenue numbers climbed up and up.

Most of their products were priced under $10, with an average sale bringing them $12 in revenue. They were processing up to 1,000 orders a day, and were trying their best to keep on top of all the order fulfillment and customer service requests that came along with that.

By the end of January, they’d had their best month yet. They looked at their sales dashboard and saw that big, shiny number staring back at them. They had made over $100,000 USD. 

With January over, they began planning for an even bigger February. While they were increasing their advertising spend and preparing for the extra workload, suppliers in China began to closing up their businesses and heading home for the Chinese New Year holidays. 

“When Chinese New Year came… everything just came crumbling down,” says Kory.

What’s the Deal with Chinese New Year?

Each year in late January to mid February, people in China celebrate Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival. On average, suppliers take two weeks off to spend time with their family and friends. This is comparable to people taking extra time off during the holiday season (Christmas and New Years) in North America. Operations of their business will generally pause during this time, so you’ll need to plan to switch suppliers or pause advertising for a short period. 

Read more about Chinese New Year. 

“We were in Hawaii, when we realized and then we were like, ‘Oh my God…’ We were doing close to 1,000 orders a day at this time, and we didn’t realize that there was a month delay with orders being sent. We were just like, ‘Oh my God, how are we gonna fulfill all these orders?’”

For weeks, they faced a tidal wave of customer service emails. People wanted to know where their package was, after it had been delayed for so long. They’d spend hours answering their requests, late into the night.

“We still have nightmares with page upon page of emails saying, ‘Why hasn’t my order shipped yet?’” says Kory. 

Time for a Reboot

When the dust settled from the Chinese New Year disaster, they began to evaluate their approach. There had to be a better way, one that could keep them growing, but avoid being crushed under the weight of hundreds of orders per day.

“We scrapped everything at that point, except for our Instagram. We bought a pro-theme on Shopify because we needed a refresh. Then we started moving into higher-ticket items, but with a lower order volume. We couldn’t keep up,” says Kory. 

Since then, they’ve hired a content writer who regularly publishes blog posts, helping to drive traffic and build a sense of community on their website. 

They’ve also teamed up with a fantasy gaming podcast, and work to cross-promote each other through social media, newsletters, and within the podcast episodes. 

“We’ve grown quite substantially online. Now we’re just trying to maintain that. We’ve realized what we’re selling now is more of a brand. It’s not just like a hot product,” says Kory.

“Over the course of the last two months we’ve just been slowly testing new things. We’re just trying to prepare and get ahead of the game for Christmas time, because we know what a crazy time of the year it is now. We want to be ready, because we were so unprepared for Christmas last year.”

Turns Out, the Future Looks Bright

For two people who started with no business experience, it’s been an uphill struggle the whole time. They learned it all themselves, every step of the way. Sometimes it was a battle, fought over long days and late nights crouched over their laptops.

In the end, they wouldn’t trade even their worst moments. “It was literally trial and error the whole time,” says Kory. “But then you look back on it and you’re like, ‘Wow. Look how far we’ve come from when we started.’ It’s beautiful.”

And their families? They’re slowly coming around to the idea that despite what they expected, things have worked out. 

Rodney recalls trying to convince his grandmother that everything would be okay. 

“Trying to explain the business to my grandma, there’s no chance I can explain to her what I’m doing,” he says. “She’s like, ‘Why would you quit your job? Do you need money?’ And I’m like, ‘No no no!’”

“I finally took her out for dinner last week, and she kind of started to realize, ‘Okay. He’s not struggling now.’”

Kory’s family has come around too, embracing his new ambitions. “They finally realized six months later, we’re still doing this. We’re paying rent for the apartment, surviving, and not asking for money from them. So they’re finally thinking, ‘Okay. You know what? They’re actually doing something serious.’” 

In late February they launched another business, Kenekt Marketing. Now they’re leveraging everything they’ve learned from their ecommerce experience to help local businesses build up their digital marketing strategies. “Both businesses are such great opportunities. But we’re trying to slowly build them both up at the same time,” says Kory. 

For anyone teetering on the edge, unsure if they’re ready to start, Rodney and Kory have one piece of advice.

“Honestly it’s never gonna be the right time to start. You just have to be willing to make sacrifices, like giving up going to the gym or yoga, or seeing your friends after work. It might be waking up early or not taking a lunch break at work and working on it. You have to make the time, because no one else will and no one’s gonna push you to start.”

How They Built Their Business: 4 Lessons to Take Away

Now comes the real down and dirty part where we pick apart Rodney and Kory’s business strategy. We drill down on some of their best tactics, discuss their shift in strategy, and break apart the most important lessons they’ve learned along the way. 

In this section, we’ll be covering:

Using Instagram to test product niches

Their low-ticket to high-ticket product strategy

Lessons they learned about pricing strategies

Figuring out Facebook advertising

Let’s get into it.

Use Instagram to Test Product Niches

Before they’d even started their store, Rodney and Kory were thinking about the smartest, most cost-effective way to go about taking that first step. 

So many dropshippers find themselves in the same situation. If they’re playing with a small budget, they look for ways to drive traffic for free, or stretch their budget further.

They might spend time on Reddit or Facebook groups, dropping in links to their store to drive traffic. They might opt to use influencer marketing before jumping into ads. They might try testing products using just $10 a day on Facebook ads. Some of these low cost tactics work well, but some of them can be difficult to pull off. 

So if you don’t have much cash to spare and are looking for a way to get things off the ground, follow Rodney and Kory’s example.

Test your product niches using Instagram. 

“We did our research and knew the horror stories of testing advertising on Facebook and how much money can be lost in the process. So we created several Instagram profiles in different niches to test audience engagement,” Kory says. 

They started off with Instagram accounts built around basketball, jewelry, tech gadgets, holiday accessories, fake house plants, and fantasy gaming. As they grew the accounts with organic content, they paid close attention to which audiences responded most strongly. 

Rodney explains their strategy: “Essentially, we wanted people to stay on our Instagram page as long as possible. We wanted them to go to our Instagram page and just continually scroll. So we tried to build a community around it.”

Even once it became clear that their fantasy gaming account was surging ahead, they didn’t jump immediately into paid advertising. They used their Instagram audience to test different products, to see which ones people were most excited about. From that, they were able to determine which products were worth putting money behind. 

Their paid advertising chops have increased significantly since the beginning, but they still rely on organic Instagram content to drive free traffic to their store.

“A lot of our sales come through Facebook ads, but the organic Instagram content is almost like the engine in the background, just continually churning,” says Rodney.  

The Low-Ticket to High-Ticket Strategy

When they started out, Rodney and Kory stocked their store with low-cost items. They figured, the cheaper a product is, the faster it would sell. 

And for the most part, they were right. 

They were able to generate thousands of orders of low-cost items over the holiday season, but that came with a price. They were swamped with the extra work that was required to fulfill and manage customer service requests for that many orders. 

After Chinese New Year sent everything crumbling down, they redefined their approach and switched to higher-ticket items. It was through this that they were able to reduce their workload, and increase their margins. 

It might have happened by accident, but turns out this approach is a pretty good strategy. 

By focusing on low-ticket items at the beginning, they were able to draw in a huge amount of visitors to their site. Some of those visitors were just browsing, others added to cart, and a lot of them made a purchase. 

In the background, as visitors came streaming into their store in search of low-cost items, the Facebook pixel was working away, gathering data and refining its classification of the ideal buyer for their store. The more data it gathered, the smarter it got at knowing who to target with advertisements. 

So by the time they were ready to switch their store to focusing on higher-ticket items, they had already refined their targeting to attract the perfect customer. They were also able to grow their email list to over 40,000 subscribers, allowing them to tap into another free marketing channel. 

The Psychology of Pricing

As a customer, when it comes to understanding price – from knowing if you’re about to snag a deal or are getting ripped off – there’s a lot going on in your head that you probably don’t realize.

As a marketer, it’s your job to try to understand what’s going on inside your customers’ heads. 

Would a customer be more tempted by a $10 product with free shipping, or a $8 product with $2 shipping? 

When Rodney and Kory started out, they wanted to make the price of the product seem as attractive as possible, so they hid their costs in the shipping price. But they ran into a problem. 

“We realized if they’re ordering more, we were actually making less,” says Rodney.

Imagine this. You’re selling a product for $5, plus $5 for shipping. The product costs you $4 to buy from the supplier, and you pay your supplier $2 to ship the product to your customers.

So if you sell one product, you’ll make $10 revenue, and $6 of that goes to your supplier. 

You’ve made $4 profit. 

But what if someone wants to buy 10 of them? Now, you’re getting $50 for the product, and $5 for the shipping, so $55 in revenue. 

This time, the product costs you $40 and $2 for shipping again. For ten times the amount of product, you’ve only made $13 in profit.

Ouch. 

Since then, they’ve switched strategies. They now offer free shipping over $50 (more on that below) and make sure the cost of the product is covered by the product price, plus a healthy margin.

But Rodney and Kory don’t have a blanket rule for pricing their products. They’ve learned through trial and error that each product needs to be thought about individually. 

“We sell a bunch of items in our store, probably close to a hundred by now. But each one has its own pricing strategy that works for it,” says Rodney. 

Certain products can be sold for a higher price with better margins, which gives them the flexibility to offer them with discounts. They could add the products to their spin-a-wheel app with a deep discount, or offer them at a cheaper price as part of a bundle. 

  “People love to think that they’re getting a deal,” says Rodney. 

The pair also realized the psychological significance of setting a threshold for free shipping. They implemented a “free shipping over $50” rule in an attempt to increase their average order value. 

They created bundled items of related products and small add-ons to upsell people. Like the chewing gum that sits next to the register in the supermarket, shoppers found it easy to toss a few smaller items into their cart so they could claim the free shipping offer. 

“We saw a huge increase in our average order value, which was massive. I think our average order value before that was $12-14, and now it’s about $35-40,” says Rodney. 

With higher average orders, they were able to pour the profits back into advertising to quickly grow the business. 

“The margins you make on an order like that – you don’t have to hold your breath until you make your next sale,” says Kory.

Facebook Ads: You’ve Got to Go Your Own Way

Rodney and Kory were both complete beginners when they first stepped into the world of online advertising, and as Kory puts it, “We got our asses kicked with Facebook.”

“We had zero clue how to do anything with ads when we first started,” says Rodney. “On Instagram we were just using the promote button, which we realized is not good, you shouldn’t be doing that. We were just pumping money into that with no real targeting.”

At the beginning, things looked like they were working. They were making sales, and money was appearing in their bank account. But they weren’t paying attention to the finer details. 

“We were just pumping more money into it thinking it’s working,” says Kory. “Then we realized that we needed to set up set rules to kill off certain ads that aren’t performing well.”

They started to look closely at their return on ad spend (ROAS), which tells you how much you’re getting back for the amount of money you’re putting in. “We didn’t even know what ROAS was for the longest time,” says Kory, laughing. 

Along with this, they also worked to refine their design and copywriting skills, so they could start creating ads that looked like the type of ad they might be tempted to click on themselves. 

“We started to become better with Photoshop, and slowly tailored it to get it to the quality that we wanted. We kind of became obsessed with it,” says Kory. “We started to get really good at learning what the algorithm wants to see in the ads, so we’d have a better chance of getting approved, or being shown.” 

But even as they began to master Facebook advertising, they often found that the strategies shared in video tutorials or articles didn’t always work for them. 

“There’s a lot of free information out there about Facebook ads,” says Rodney. “It’s a great start, but unless you’re selling or mimicking exactly what that person in the video or the blog is talking about, it’s only relevant to your store to a certain extent. That was one of the issues we found.”

“We figured, we need to learn the base idea of how it works. We’ll just get a general understanding of how the strategy works, then we’ll need to tailor it to our store,” says Kory. 

And in the end, they’ve found that most of their success comes down to good old fashioned trial and error. 

“We’re still always testing new ideas,” says Kory. “Whenever we find a new product, we’re thinking about something we’ve learned from the past in terms of branding it or putting it out there. What do we think is going to work the best for this product? And then if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, we try something else.”

Want to Learn More?

How to Start a Dropshipping Business in 2019

20+ Trending Products to Sell in 2019

The Ultimate Shopify Dropshipping Guide

The One Product Store: This Entrepreneur’s Simple Formula for Success

The post Here’s to the Crazy Ones: How These Two Friends Built a Business No One Expected appeared first on Oberlo.

https://ift.tt/31SHSfH November 18, 2019 at 09:48PM https://ift.tt/31VJ4PD

[peanutdracolich]

Peanut Dracolich Watches Horror: Saw

I had never seen Saw. What I had heard led me to believe it led to a period of gruesome torture porn as horror films and was itself a film about gruesome torture and ‘oh look bloodshed the horror’. It was not.

This was in fact a pleasant surprise. It did not rely upon gruesome showings of severed limbs and cut open stomachs, but understood that hey the implication is more horrific. It was instead Psychological Horror of the locked in a room murder gamey type. I enjoy this horror in manga and stories. So this was a pleasant surprise.

It was also a badly done example of this type of horror. The villain relied too far on luck and people acting extremely stupid and in some cases extremely uncharacteristically stupid. The film was sloppy with details, that in the sort of puzzle it was presenting you would and should be looking at. While some of these were inconsequential (ok in the long run it didn’t matter that the dude instantly dried off) it was jarring from the mystery and the horror and the film asked me to look for it. It lacked the fun that made Child’s Play enjoyable despite the bad (and I’d say Child’s Play wasn’t worth the time) leaving it unsatisfactory.

Ultimately I expected a film at about The Omen’s quality. Nothing that I’d be wondrously impressed by, nor anything that would make me groan. Instead I found it profoundly disappointing even by those standards and would put it closer to Uzumaki; though it did do many things better than Uzumaki it invited the critical/analytical brain and it should not have done that. Unlike The Omen, Alien: Covenant, and Prince of Darkness I feel no need or desire to ever watch this film again.

Still the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and my screaming loathing of Adam as an annoying dolt... I mean my scene by scene are below the cut.

The Good:

The Bear Trap story: It’s not surprising that they picked this for the 10 year anniversary poster. This story was in fact chilling and horrific (if not scary but horror and scary are not always the same). It was the best part of the film.

The creepy doll: The puppet is creepier than Chucky. it just didn’t really get to do much in the film to capitalize on it.

Cary Elwes. I like him. And his character was actually likeable despite his flaws. You root for him which is necessary in this sort of film.

 The Bad:

The Music. It slips from mediocre horror movie track to feeling like it's a laughtrack telling me when to be scared, attempting to manipulate my emotions with all the skill of an auditory jump scare. Yes suddenly loud/creepy tone as they reveal the object. I'm so scared.

Adam. You need to like him. You need to be torn between Cary Elwes's character killing him or not, you need to want him to survive. He annoyed me throughout the film until the last 5 minutes. The only reason to want him to win is because you want the monster to lose more.

The resolution: While the very last 3 minutes are good, the events that lead to the resolution are a cluster of stupidity that just leaves a bad taste in the mouth (especially as it was coming from Cary Elwes who had been smart before that).

The start: It starts off on the wrong foot with Adam being annoying and stupid. This means it makes a bad first impression it has to fight against, and while the Bear Trap scene does that... well it just means it had an uphill battle to reach the bear trap scene and then unfortunately goes back to Adam.

 The Ugly:

The 'frantic mode' accelerated footage. At first I thought it was supposed to be time skip, but no apparently it's just supposed to be some stylistic 'things are happening frantically' and it doesn't work well. Show them being frantic, that'd have worked better.

The details. Details are important in this type of plot, and the movie ignores things like 'he has another tool' or 'he should be soaking wet' and it detracts heavily from it; sometimes as just 'nitpicks' that would normally be shrugged off if it was not a movie that demanded that sort of attention, and sometimes as ‘your plot hinges on stupidity because you didn’t show this as failing’ which just leaves a bad taste at the best of times.

And now my unsatisfied play by play

Saw (Film)

 Nice start. Immediately gets into the creepy with waking up drowning in a bath. Character loses points for 'I'm probably already dead'. You've got a chain on your foot, and you woke up in a life or death situation, you shouldn't be jumping to that yet. Actually I just don't like the dialogue thus far.

 Music does its job to try and trick me into thinking a dead body is scary. Those burns on the face of the man with the gun are... supposed to be muzzle burns? Every line from main character makes me like him less. And I want to know how he got here drowning without the doctor noticing something. I mean the water wasn't rising, it was over his face. He should have been drowning well earlier if he was put in first.

 And you question the doctor on why he knows that 'if your kidneys were stolen it'd hurt like hell'. Adam you annoy me. Every line from your mouth has annoyed me. You are an idiot and it's only 6 minutes into the film.

 Still Adam and the doctor Lawrence are trapped in a shit hole room together, with tapes in their pockets, and padlocked and chained to a pair of pipes. The tapes so to play them, though, and the dead body in the center of the room has a cassette player so.

 Adam is stupid some more... also surprisingly dry. Like his clothes aren't wet at all. Does this film not understand how water works? I don't think this film understands that water is wet.

 Tape is ok. Gravely voice is so so effect for horror, music accents it well. Still it's basic serial killer threat of you might die in here. Which yes you woke up chained up in a room that's to be expected. The Doctor's tape is more fun. He has to kill Adam! Adam knows this. Doctor also seems to have a better idea what the puzzle is going on than Adam, but I feel that Adam never knows what the puzzle is going on. Ok, it finally does something scarier than 'locked in room' (scary irl but the stakes are low in that the monster has already won, the danger can only decrease); the fact that his wife and daughter (I'm guessing) are threatened adds danger once more, something more than just the madman has already won.

 Adam is surprisingly cooperative with the man who just got told to kill him. And there's a bad bit of humor/gross out with Adam reaching into the bowl of the toilet instead of checking under the lid first and having to deal with disgusting poop water. They find hacksaws, but Adam breaks his and the iron chain is just too thick and hard for the rusty old piece of junk. Lawrence realizes that they're supposed to cut their own feet off.

 We get a campfire story about a serial killer from Lawrence. Thus far film's best thing is average music. Still murder games/torture is creepy. Um Lawrence, technically speaking putting someone in a situation that will kill them if they do nothing or if they try and escape is murder. There is no technically not a murderer here. Don't say stupid stuff, I want to like one of you.

 Still we learn some stuff from the murder game stories. Jigsaw, the killer, likes to watch. Also Dr. Gordon had a patient that looks like the dead dude on the floor, and an underling who was Ben in Lost. I don't trust Ben. Ben just has a villain face. Oh and Jigsaw left Lawrence's penlight at the scene of one of the crimes. Fun. Apparently his alibi was that he was having an affair. I currently suspect Ben.

 I have mostly not commented on the 'campfire stories' but they're not actually bad. The reverse beartrap is actually creepy. The puppet works. And if the film can keep this quality (instead of the first 10 minutes) it'll be pretty good. the fast movement thrashes of the victim and attempt at frantic is more headache inducing than scary, though, and I am unsure if I'm supposed to think it's a long time (which the fast forwarded motion implies) or just 'panic mode' which makes more sense with the time. The sounds and movements of the man as she cuts him open to get the key is effective. The rummaging in his stomach less so. And then we get frantic mode again as she takes off the helmet with the key.

 The puppet appears and is creepy. Far creepier than Chucky was. But I've not been scared. The only story with tension was the woman's thus far, and now that it's gone I feel unsatisfied as I didn't get the fear hit.

 Adam is a dumbass. But picking up a piece of broken glass realizes it's a two way mirror and then starts throwing shit at the mirror. In all the stories the rooms were very carefully prepared so that there weren't just random tools, in this one there's a good number in Adam's reach and he's just chucking shit at a camera where it won't hit. Lawrence believes that they have to play the game... and Adam is a total dumb ass again. He needs to keep his mouth shut. I enjoy the film much more when he does.

 We are now 1/3rd through the film. I don't feel primed for horror. I don't feel any desire to stop typing. The movie has been 'better' than Child's Play thus far, but simultaneously it's been less fun because Child's Play at least made me laugh at its serious attempts, and this makes me... want to read Japanese murder porn manga because they get a better hit.

 Musical cue to be scared when Adam reveals the photo of Lawrence's wife and daughter tied and gagged is oo overt, to forced. And... Did Adam take the picture with the clue, or did Lawrence just not react at all to it? We get some immediate horror (as opposed to vague dread) when he comes for Lawrence's wife and daughter in flashback that is now no longer someone's specific memory but just prior events (acceptable technique just on my mind). Unlike with Child's Play I feel this film has an outside chance of actually killing the small child. I hope they don't but... was that Ben's face. I'm pretty sure that was Ben's face. So either Ben did it or he's an accomplice which... not surprising.

 And the detective apparently is 1) Spying on the doctor's home while the abduction takes place, and 2) blaming himself for letting the doctor go while watching the criminal abduct his wife. Detective seems crazy. We also learn this movie was brought to us by Krispy Kreme. Krispy Kreme donuts the best for cops who are being presented as irrationally hating a doctor enough to watch someone abduct his wife. To be fair he might just be illegaly spying on the doctor and thinks it's an affair, but his words implied the other and either it's... This film does not want me to think about things. Also sound cues for horror have gone from 'mediocre' to 'it feels like a laugh track that is telling me be scared now'.

 We get that the villain is sick, implied to be terminally ill, and he cuts Tapp, and this is implied to be a flashback to after Gordon gave his alibi but before they... shot Jigsaw. So it's a fake or he's playing dead. Ok lures the young cop into a death trap, and the old cop can't follow because throat is slashed. And his hand that is 'keeping him from bleeding to death' stretches out...

 Still ok Cop is now completely obsessed with catching the man who killed his partner, and talking to his dead partner. This is the creepiest the movie has felt. And Adam is in fact hiding the clue like a dumb ass. Still he half tells him the clue, but not 'oh yeah there's a picture of your tied up family'. Gordon I hope you kill Adam. If only one of you is going to live, I would prefer Gordon. I mean either he should give him the picture, or not give him the clue. If he's trying to make sure Gordon doesn't have the information to kill him not giving him the clue is a good move. It'll lead to them both being left to rot if Jigsaw is honest but... If he's not then give the man his picture, you already (before seeing the picture) made certain he believed it was true and tried to call him cold hearted for not panicking more. Also lying makes you suspicious. Adam lies badly and I agree with Gordon that he's dealing with a juvenile. Adam finally gives the picture clue, after lying about it. And Gordon asks the sensible 'why didn't you show me it before'. We're supposed to think that Adam was just being nice by hiding the pain. He's a douche ass for it, though. Though now Gordon is really thinking about killing him, partially because of the picture and partially because Adam has been a dumb ass.

 Gordon comes up with a plan, in the dark, whispered so that Jigsaw and we don't hear it, we hear enough to get the idea that there is a plan, and it's pretty obvious that it's fake poisoning a cigarette and giving it to the smoker Adam to kill him. This is not a good plan given that they don't know how the poison works, and that Adam is a lousy liar with the most unconvincing death scene. Jigsaw's response is to electrocute Adam. Which apparently makes him remember what happened the night before... Progress?

 An hour in and I have decided that for murder/torture/deathtrap porn I'm just going to stick to Japanese stuff. This reminds me I need to watch Battle Royale.

 Still the scene in his memory is more traditional horror; the killer is in the house.

 Alright his daughter is calling Gordon on a phone that was provided with the last set of stuff. We are... Not scared. Ali tells him not to believe Adam's lies, that Adam knows him, and we saw it in the flashback so it can be believed. Gordon immediately shares the clue. Gordon demands the truth. Adam seems to be a private eye that's been spying on Gordon with pretty obvious flash photography and knows that Gordon was having an affair. Which apparently he broke off last night because she paged him while he was at home and that made him have qualms of conscience... I still like him more than Adam. I'm guessing someone died because Gordon was sleeping around and Jigsaw wants revenge, but idk.

 Adam was hired by Bob for $200 a night. Gordon figures that he's the culprit, and Adam can't remember shit about what he looks like, but finally says 'tall black guy with a scar around his throat', i.e. the detective. We've seen enough shots of a white guy watching them that I don't believe that he's the culprit. Though Ben could be the accomplice to him... I don't believe it quite.

 Ben is named Zep. Zep the Orderly who has been watching them on the camera. And time runs out. With, guestimating 30 minutes or less (maybe only 15 minutes) we finally enter the final act. The music increases the tempo to say danger time is go, and Ben begins to talk to Gordon's wife forcing her to tell him that he failed. Except the wife has slipped her bindings and takes the gun from FailBen. She doesn't shoot him. Shoot him. Shoot him before everything goes wrong. They both break down crying. There's some actual tension, and then FailBen attempts to take back the gun. There's a few shots, and the corrupt ex-cop who has been watching it all finally makes his move.

 And I must simply wonder what is it with horror movies and stabbing people with scissors. Do they really go into the flesh so well? Like seriously several inches? Either way corrupt cop hears a gunshot so comes in to try and play the hero and save Gordon's wife and daughter and apprehend FailBen. We've got the psycho killer is in the house horror, the music is working to increase adrenaline, and the scene is ok. He also electrocutes Gordon presumably to death. We see some 'frantic mode' scenes with FailBen and the cop and then Gordon wakes up.

 Gordon dropped the phone and it's out of reach. He tries to grab it with a box, ignoring that the hacksaw is longer and in reach and would reach it. This ruins the tension a bit, and makes his panic stupid. He ties off his foot, with his shirt (that could also reach the phone) and starts cutting off his foot. And this is supposed to be horror with all this blood and... It mostly makes me feel slightly more nauseous (I have a stomach thing and have felt like puking off and on for the last 30 hours) but mostly that the film is dumb.

 Cop shoots himself in another moment of dumb. The film is dumb. Gordon shoots Adam now that he knows there is no reason to do it. The film is stupid. The film is dumb. I still might have enjoyed it more than Uzumaki, but I think I hated it more too? It leaves you feeling slightly unclean (a good thing in horror), but it's fucking dumb. The plot runs on idiot ball at the end, and before that it's just not good.

 And then there's a good moment. Adam was faking dead and begins to brutally beat Ben with a toilet lid. It's not scary, though, it's senseless brutality. He could have shot him, but the film wanted to show 'scary' brutal murder. And 'chillingly' we learn that FailBen was not the culprit, but another victim. Which is a good ending, music gets the heartbeat up, but it all feels hollow.

 The dead man from the floor rises and kills Adam. Your classic final rise of the monster to show that even in defeat Jason/Freddy has won. "The key to that chain is in the bathtub" Which means it got flushed down the drain. It's a nice effect, but while it feels a lot better as a film, similar to the omen with its good end giving the illusion for a short time of being better, the film is overall dumb. The last 3 minutes do not make up for almost 100 minutes of dumb.

 I came in with low expectations. The film surprised me. It mostly avoided what I was led to expect, and had some legitimately good moments of psychological murder room horror (the woman with the reverse bear trap). It was still, however, worse than I had been led to expect.

 The movie lacks the camp charm of Prince of Darkness, or even Uzumaki. It plays itself as a psychological horror, a genre that is supposed to engage the mind and get you thinking, but relies on a massive idiot ball, and thus if you're thinking it ruins the film. The cop is supposed to be 'secretly a hero' all along, but could have caught the killer by simply making a move when he first realized what was going on instead of watching it like he was getting off on Gordon's family being held hostage and chose to wait until a person who he seems to have evidence is innocent's family is apparently shot before acting because... umm??? Gordon could have reached the phone with the hacksaw, either it was a final chance or too late, and his logical characterization suddenly exploded. Yes he has an IC reason for suddenly going from cold and logical to panicking, but he obviously wants to answer the phone so he's not at that type of panic (should have shown the phone further away). The little bits of stupid added up throughout the film and the ending does not save it by having a sudden creepy reveal; though it does finally answer the itching 'what about the third dude, guys you're obviously missing something' aspect. Still if psychological murder trap horror is your thing, there's a good number of manga about it; it has teenagers which apparently makes it better! Also decent writing.

 I came in expecting something mediocre, on the side of good, something near the level of the Omen. I was disappointed. It demands intellectual involvement (psychological and mystery elements) and cannot stand up to it, leaving a film that is neither fun or fulfilling, and not even a film that is scary.

 The Good:

The Beartrap story.

The creepy doll.

Cary Elwes. I like him. And his character was actually likeable despite his flaws. You root for him which is necessary in this sort of film.

 The Bad:

The Music. It slips from mediocre horror movie track to feeling like it's a laughtrack telling me when to be scared, attempting to manipulate my emotions with all the skill of an auditory jump scare. Yes suddenly loud/creepy tone as they reveal the object. I'm so scared.

Adam. You need to like him. You need to be torn between Cary Elwes's character killing him or not, you need to want him to survive. He annoyed me throughout the film until the last 5 minutes. The only reason to want him to win is because you want th e monster to lose more.

The resolution: While the very last 3 minutes are good, the events that lead to the resolution are a cluster of stupidity that just leaves a bad taste in the mouth (especially as it was coming from Cary Elwes who had been smart before that).

 The Ugly:

The 'frantic mode' accelerated phootage. At first I thought it was supposed to be time skip, but no apparently it's just supposed to be some stylistic 'things are happening frantically' and it doesn't work well. Show them being frantic, that'd have worked better.

The details. Details are important in this type of plot, and the movie ignores things like 'he has another tool' or 'he should be soaking wet' and it detracts heavily from it; sometimes as just 'nitpicks' that would normally be

[ecotone99]

[RF]The uphill battle of a below average male

The below average male, 160 CM tall, not handsome but also not ugly, his body stays in a state that is neither skinny nor fat. Some call him chubby and some call him cute but he's definitely not girls would consider irresistible thus he was able to make friends in school but he was rejected by 3 of his crushes. "You're okay as a friend but, your genes should not survive another generation" - was what they implied before leaving him in the dust.

School was no easy task. With below average intellect and work ethic his grades were sub par which landed him in a normal academic. A tier below that of his brother who was a smart person and was good at sports. He thought, " Okay, maybe if I worked a little harder I could make it in life." This wasn't the first time he made a statement that was not only uneducated but later turned out to be factually wrong

He worked a few jobs and volunteered a bit but he never made many friends with his below average social skills. He had improved his work ethic but his pay never got better and he wasn't very wise in spending the money. He used most of it on cigarettes and alcohol to drown out his sorrows to no avail.

The he went to the military for two years which was mandatory in the country he called "home" truly. "Nothing like a two year jail term for being born male aye?".He sighed. He learned nothing much in the two years. During his free time he often looked at Instagram where his female peers are popping out babies and his male foreigner friend is starting a business with the help of his family in America. He then felt a little jealous but thought again that he will be there one day. Another factually wrong statement.

As he got out of the army at twenty-two years of age he found that his degree was useless and he was forced to work at restaurants. Money came in, it wasn't much but he was earning something. He never gave a thought to it until he was 30.

The day after his 30th birthday, he woke up and scanned through his memory. "Oh right now it must be a good time to start a family." He raised optimistically out of his bed at his parent's apartment. His spending habits hadn't changed since he was eighteen. A pack of cigarettes here and a bottle of Heineken there and BAM he had used fifty percent of all the money he worked for.

He downloaded tinder and posted a few bathroom pictures and swiped for months. There were a few takers but they were more keen on asking for money than dates and many of them texted very similarly to his male colleagues. He was ghosted a few times then cat fished by a guy. He thought" what the hell, other people have it so easy"

So he went out to get a prostitute and had sex for the first time in his thirty-two years of god gifted life. He was drunk that day and didn't want to take the train home so he got a taxi. The driver was old. "Where ? " the driver demanded which reminded him of his sergeant . He was so drunk he couldn't remember so he gave the driver his ID. He fell asleep in the backseat.

All was not good and well and there are no happy endings in this story. The taxi crashed into a pole at no fault of the driver as he was unscathed. A leak in the hydraulics of the brakes. The police concluded. As he wasn't strapped in with a seat belt the man died due to slamming his head against the front seat causing a brain hemorrhage and his face was left unrecognizable.

to be continued maybe I didn't bother giving him a name as I want him to be someone nobody cares about not even the reader . this is entirely made up and I'm not this guy lol this phrase is from Jordan Peterson "You're okay as a friend but, your genes should not survive another generation" I recommend you know who he is but stay away from the politics. For context, this takes place in Singapore, my home country

submitted by /u/Johnathan_wickerino [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/3gK37aC

[survival0001-blog]

Survival Gear Review: Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife - Survival Cache

New Post has been published on https://outdoorsurvivalqia.com/trending/survival-gear-review-schrade-schf9-survival-knife-survival-cache/

Survival Gear Review: Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife - Survival Cache

Like many who have their head on a survival swivel, you may have noticed a monster blade by the Schrade Knife Company that seemed too good to be true. Its huge cross section, full tang, combination serrated/reverse curve blade, and black tactical skin make it seem a no-brainer for the scant $30-$40 it sells for in sporting goods stores and gas stations nationwide. Well, unfortunately it is too good to be true, but its not without a purpose. As a Get-Home blade, the Schrade excels, but for a Bug Out knife, forget it. Let me explain.

By Doc Montana, contributing author to SHTFblog and Survival Cache

Is Bigger Better?

The Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife is an impressive slab of sharpened 1095 carbon steel that sure looks like a great knife. It’s specs in a nutshell are a foot and a pound. But looks can be deceiving. First of all, the steel is marginal at best, and wildly substandard if you have any experience and expectations of finer irons. In fact, this particular version of 1095 is troublesome steel when it comes to edge sharpness, edge retention, sharpening, corrosion resistance, and just about everything else but price.

However, for short-term use, the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife has advantages. For one, the cost. Second, you can beat the hell of it without concern of losing your investment. Third, the sheer mass of the of the knife will demand fear and respect from every snowflake for miles around. And that’s about it. Poking holes in the Taiwan-made Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife facade is easy. But picking your starting point is hard. There is the blade shape, the steel, the edge grind, the handle, the tang, the sheath, and the coating, just to name a few launch points.

The blade shape is a drop point with reverse curve. Unfortunately a drop point of this size is somewhat contradictory. The drop point was designed to help keep the tip of a blade from catching on things or the unwanted tearing of flesh and entrails during intricate gutting tasks. But on a blade big, those finer movements are tough in spite of the blade shape. And worse, the drop point is not the best fighting blade due to its subdued point, yet a cutter as large as the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife should have both offensive and defensive potential.

The reverse curve of the blade is shaped to keep the work-piece in place during cutting. Say for instance you are slicing something back and forth. As you press the blade into the work-piece there is a chance the knife could slip forward off the task. The reverse curve creates an uphill battle causing a more likely re-centering of the work-piece rather than sliding off it. While the reverse curve is common on knives from pocket to machete, it does limit the jobs that a survival knife should excel at. But chopping brush and hacking through branches is truly easier with a reverse curve. It’s just that reverse curve blade chopping chores are not front and center in most survival situations.

Iron Maidens

The steel of the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife is a room-temperature working steel that has neither the desirable properties of a survival knife or a hatchet. The steel does not hold an edge well regardless of the quality of its temper, it does not sharpen easily, and it is prone to chipping and rollover compared to 21st century knife steels. Even worse, the rust-prone nature of a carbon steel is often armored against corrosion by a blade coating. Unfortunately the black paint on the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife blade flakes off easily, and scratches even easier. Experience with high quality blade coatings has proven that durability is possible. But that is not the case here. But for $30 what should we expect?

To make opinions about a knife, or anything for that matter, relevant, there should be comparable(s) in the mix. Any single knife cannot be compared to itself, only other blades. So for this review, my comparable(s) were the Ka-Bar BK-2 (at twice the price of the Schrade), the Boker Orca 2 (at six times the price) and the Fallkniven F2 Wilderness Knife (at ten times the price).

The Ka-Bar offers a similar blade steel and thickness. The Boker Orca 2 offers a similar blade shape and handle profile. And the Fallkniven F2 offers a similar overall length and weight. Personally, I would take any of the above over the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife, but in the short-term Get Home, there is little chance that unless traveling long distance across varied terrain, the major difference between the blades will rear its ugly head.

Grip Woes

The handle of the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife looks impressive from an arm’s reach, but reality tells a different story. The rubber grips do grip, but will have a shelf life of about one hard Get Home. Technically, the grips are a rubber-like elastomer called Kraton. It is a polymer with many desirable properties for knife grips, but the execution of them is severely is knife dependent. Just like the blade. The grips, or scales really, are held onto the knife tang, but not held in place. Even when the four torx-screws are tightened tightly, the grips still slide around. And given that they don’t match the contour of the steel tang, gaps ebb and flow as you use the knife.

The combination of screw-mounted rubber grips is rare. Usually the entire handle is contained into a Kraton grip shell molded over the tang, or the grip scales are a more firm material like Micarta or G10, or glass reinforced polymer (aka Plastic). You can actually feel the rubber material of the grips move when twisting and turning the blade. Not so much with gloves on, but certainly enough to know it won’t last under sustained use. And given the blade steel and shape along with the grip, the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife may have a place in the immediate, but certainly not in the long term.

But there is one more issue, one of concept. The Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife appears to be a significant chopper and wood processor. Chewing through wood is a serious issue with SHTF and survival blades. In fact anything that can bash and baton through pine is a friend when things go dark. Although the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife does chop, it does so more out of dumb luck than talent. In fact it is a fairly poor chopper compared to other choppers of this size partially due to the blade grind, and also due to the fact that the non-skeletonized metal of the tang places a proportional amount of weight behind your index finger as it does in front of it. So a knife of this weight is much less productive than a equally massive hatchet. The Fallkniven F2 is dynamite at chopping, while the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife is sluggish and subdued. The convex grind on the Fallkniven F2 throws wood far as its blade makes quick work of the wood. Sadly, the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife instead attempts to dive deep into the wood with its flat grind throwing no wood and doing surprisingly little damage given the muscle behind the swing. Worse, the heavy spine tends to spin the blade when angle struck rather than pry out wood chips and throw them across the forest floor.

For a knife to remain a knife and not just a chopper, the blade must have a skill set beyond the crude splitting of firewood. Alas, the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife is an amateur when it comes to more intricate survival tasks. Which leads to the question of if it should be part of a bug out kit at all. My answer? No. There is so much more to survival than just chopping wood. And the knife is arguably the single most critical piece of hardware in your kit. Just because the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife chops wood does not put it anywhere near a good quality hatchet. And the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife’s chopping ability does not circumvent its use as a knife, and thus it fails spectacularly as a performance survival knife. Instead, you would be far better off with a decent hatchet and a quality fixed blade knife smaller than the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife.

Dysfunctional Family

The Schrade line of survival/outdoor fixed blade knives looks like a tree of life for beetles. There are dozens of them with minor differences and odd mixes of features. It’s almost as if the Schrade knife designers are throwing all sorts of shapes and grinds at the consumer wall to see what sticks. Frankly, I would like to see far fewer options, but better ones. Having such a diverse product line complicates the refinement process which is essential to develop a performance blade regardless of cost. Looking at the vast landscape of Schrade survival blade choices all but prohibits the necessary attention given to any one design allowing it to evolve into greatness. Instead, sales numbers will likely drive its destiny with bean counters determining its fate. Sadly, a promising design will be killed off rather than enhanced and updated according to public wishes.

That said, the Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife can run double duty meaning that if your needs include wood work and wet work, prying, pounding, and penetrating, as well as non-demanding fine knife work, then this Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife is a solution. One area where a blade of this quality and size comes in handy is working one’s way home after something bad happens. Or working your way to your bug out location. But once there you will need to transition to a knife of higher quality or you just made a tough situation even tougher.

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Survival Gear Review: Schrade SCHF9 Survival Knife

[mikeyd1986]

MIKEY’S PERSONAL BLOG 120, September 2018

The challenge of writing about my feelings towards Father’s Day is to not make it sound like a depressing sob story but it most likely will come across that way. I’ve had a very distant relationship with my biological father for many years now. Even after briefly reconnecting with him about five years ago, it really hasn’t done much to strengthen or salvage the relationship. Making an effort with him just feels like a waste of time and energy.

He’s made several attempts at asking me for money and only really texts me whenever he wants something. It’s an emotional time, not just for me but also for my parents who both no longer have their Dads in their lives. It’s felt like a massive void in my life for many years that I’ve had to find masculine energy and strength from other sources. This includes my step-dad, former personal trainer and a current yoga teacher. But sadly these will never completely fill the void or my needs.

So what’s the best way of taking your mind off the fact that it’s Father’s Day today? Switching off all forms of social media. Going to the local community market at Cranbourne Public Hall and having a coffee with Mum at Michel's Patisserie (Cranbourne East, Victoria). Then going out to Village Cinemas Fountain Gate Gold Class to see the latest Mission: Impossible movie. I think that’s more than enough distractions really. I know a lot of people love and embrace Father’s Day but sadly I’m not one of them for obvious reasons.

On Monday night, I went to the Men of Doveton Program held at Doveton College Theatre and Gym. It’s about halfway through the program now and to be honest, I feel like I’ve only just broken through the iceberg. Whenever it comes to social support groups, I always seem to be the underdog, the one lagging behind the others, the one struggling to catch up. It’s probably due to my autistic traits and under-developed social skills plus the fact that I’ve always been shy, introverted and reserved. But I am determined to complete this program and not simply give up due to my low motivation, self confidence and self worth.

Motivation is still something of a barrier for me, especially on Mondays where I typically don’t do much with my day at all. I usually do some housework, reading, check emails, listen to music and lay in bed. And so the Men of Doveton program has in fact given me a reason to get myself out of the house for a couple of hours and that in itself is an achievement for me. It shows that I need all the help and support I can get from this group of guys. https://www.caseystadium.ymca.org.au/whats-on/upcoming-events/event/men-of-doveton-free-health-program-2/2018/07/30

Tonight we started our first week of playing soccer. My initial reaction to this...well at least it’s better than cricket. But that certainly doesn’t make it easier. Learning to dribble, headbutt and maintain control of the ball wasn’t a walk in the park but I gave it a crack. Similarly, my aim was pretty terrible when it came to kicking the ball into the goals but at least I tried.

Hesitation and uncertainty continue to cloud my judgement when it comes to playing team sports games like soccer but it felt good to least least try to get involved. I made a couple of good attempts at passing the ball to a fellow teammate and also did my best to defend. Again this is not something I’m naturally good at but it’s good to see the other guys being supportive and respectful to the ones giving it a go.

After the physical health session, we gathered ourselves into the kitchen area for our cooking class. We divided ourselves up into seven groups and each worked on a different recipe together. These included: berry smoothies, beans and mushroom on toast, spinach, sweet potato and lentil Dhal, Mediterranean bean salad, roasted chickpeas, protein balls and wholemeal banana pancakes.

It honestly got me out of my comfort zone big time being in that kitchen. I don't do a great deal of cooking at home myself, just occasionally do simple dishes like scrambled eggs, omelettes, salads, smoothies, stir fris etc. And it felt good to be able to contribute and get involved in the cooking process. With there being about 25-30 people in the kitchen, it got hectic very quickly.

Of course my autism and anxiety was going off like an alarm, getting myself easily distracted and being unsure of myself. To throw myself into situations where there is little structure and plenty of chaos, that requires a lot of strength. The solution is to perform tasks I know I’m actually good at like chopping up vegetables, heating up some rice and helping to clean up.

The other is to ask others what needs doing but it’s tough when there’s a lot going on stimulation wise. Still even with how busy the environment got, I still enjoyed myself and felt good about using some hands on kitchen skills again. It’s actually pretty therapeutic as it keeps your mind focused and active on that single activity. Plus I was cutting up and crushing chilies, ginger and garlic which are ingredients I don’t eat or use very often.

In terms of social connections, I feel like I’m slowly blending in with the others. Being one of the quietest men in the group, it’s very easy for me to get overlooked and not stand out. Whenever I meet new people, a wall goes up for my own self-protection due to my trust issues from the past and so it takes time for me to begin opening up to other people and gradually bring that wall down. But I could tell that people were there to support me and to make sure that I didn’t feel alone.

Just attending these weekly Men of Doveton sessions is half the battle for me as social awkwardness and fears of being rejected can rear their ugly heads. But everyone is pretty accepting and inclusive in this group hence why I keep coming each week.

On Tuesday morning, I attended the Adults Learners Week pop-up event at Hampton Park Library. Entering the library foyer, I could already feel my cheeks getting flushed with redness, mainly due to the big question: What the hell am I doing with my life? Thankfully there were plenty of free resources here from Hampton Park Community House, Hampton Park Uniting Church, Hallam Community Learning Centre Inc., Chisholm Institute and Casey Cardinia Libraries.

Mum and I both renewed our library membership cards, grabbed lots of programs and brochures and filled out a work/learning goals form. For 16 years, I’ve referred to myself as a Career Counsellor’s nightmare and nothing much has changed today. It would be easier to say what I’m not interested in. I wrote down: creative writing, painting, drawing, reviewing, barista training, hospitality, waiting and bar service, health and fitness, mental health, nutrition just to name a few things. https://www.cclc.vic.gov.au/

But I’m glad I went today as I’ve opened myself up to more potential social outlets and ways to connect with the local community through classes, workshops, activities, functions, events and training courses. Plus finding mental health support groups, social groups and building friendships. All of those things are very important to me. I’m actually highly considering attending a local church group to pick myself up and feel more connected with others. And I’m not even a Christian. https://www.adultlearnersweek.org/learning-in-casey/ 

On Tuesday night, I attended my RPM class at YMCA Casey RACE in Cranbourne East. I wasn’t exactly feeling energised or alert even after having a regular latte before my class started but I didn’t care. I was determined to jump on that bike and workout hard. It’s been a while since I last did a class with fitness instructor Caroline Dowswell Symmons aka Cas (who also teaches Body Balance and Body Pump) so it was good to see her again. https://www.caseyrace.ymca.org.au/gym/group-fitness 

We did a mixture of tracks tonight including Ke$ha - We R Who We R (Release 51), Cascada - San Fransisco (Release 54), Sash! featuring Stunt - Raindrops (Release 50) and Fatboy Slim versus Moguai - Ya Mama “Push The Tempo” (Release 56). Cas has a really entertaining way of accentuating the lyrics and trying to encourage us to increase the resistance a little more especially during the climbing uphill tracks. It certainly makes RPM classes a lot more enjoyable and fun. https://www.lesmills.com/workouts/fitness-classes/rpm/ 

On Wednesday, my mental health took a turn for the worse. I realised that I’d been carrying a lot of unresolved baggage from Father’s Day last weekend plus lack of sleep, confidence and self-esteem issues, work-related stress, frustration, moodiness, irritability, social isolation. All of it was coming to a head today. I really needed to be pro-active and do something about it.     

So I decided to see my GP Dr. Mah Mah Thet for her recommendation. After suggesting that I think I should change my antidepressant medication (I’ve been taking Zoloft/Sertraline for over 18 months now), she agreed and recommended finding a psychiatrist who specialises in mood disorders and sleep problems. The difficult task now is doing my homework, researching and finding a psych who suits my needs, narrowing the options down to one. 

On Thursday afternoon, I had my NDIS planning meeting/conversation held at Level 2, Suite 1, 64 Victor Crescent in Narre Warren. I spent this week deliberately distracting myself from thinking about this meeting as I was feeling pretty nervous and uncertain about it. I couldn’t have been more organised with a yellow display folder packed with notes, information brochures, letters, reports and evidence about my mental health condition and disability. With how daunting and overwhelming the NDIS system is, I just couldn’t wait to get this planning meeting over with. 

An NDIS representative named Sean ran the meeting today in one of the office spaces. After wasting 5-10 minutes trying to plug the mouse into his computer, we finally got going. Most of it was answering a range of online questionnaires about my family life, social and work environments, living arrangements, what I need help and support with, how my disability impacts on my life, my emotional health, how I want my plan to be managed, my goals and participant statement.     I found that the wording of some of the questions was very convoluted and unnecessarily complex that I had to go to Mum or Sean for a second opinion. It was like they were trying to trip me up if I answered the question incorrectly but Sean assured me that this wasn’t the case.

I did notice that Sean would often go off on a tangent and not be mindful enough about the time (we only had 1.5 hours allocated for this appointment). I also found that he’d sometimes try to answer questions for me and I wasn’t exactly comfortable about that.  But otherwise he was very easy to get along with. https://www.casey.vic.gov.au/community-services/ndis

Thankfully the rest of it was pretty easy as I already did my homework and pre-filled a lot of information ahead of time. Sean offered the suggestion of doing an aged care or disability services course but I’m not really sure about that right now and I’d rather see an actual careers counsellor about that. I’m sure he meant well by it. Now I just have to wait for the plan to get put together. https://www.ndis.gov.au/participants/firstplan

On Friday night, I went to a boxing small group training session at CinFull Fitness. Considering how low, depressed, overwhelmed, highly strung and stressed out I’ve been feeling this week, I figured that trying out some boxing would be a good way to release those negative emotions and make me feel more energized. It was just the four of us tonight, being joined by Grace, Chloe and Ashlee.

Considering I don’t do boxing classes regularly enough or had much experience, I was pretty rusty at it but the girls were very patient and encouraging with me. We took it in turns in wearing the gloves and the focus mitts, doing a few drills and basic combos. The hardest part for me was learning the co-ordination, mitt/glove positioning and timing of the jabs, hooks, crosses and uppercuts but I was slowly getting the hang of it. https://www.expertboxing.com/boxing-basics/how-to-box/the-beginners-guide-to-boxing

There was a lot of cardio exercise mixed in including walking lunges, plank holds, squats, star jumps, step jumps, jumping jacks, squat jumps and push-ups. The physical fatigue and profuse amounts of sweat was obviously present tonight but I felt like I was managing okay. If I don’t need to have the ambos called from Casey Hospital, you know that I’m not overdoing it and that’s important. I’m aware enough of my limits and if I need to stop and take a breather. I’m sure that Cinamon Guerin doesn’t want to see me keeling over.

“I was like a lead balloon when I couldn't even get up to turn the lights on, the dark was swallowing me. Lord knows you can't trust your head, when you're standing on the edge. I'm breaking down. Lord knows you can't trust your head, when you're hanging by a thread. I was breaking down.” SIA - Footprints (2016)

[onlinemarketinghelp]

Here’s to the Crazy Ones: How These Two Friends Built a Business No One Expected https://ift.tt/2Z2hAuy

“When we started doing $1,000 days, I’m sitting around with all these guys at work and I’m just thinking, ‘My life is about to change, and I can’t even tell anybody.’”

When Rodney Zachariuk and Kory Szostak started their ecommerce business, nobody knew. Even as the months ticked by and their sales continued to climb, they kept it to themselves. 

“We didn’t want to be looked down upon,” says Kory. “We just didn’t need the negativity associated around trying to break away from the norm, which is commonplace where we’re from.”

That feeling – the one that others around you won’t support your ideas or approve of you carving your own path – is not fiction. It’s reality. And entrepreneurs experience it all the time. 

From Apple to Warby Parker, the entrepreneurs behind some of the most daring businesses were often fighting to get others to believe in what they were doing.

When Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk first began pitching the idea of Airbnb to investors, they were laughed out of the room. “Everyone thought that they were completely crazy; no one thought this was a good idea,” says Leigh Gallagher, author of The Airbnb Story. 

Ecommerce entrepreneurs, and especially those who build their businesses with the dropshipping business model, face the same uphill battle. 

The people around them don’t even understand how their businesses work, let alone believe it’s possible to be successful doing it. 

But the ones who succeed, like Rodney and Kory, are the ones who forge ahead anyway. They’re the ones who take a chance on starting a business built on a model their parents have never heard of. They’re the ones who have the courage to stray off the traditional path that funnels you from school to college, then into a 9-5 job. They’re the ones that have the audacity to redefine their careers and their future. 

The story of Rodney and Kory’s climb to success is full of the types of situations usually reserved for television scripts. There’s a chance meeting in Central America that plants the seed, and a car accident that caused Rodney to question his future. There’s a meteoric rise to the top, followed by a catastrophic collapse. There’s the months spent hiding their business from family and friends, and the moment they knew that this was about to change their lives. 

Let’s start at the beginning. 

L-R: Rodney Zachariuk and Kory Szostak

  You Make Money Selling Mugs Online?

Looking back, Rodney and Kory might have ended up somewhere very different if it wasn’t for a chance encounter in the back of a cab in Costa Rica. 

It was mid-2017, and the pair had been traveling together for two weeks. Kory had left a few days earlier, and now with the trip wrapping up, Rodney was on his way back to the airport to board a plane back home to Vancouver. 

On his way to the airport, he agreed to share a cab with a stranger. As they drove, the two got chatting. 

“He started talking about what I now know is dropshipping, but I didn’t really know what it was at the time,” says Rodney. “He was saying he was selling mugs online, and I was kind of confused, I was like, ‘You just make money traveling… and you sell mugs online?’”

Sure, the concept was puzzling, but Rodney was intrigued. He began scribbling down notes in his phone. 

The idea was buzzing around in his head for a few days after getting home, then life went on and the notes he’d copied down were left on his phone untouched. 

You Guys Took My Credit Card Information?

A few months later when Kory came across an article mentioning dropshipping, he called up Rodney. Memories of the guy in Costa Rica came back, and Rodney agreed to try it out. 

They both quickly fell into an obsession with learning how to run a dropshipping business. They devoured hours of videos detailing store setup, product selection, and budgeting advice.

They were leveling up their skills, but they still weren’t sure if anything they’d learned about setting up a website would work in real life. So they decided to test it. 

Just before Christmas in 2017, their friends were planning a bar crawl. Being Christmas and all, the event demanded that everyone come dressed in a santa suit.

The pair spotted their opportunity. They whipped up a Christmas-themed Shopify store, and filled it with ugly Christmas sweaters and santa suits they sourced from dropshipping suppliers. 

Casually, they mentioned the site to their friends. 

“We told them we found a really cheap website that they could buy their suits from,” Kory says. “We just wanted to see if we could make it all work and make it seem like a legit website. Lo and behold, one of them bought one.” 

“In the end, we sold them so cheaply we didn’t make any money, we lost money,” Rodney adds, laughing. 

Months later, they revealed to their friend that it was their store he had bought his suit from. “It all kind of clicked for him, and he’s like, ‘Holy shit, you guys took my credit card information? I bought this Santa suit from you?!’”

Pranks aside, the success of the santa store proved something serious for both of them. This thing works. 

Getting Serious: The Testing Phase

In the months that followed, Rodney and Kory packed up and set off on a five-month trip around Asia. As they traveled, they kept meeting digital nomads – those location-independent people who can live anywhere, work anywhere. They were drawn to the idea that they could make their work fit around their travel plans, and not the other way around. 

They were excited to dip their toes into the world of online business, so they set up several Instagram accounts around potential business ideas. They had an account for basketball lovers, one promoting jewelry, one for fake house plants, another for tech gadgets, and one for holiday accessories. Their final account was dedicated to fantasy gaming. 

As they traveled, they continued to post new content to the accounts, and watched as they began to slowly grow in popularity. 

But before they knew it, their trip was over. They returned home to Vancouver, got full-time jobs, and found themselves settling back into their normal lives. Kory found a sales role in a tech company, and Rodney began working in construction while studying for his real estate license.

At night they’d work together on the Instagram accounts, taking notice of which niches seemed to attract the most attention and engagement. 

The fantasy gaming account started to pull ahead, gathering followers quickly. By September they were up to almost 4,000 followers. They noticed the sense of community that began to build on their account, where users would leave long streams of comments under their posts, chatting back and forth. 

Off the back of the Instagram success, in September they decided to take their next step forward. They began building out a Shopify store around the fantasy gaming niche, filling it with mugs, pins and apparel related to the fantasy gaming world. Then they began testing the reception to different products with their Instagram audience. Their followers quickly responded. 

A Close Call Makes Rodney Question His Future

October 30, 2018, is a day that Rodney remembers well. It had been raining that day, and he was working alongside three colleagues at a construction site. They heard a noise and turned quickly to see what was happening. Moments before, a speeding car came flying around the corner, colliding with a Corvette that was passing by. The road was wet, and the force of the impact sent the Corvette barrelling toward where Rodney and the three others were standing. 

Suddenly, with the sound of the metal car body crumpling around an immovable object, the Corvette came to a stop. The arm of a piece of heavy machinery had been resting on the road next to the workers. The Corvette collided with the arm, shielding the Rodney and the workers from the impact. 

“This was pretty traumatizing,” Rodney says. “It really made me realize that I needed to start doing something more fulfilling with my life.”

Kicking Things Off on Black Friday

While Rodney’s day job was serving up near-death experiences, their fledgling business was beginning to grow. They were making a few sales here and there, all from organic Instagram traffic. Then in mid-November they decided to step it up. 

It was just before Black Friday, and they knew that people would be in the mood to shop. If there ever was a time to test the validity of their business, it was now.

They knew they needed to stand out on Black Friday weekend, so they searched around for an idea. That’s when they came up with the mystery pack. 

The mystery pack contained a mix of some of their most popular low-ticket products, bundled together for a discounted price. 

And really, the idea couldn’t have been a better fit for their audience. Their customers lived for games, and the mystery pack was a little game in itself. Want to know what you’ll get? You’ll have to play the game (and buy the pack) to find out. 

As you might have already guessed, the mystery packs were a hit. 

“They loved it,” Kory says, grinning. 

The store made over $3,000 revenue that weekend, all without spending a cent on advertising. 

Audiences for a fantasy niche store are lovers of dragons, wolves and medieval magic. Fill your store with products featuring mythical creatures and black magic, and try creating a character for your brand that fits within that world. Talk in your audience’s language, and you’ll win their hearts. 

On Facebook, you could try targeting your audience around Game of Thrones, Final Fantasy or Lord of the Rings fans. 

Fantasy Niche Product Ideas

  Stepping Into the Unknown

By now, Rodney and Kory were pouring every spare moment they had into the business. Late into the night they’d be tweaking their website, sourcing new products, and honing their advertising skills. The weekend became precious, the only part of the week where they could dedicate two days of interrupted time into their business.  

And when Monday morning rolled around, Rodney would head back to his construction job, and Kory would head into the office, and spend the day making sales for someone else. 

Kory had been in his tech sales job for three months and was coming up to the end of his probation period. He would soon be offered a permanent position with benefits.

Despite what seemed like an obvious choice, Kory knew that it didn’t feel right to stay on. He’d never seen himself working a desk job, and this taste of it made it clear to him it wasn’t where he needed to be. 

Plus, even though it was early days, he sensed that the business had potential. If only he was able to dedicate more of his time to it, he felt like he could turn it into something big. And he couldn’t get that idea out of his head. 

So just as he was about to be offered a permanent role, Kory announced he was quitting. He waved goodbye to the stable paycheck, and stepped into the unknown.

To make matters more complicated, Kory had just moved out of his parents’ home and into his own apartment, with its own rent to pay.

“I was like, ‘This is great. I have no job now and I just moved in here,’” says Kory, laughing.

The new-apartment-with-no-job situation was something Kory sensed that his parents would not approve of, so he decided to keep it a secret. 

“I didn’t tell my parents [that I had quit] for their sake, as this would have gone against everything they ever taught me. I knew this would sound like the stupidest decision of my life,” he says. 

Both Rodney and Kory’s parents didn’t even know they had started a business together, so how could he begin to explain that he’d quit his job to pursue it? 

Keeping the lie alive was hard work. 

One Friday, Kory invited his parents and grandmother out for lunch, forgetting it was a day he’d normally be working. 

When they began to wonder how he was able to have enough time to meet them in the middle of the day on a workday, he quickly made up an excuse about being allowed to leave early. 

“But I had quit my job at that point, and I was lying to them the whole time at the table, trying to just not say anything.”

The Happy Holiday Season

With Kory now working full-time on the business, things really kicked off. The Christmas season was rapidly approaching, and they wanted to capture as much of the shopping spirit as possible.

They began running Facebook advertisements, which allowed them to reach a much wider audience outside of their Instagram following. 

The mystery packs continued to be a hit. As they pumped more money into ads, their revenue began to skyrocket.

“Christmas was insane,” says Kory. “We jumped from about $3,000 in November to $75,000 the next month.”

Rodney was still working full-time, but had moved into office work as the result of a back injury. The change of work gave him a lot of time to reflect on what he wanted for his life, and what he needed to do to get there. But as he became increasingly disconnected from his day job, things with the business began to get more exciting. 

“I was at work and the Shopify ping was just going off like crazy,” he says. “I would look at my phone, I’m like, ‘Oh my God. We just sold $200-$300.’ And I couldn’t tell anybody what was happening.”

So as things were ramping up with the business, Rodney knew the time had come.

“My contract was up for renewal soon and I had to make a decision. I decided that for the sake of my body’s wellbeing, my mental health, and the business, it was time that I went all in.”

Just before Christmas, Rodney stepped out of his job and into the business full-time.

“Mom, I’m an Entrepreneur.”

Christmas had passed and the pair were closing in on $75,000 revenue that month. They knew it was time to tell their parents.

Kory remembers their reaction, “They didn’t know what to say. They were just so confused.”

“It’s a hard concept to explain to them,” adds Rodney. “My parents are pretty old school. So, they were like, ‘What? You’re selling these products and you don’t even touch them? You don’t even hold the products?’”

And it wasn’t just the complexities of the dropshipping business model that confused them, it was the fact that they’d given up such solid jobs to pursue it. 

“They were like, ‘Why would you give up this job where you make really good money, are getting benefits, and where you can move up the ladder?’” Kory says.

“I’m pretty sure they thought I was selling drugs, or something,” laughs Rodney. 

In the end, the pair accepted the fact that their parents probably wouldn’t get it. They pushed ahead regardless.

Everything That Goes Up…

With the calendar flipping over to a new year, and with the weight of their secret lifted from their shoulders, the pair went into January with full force.

The shopping mood of the holiday season seemed to continue, and they watched as their revenue numbers climbed up and up.

Most of their products were priced under $10, with an average sale bringing them $12 in revenue. They were processing up to 1,000 orders a day, and were trying their best to keep on top of all the order fulfillment and customer service requests that came along with that.

By the end of January, they’d had their best month yet. They looked at their sales dashboard and saw that big, shiny number staring back at them. They had made over $100,000 USD. 

With January over, they began planning for an even bigger February. While they were increasing their advertising spend and preparing for the extra workload, suppliers in China began to closing up their businesses and heading home for the Chinese New Year holidays. 

“When Chinese New Year came… everything just came crumbling down,” says Kory.

What’s the Deal with Chinese New Year?

Each year in late January to mid February, people in China celebrate Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival. On average, suppliers take two weeks off to spend time with their family and friends. This is comparable to people taking extra time off during the holiday season (Christmas and New Years) in North America. Operations of their business will generally pause during this time, so you’ll need to plan to switch suppliers or pause advertising for a short period. 

Read more about Chinese New Year. 

“We were in Hawaii, when we realized and then we were like, ‘Oh my God…’ We were doing close to 1,000 orders a day at this time, and we didn’t realize that there was a month delay with orders being sent. We were just like, ‘Oh my God, how are we gonna fulfill all these orders?’”

For weeks, they faced a tidal wave of customer service emails. People wanted to know where their package was, after it had been delayed for so long. They’d spend hours answering their requests, late into the night.

“We still have nightmares with page upon page of emails saying, ‘Why hasn’t my order shipped yet?’” says Kory. 

Time for a Reboot

When the dust settled from the Chinese New Year disaster, they began to evaluate their approach. There had to be a better way, one that could keep them growing, but avoid being crushed under the weight of hundreds of orders per day.

“We scrapped everything at that point, except for our Instagram. We bought a pro-theme on Shopify because we needed a refresh. Then we started moving into higher-ticket items, but with a lower order volume. We couldn’t keep up,” says Kory. 

Since then, they’ve hired a content writer who regularly publishes blog posts, helping to drive traffic and build a sense of community on their website. 

They’ve also teamed up with a fantasy gaming podcast, and work to cross-promote each other through social media, newsletters, and within the podcast episodes. 

“We’ve grown quite substantially online. Now we’re just trying to maintain that. We’ve realized what we’re selling now is more of a brand. It’s not just like a hot product,” says Kory.

“Over the course of the last two months we’ve just been slowly testing new things. We’re just trying to prepare and get ahead of the game for Christmas time, because we know what a crazy time of the year it is now. We want to be ready, because we were so unprepared for Christmas last year.”

Turns Out, the Future Looks Bright

For two people who started with no business experience, it’s been an uphill struggle the whole time. They learned it all themselves, every step of the way. Sometimes it was a battle, fought over long days and late nights crouched over their laptops.

In the end, they wouldn’t trade even their worst moments. “It was literally trial and error the whole time,” says Kory. “But then you look back on it and you’re like, ‘Wow. Look how far we’ve come from when we started.’ It’s beautiful.”

And their families? They’re slowly coming around to the idea that despite what they expected, things have worked out. 

Rodney recalls trying to convince his grandmother that everything would be okay. 

“Trying to explain the business to my grandma, there’s no chance I can explain to her what I’m doing,” he says. “She’s like, ‘Why would you quit your job? Do you need money?’ And I’m like, ‘No no no!’”

“I finally took her out for dinner last week, and she kind of started to realize, ‘Okay. He’s not struggling now.’”

Kory’s family has come around too, embracing his new ambitions. “They finally realized six months later, we’re still doing this. We’re paying rent for the apartment, surviving, and not asking for money from them. So they’re finally thinking, ‘Okay. You know what? They’re actually doing something serious.’” 

In late February they launched another business, Kenekt Marketing. Now they’re leveraging everything they’ve learned from their ecommerce experience to help local businesses build up their digital marketing strategies. “Both businesses are such great opportunities. But we’re trying to slowly build them both up at the same time,” says Kory. 

For anyone teetering on the edge, unsure if they’re ready to start, Rodney and Kory have one piece of advice.

“Honestly it’s never gonna be the right time to start. You just have to be willing to make sacrifices, like giving up going to the gym or yoga, or seeing your friends after work. It might be waking up early or not taking a lunch break at work and working on it. You have to make the time, because no one else will and no one’s gonna push you to start.”

How They Built Their Business: 4 Lessons to Take Away

Now comes the real down and dirty part where we pick apart Rodney and Kory’s business strategy. We drill down on some of their best tactics, discuss their shift in strategy, and break apart the most important lessons they’ve learned along the way. 

In this section, we’ll be covering:

Using Instagram to test product niches

Their low-ticket to high-ticket product strategy

Lessons they learned about pricing strategies

Figuring out Facebook advertising

Let’s get into it.

Use Instagram to Test Product Niches

Before they’d even started their store, Rodney and Kory were thinking about the smartest, most cost-effective way to go about taking that first step. 

So many dropshippers find themselves in the same situation. If they’re playing with a small budget, they look for ways to drive traffic for free, or stretch their budget further.

They might spend time on Reddit or Facebook groups, dropping in links to their store to drive traffic. They might opt to use influencer marketing before jumping into ads. They might try testing products using just $10 a day on Facebook ads. Some of these low cost tactics work well, but some of them can be difficult to pull off. 

So if you don’t have much cash to spare and are looking for a way to get things off the ground, follow Rodney and Kory’s example.

Test your product niches using Instagram. 

“We did our research and knew the horror stories of testing advertising on Facebook and how much money can be lost in the process. So we created several Instagram profiles in different niches to test audience engagement,” Kory says. 

They started off with Instagram accounts built around basketball, jewelry, tech gadgets, holiday accessories, fake house plants, and fantasy gaming. As they grew the accounts with organic content, they paid close attention to which audiences responded most strongly. 

Rodney explains their strategy: “Essentially, we wanted people to stay on our Instagram page as long as possible. We wanted them to go to our Instagram page and just continually scroll. So we tried to build a community around it.”

Even once it became clear that their fantasy gaming account was surging ahead, they didn’t jump immediately into paid advertising. They used their Instagram audience to test different products, to see which ones people were most excited about. From that, they were able to determine which products were worth putting money behind. 

Their paid advertising chops have increased significantly since the beginning, but they still rely on organic Instagram content to drive free traffic to their store.

“A lot of our sales come through Facebook ads, but the organic Instagram content is almost like the engine in the background, just continually churning,” says Rodney.  

The Low-Ticket to High-Ticket Strategy

When they started out, Rodney and Kory stocked their store with low-cost items. They figured, the cheaper a product is, the faster it would sell. 

And for the most part, they were right. 

They were able to generate thousands of orders of low-cost items over the holiday season, but that came with a price. They were swamped with the extra work that was required to fulfill and manage customer service requests for that many orders. 

After Chinese New Year sent everything crumbling down, they redefined their approach and switched to higher-ticket items. It was through this that they were able to reduce their workload, and increase their margins. 

It might have happened by accident, but turns out this approach is a pretty good strategy. 

By focusing on low-ticket items at the beginning, they were able to draw in a huge amount of visitors to their site. Some of those visitors were just browsing, others added to cart, and a lot of them made a purchase. 

In the background, as visitors came streaming into their store in search of low-cost items, the Facebook pixel was working away, gathering data and refining its classification of the ideal buyer for their store. The more data it gathered, the smarter it got at knowing who to target with advertisements. 

So by the time they were ready to switch their store to focusing on higher-ticket items, they had already refined their targeting to attract the perfect customer. They were also able to grow their email list to over 40,000 subscribers, allowing them to tap into another free marketing channel. 

The Psychology of Pricing

As a customer, when it comes to understanding price – from knowing if you’re about to snag a deal or are getting ripped off – there’s a lot going on in your head that you probably don’t realize.

As a marketer, it’s your job to try to understand what’s going on inside your customers’ heads. 

Would a customer be more tempted by a $10 product with free shipping, or a $8 product with $2 shipping? 

When Rodney and Kory started out, they wanted to make the price of the product seem as attractive as possible, so they hid their costs in the shipping price. But they ran into a problem. 

“We realized if they’re ordering more, we were actually making less,” says Rodney.

Imagine this. You’re selling a product for $5, plus $5 for shipping. The product costs you $4 to buy from the supplier, and you pay your supplier $2 to ship the product to your customers.

So if you sell one product, you’ll make $10 revenue, and $6 of that goes to your supplier. 

You’ve made $4 profit. 

But what if someone wants to buy 10 of them? Now, you’re getting $50 for the product, and $5 for the shipping, so $55 in revenue. 

This time, the product costs you $40 and $2 for shipping again. For ten times the amount of product, you’ve only made $13 in profit.

Ouch. 

Since then, they’ve switched strategies. They now offer free shipping over $50 (more on that below) and make sure the cost of the product is covered by the product price, plus a healthy margin.

But Rodney and Kory don’t have a blanket rule for pricing their products. They’ve learned through trial and error that each product needs to be thought about individually. 

“We sell a bunch of items in our store, probably close to a hundred by now. But each one has its own pricing strategy that works for it,” says Rodney. 

Certain products can be sold for a higher price with better margins, which gives them the flexibility to offer them with discounts. They could add the products to their spin-a-wheel app with a deep discount, or offer them at a cheaper price as part of a bundle. 

  “People love to think that they’re getting a deal,” says Rodney. 

The pair also realized the psychological significance of setting a threshold for free shipping. They implemented a “free shipping over $50” rule in an attempt to increase their average order value. 

They created bundled items of related products and small add-ons to upsell people. Like the chewing gum that sits next to the register in the supermarket, shoppers found it easy to toss a few smaller items into their cart so they could claim the free shipping offer. 

“We saw a huge increase in our average order value, which was massive. I think our average order value before that was $12-14, and now it’s about $35-40,” says Rodney. 

With higher average orders, they were able to pour the profits back into advertising to quickly grow the business. 

“The margins you make on an order like that – you don’t have to hold your breath until you make your next sale,” says Kory.

Facebook Ads: You’ve Got to Go Your Own Way

Rodney and Kory were both complete beginners when they first stepped into the world of online advertising, and as Kory puts it, “We got our asses kicked with Facebook.”

“We had zero clue how to do anything with ads when we first started,” says Rodney. “On Instagram we were just using the promote button, which we realized is not good, you shouldn’t be doing that. We were just pumping money into that with no real targeting.”

At the beginning, things looked like they were working. They were making sales, and money was appearing in their bank account. But they weren’t paying attention to the finer details. 

“We were just pumping more money into it thinking it’s working,” says Kory. “Then we realized that we needed to set up set rules to kill off certain ads that aren’t performing well.”

They started to look closely at their return on ad spend (ROAS), which tells you how much you’re getting back for the amount of money you’re putting in. “We didn’t even know what ROAS was for the longest time,” says Kory, laughing. 

Along with this, they also worked to refine their design and copywriting skills, so they could start creating ads that looked like the type of ad they might be tempted to click on themselves. 

“We started to become better with Photoshop, and slowly tailored it to get it to the quality that we wanted. We kind of became obsessed with it,” says Kory. “We started to get really good at learning what the algorithm wants to see in the ads, so we’d have a better chance of getting approved, or being shown.” 

But even as they began to master Facebook advertising, they often found that the strategies shared in video tutorials or articles didn’t always work for them. 

“There’s a lot of free information out there about Facebook ads,” says Rodney. “It’s a great start, but unless you’re selling or mimicking exactly what that person in the video or the blog is talking about, it’s only relevant to your store to a certain extent. That was one of the issues we found.”

“We figured, we need to learn the base idea of how it works. We’ll just get a general understanding of how the strategy works, then we’ll need to tailor it to our store,” says Kory. 

And in the end, they’ve found that most of their success comes down to good old fashioned trial and error. 

“We’re still always testing new ideas,” says Kory. “Whenever we find a new product, we’re thinking about something we’ve learned from the past in terms of branding it or putting it out there. What do we think is going to work the best for this product? And then if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, we try something else.”

Want to Learn More?

How to Start a Dropshipping Business in 2019

20+ Trending Products to Sell in 2019

The Ultimate Shopify Dropshipping Guide

The One Product Store: This Entrepreneur’s Simple Formula for Success

The post Here’s to the Crazy Ones: How These Two Friends Built a Business No One Expected appeared first on Oberlo.

from Oberlo

“When we started doing $1,000 days, I’m sitting around with all these guys at work and I’m just thinking, ‘My life is about to change, and I can’t even tell anybody.’”

When Rodney Zachariuk and Kory Szostak started their ecommerce business, nobody knew. Even as the months ticked by and their sales continued to climb, they kept it to themselves. 

“We didn’t want to be looked down upon,” says Kory. “We just didn’t need the negativity associated around trying to break away from the norm, which is commonplace where we’re from.”

That feeling – the one that others around you won’t support your ideas or approve of you carving your own path – is not fiction. It’s reality. And entrepreneurs experience it all the time. 

From Apple to Warby Parker, the entrepreneurs behind some of the most daring businesses were often fighting to get others to believe in what they were doing.

When Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk first began pitching the idea of Airbnb to investors, they were laughed out of the room. “Everyone thought that they were completely crazy; no one thought this was a good idea,” says Leigh Gallagher, author of The Airbnb Story. 

Ecommerce entrepreneurs, and especially those who build their businesses with the dropshipping business model, face the same uphill battle. 

The people around them don’t even understand how their businesses work, let alone believe it’s possible to be successful doing it. 

But the ones who succeed, like Rodney and Kory, are the ones who forge ahead anyway. They’re the ones who take a chance on starting a business built on a model their parents have never heard of. They’re the ones who have the courage to stray off the traditional path that funnels you from school to college, then into a 9-5 job. They’re the ones that have the audacity to redefine their careers and their future. 

The story of Rodney and Kory’s climb to success is full of the types of situations usually reserved for television scripts. There’s a chance meeting in Central America that plants the seed, and a car accident that caused Rodney to question his future. There’s a meteoric rise to the top, followed by a catastrophic collapse. There’s the months spent hiding their business from family and friends, and the moment they knew that this was about to change their lives. 

Let’s start at the beginning. 

L-R: Rodney Zachariuk and Kory Szostak

  You Make Money Selling Mugs Online?

Looking back, Rodney and Kory might have ended up somewhere very different if it wasn’t for a chance encounter in the back of a cab in Costa Rica. 

It was mid-2017, and the pair had been traveling together for two weeks. Kory had left a few days earlier, and now with the trip wrapping up, Rodney was on his way back to the airport to board a plane back home to Vancouver. 

On his way to the airport, he agreed to share a cab with a stranger. As they drove, the two got chatting. 

“He started talking about what I now know is dropshipping, but I didn’t really know what it was at the time,” says Rodney. “He was saying he was selling mugs online, and I was kind of confused, I was like, ‘You just make money traveling… and you sell mugs online?’”

Sure, the concept was puzzling, but Rodney was intrigued. He began scribbling down notes in his phone. 

The idea was buzzing around in his head for a few days after getting home, then life went on and the notes he’d copied down were left on his phone untouched. 

You Guys Took My Credit Card Information?

A few months later when Kory came across an article mentioning dropshipping, he called up Rodney. Memories of the guy in Costa Rica came back, and Rodney agreed to try it out. 

They both quickly fell into an obsession with learning how to run a dropshipping business. They devoured hours of videos detailing store setup, product selection, and budgeting advice.

They were leveling up their skills, but they still weren’t sure if anything they’d learned about setting up a website would work in real life. So they decided to test it. 

Just before Christmas in 2017, their friends were planning a bar crawl. Being Christmas and all, the event demanded that everyone come dressed in a santa suit.

The pair spotted their opportunity. They whipped up a Christmas-themed Shopify store, and filled it with ugly Christmas sweaters and santa suits they sourced from dropshipping suppliers. 

Casually, they mentioned the site to their friends. 

“We told them we found a really cheap website that they could buy their suits from,” Kory says. “We just wanted to see if we could make it all work and make it seem like a legit website. Lo and behold, one of them bought one.” 

“In the end, we sold them so cheaply we didn’t make any money, we lost money,” Rodney adds, laughing. 

Months later, they revealed to their friend that it was their store he had bought his suit from. “It all kind of clicked for him, and he’s like, ‘Holy shit, you guys took my credit card information? I bought this Santa suit from you?!’”

Pranks aside, the success of the santa store proved something serious for both of them. This thing works. 

Getting Serious: The Testing Phase

In the months that followed, Rodney and Kory packed up and set off on a five-month trip around Asia. As they traveled, they kept meeting digital nomads – those location-independent people who can live anywhere, work anywhere. They were drawn to the idea that they could make their work fit around their travel plans, and not the other way around. 

They were excited to dip their toes into the world of online business, so they set up several Instagram accounts around potential business ideas. They had an account for basketball lovers, one promoting jewelry, one for fake house plants, another for tech gadgets, and one for holiday accessories. Their final account was dedicated to fantasy gaming. 

As they traveled, they continued to post new content to the accounts, and watched as they began to slowly grow in popularity. 

But before they knew it, their trip was over. They returned home to Vancouver, got full-time jobs, and found themselves settling back into their normal lives. Kory found a sales role in a tech company, and Rodney began working in construction while studying for his real estate license.

At night they’d work together on the Instagram accounts, taking notice of which niches seemed to attract the most attention and engagement. 

The fantasy gaming account started to pull ahead, gathering followers quickly. By September they were up to almost 4,000 followers. They noticed the sense of community that began to build on their account, where users would leave long streams of comments under their posts, chatting back and forth. 

Off the back of the Instagram success, in September they decided to take their next step forward. They began building out a Shopify store around the fantasy gaming niche, filling it with mugs, pins and apparel related to the fantasy gaming world. Then they began testing the reception to different products with their Instagram audience. Their followers quickly responded. 

A Close Call Makes Rodney Question His Future

October 30, 2018, is a day that Rodney remembers well. It had been raining that day, and he was working alongside three colleagues at a construction site. They heard a noise and turned quickly to see what was happening. Moments before, a speeding car came flying around the corner, colliding with a Corvette that was passing by. The road was wet, and the force of the impact sent the Corvette barrelling toward where Rodney and the three others were standing. 

Suddenly, with the sound of the metal car body crumpling around an immovable object, the Corvette came to a stop. The arm of a piece of heavy machinery had been resting on the road next to the workers. The Corvette collided with the arm, shielding the Rodney and the workers from the impact. 

“This was pretty traumatizing,” Rodney says. “It really made me realize that I needed to start doing something more fulfilling with my life.”

Kicking Things Off on Black Friday

While Rodney’s day job was serving up near-death experiences, their fledgling business was beginning to grow. They were making a few sales here and there, all from organic Instagram traffic. Then in mid-November they decided to step it up. 

It was just before Black Friday, and they knew that people would be in the mood to shop. If there ever was a time to test the validity of their business, it was now.

They knew they needed to stand out on Black Friday weekend, so they searched around for an idea. That’s when they came up with the mystery pack. 

The mystery pack contained a mix of some of their most popular low-ticket products, bundled together for a discounted price. 

And really, the idea couldn’t have been a better fit for their audience. Their customers lived for games, and the mystery pack was a little game in itself. Want to know what you’ll get? You’ll have to play the game (and buy the pack) to find out. 

As you might have already guessed, the mystery packs were a hit. 

“They loved it,” Kory says, grinning. 

The store made over $3,000 revenue that weekend, all without spending a cent on advertising. 

Audiences for a fantasy niche store are lovers of dragons, wolves and medieval magic. Fill your store with products featuring mythical creatures and black magic, and try creating a character for your brand that fits within that world. Talk in your audience’s language, and you’ll win their hearts. 

On Facebook, you could try targeting your audience around Game of Thrones, Final Fantasy or Lord of the Rings fans. 

Fantasy Niche Product Ideas

  Stepping Into the Unknown

By now, Rodney and Kory were pouring every spare moment they had into the business. Late into the night they’d be tweaking their website, sourcing new products, and honing their advertising skills. The weekend became precious, the only part of the week where they could dedicate two days of interrupted time into their business.  

And when Monday morning rolled around, Rodney would head back to his construction job, and Kory would head into the office, and spend the day making sales for someone else. 

Kory had been in his tech sales job for three months and was coming up to the end of his probation period. He would soon be offered a permanent position with benefits.

Despite what seemed like an obvious choice, Kory knew that it didn’t feel right to stay on. He’d never seen himself working a desk job, and this taste of it made it clear to him it wasn’t where he needed to be. 

Plus, even though it was early days, he sensed that the business had potential. If only he was able to dedicate more of his time to it, he felt like he could turn it into something big. And he couldn’t get that idea out of his head. 

So just as he was about to be offered a permanent role, Kory announced he was quitting. He waved goodbye to the stable paycheck, and stepped into the unknown.

To make matters more complicated, Kory had just moved out of his parents’ home and into his own apartment, with its own rent to pay.

“I was like, ‘This is great. I have no job now and I just moved in here,’” says Kory, laughing.

The new-apartment-with-no-job situation was something Kory sensed that his parents would not approve of, so he decided to keep it a secret. 

“I didn’t tell my parents [that I had quit] for their sake, as this would have gone against everything they ever taught me. I knew this would sound like the stupidest decision of my life,” he says. 

Both Rodney and Kory’s parents didn’t even know they had started a business together, so how could he begin to explain that he’d quit his job to pursue it? 

Keeping the lie alive was hard work. 

One Friday, Kory invited his parents and grandmother out for lunch, forgetting it was a day he’d normally be working. 

When they began to wonder how he was able to have enough time to meet them in the middle of the day on a workday, he quickly made up an excuse about being allowed to leave early. 

“But I had quit my job at that point, and I was lying to them the whole time at the table, trying to just not say anything.”

The Happy Holiday Season

With Kory now working full-time on the business, things really kicked off. The Christmas season was rapidly approaching, and they wanted to capture as much of the shopping spirit as possible.

They began running Facebook advertisements, which allowed them to reach a much wider audience outside of their Instagram following. 

The mystery packs continued to be a hit. As they pumped more money into ads, their revenue began to skyrocket.

“Christmas was insane,” says Kory. “We jumped from about $3,000 in November to $75,000 the next month.”

Rodney was still working full-time, but had moved into office work as the result of a back injury. The change of work gave him a lot of time to reflect on what he wanted for his life, and what he needed to do to get there. But as he became increasingly disconnected from his day job, things with the business began to get more exciting. 

“I was at work and the Shopify ping was just going off like crazy,” he says. “I would look at my phone, I’m like, ‘Oh my God. We just sold $200-$300.’ And I couldn’t tell anybody what was happening.”

So as things were ramping up with the business, Rodney knew the time had come.

“My contract was up for renewal soon and I had to make a decision. I decided that for the sake of my body’s wellbeing, my mental health, and the business, it was time that I went all in.”

Just before Christmas, Rodney stepped out of his job and into the business full-time.

“Mom, I’m an Entrepreneur.”

Christmas had passed and the pair were closing in on $75,000 revenue that month. They knew it was time to tell their parents.

Kory remembers their reaction, “They didn’t know what to say. They were just so confused.”

“It’s a hard concept to explain to them,” adds Rodney. “My parents are pretty old school. So, they were like, ‘What? You’re selling these products and you don’t even touch them? You don’t even hold the products?’”

And it wasn’t just the complexities of the dropshipping business model that confused them, it was the fact that they’d given up such solid jobs to pursue it. 

“They were like, ‘Why would you give up this job where you make really good money, are getting benefits, and where you can move up the ladder?’” Kory says.

“I’m pretty sure they thought I was selling drugs, or something,” laughs Rodney. 

In the end, the pair accepted the fact that their parents probably wouldn’t get it. They pushed ahead regardless.

Everything That Goes Up…

With the calendar flipping over to a new year, and with the weight of their secret lifted from their shoulders, the pair went into January with full force.

The shopping mood of the holiday season seemed to continue, and they watched as their revenue numbers climbed up and up.

Most of their products were priced under $10, with an average sale bringing them $12 in revenue. They were processing up to 1,000 orders a day, and were trying their best to keep on top of all the order fulfillment and customer service requests that came along with that.

By the end of January, they’d had their best month yet. They looked at their sales dashboard and saw that big, shiny number staring back at them. They had made over $100,000 USD. 

With January over, they began planning for an even bigger February. While they were increasing their advertising spend and preparing for the extra workload, suppliers in China began to closing up their businesses and heading home for the Chinese New Year holidays. 

“When Chinese New Year came… everything just came crumbling down,” says Kory.

What’s the Deal with Chinese New Year?

Each year in late January to mid February, people in China celebrate Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival. On average, suppliers take two weeks off to spend time with their family and friends. This is comparable to people taking extra time off during the holiday season (Christmas and New Years) in North America. Operations of their business will generally pause during this time, so you’ll need to plan to switch suppliers or pause advertising for a short period. 

Read more about Chinese New Year. 

“We were in Hawaii, when we realized and then we were like, ‘Oh my God…’ We were doing close to 1,000 orders a day at this time, and we didn’t realize that there was a month delay with orders being sent. We were just like, ‘Oh my God, how are we gonna fulfill all these orders?’”

For weeks, they faced a tidal wave of customer service emails. People wanted to know where their package was, after it had been delayed for so long. They’d spend hours answering their requests, late into the night.

“We still have nightmares with page upon page of emails saying, ‘Why hasn’t my order shipped yet?’” says Kory. 

Time for a Reboot

When the dust settled from the Chinese New Year disaster, they began to evaluate their approach. There had to be a better way, one that could keep them growing, but avoid being crushed under the weight of hundreds of orders per day.

“We scrapped everything at that point, except for our Instagram. We bought a pro-theme on Shopify because we needed a refresh. Then we started moving into higher-ticket items, but with a lower order volume. We couldn’t keep up,” says Kory. 

Since then, they’ve hired a content writer who regularly publishes blog posts, helping to drive traffic and build a sense of community on their website. 

They’ve also teamed up with a fantasy gaming podcast, and work to cross-promote each other through social media, newsletters, and within the podcast episodes. 

“We’ve grown quite substantially online. Now we’re just trying to maintain that. We’ve realized what we’re selling now is more of a brand. It’s not just like a hot product,” says Kory.

“Over the course of the last two months we’ve just been slowly testing new things. We’re just trying to prepare and get ahead of the game for Christmas time, because we know what a crazy time of the year it is now. We want to be ready, because we were so unprepared for Christmas last year.”

Turns Out, the Future Looks Bright

For two people who started with no business experience, it’s been an uphill struggle the whole time. They learned it all themselves, every step of the way. Sometimes it was a battle, fought over long days and late nights crouched over their laptops.

In the end, they wouldn’t trade even their worst moments. “It was literally trial and error the whole time,” says Kory. “But then you look back on it and you’re like, ‘Wow. Look how far we’ve come from when we started.’ It’s beautiful.”

And their families? They’re slowly coming around to the idea that despite what they expected, things have worked out. 

Rodney recalls trying to convince his grandmother that everything would be okay. 

“Trying to explain the business to my grandma, there’s no chance I can explain to her what I’m doing,” he says. “She’s like, ‘Why would you quit your job? Do you need money?’ And I’m like, ‘No no no!’”

“I finally took her out for dinner last week, and she kind of started to realize, ‘Okay. He’s not struggling now.’”

Kory’s family has come around too, embracing his new ambitions. “They finally realized six months later, we’re still doing this. We’re paying rent for the apartment, surviving, and not asking for money from them. So they’re finally thinking, ‘Okay. You know what? They’re actually doing something serious.’” 

In late February they launched another business, Kenekt Marketing. Now they’re leveraging everything they’ve learned from their ecommerce experience to help local businesses build up their digital marketing strategies. “Both businesses are such great opportunities. But we’re trying to slowly build them both up at the same time,” says Kory. 

For anyone teetering on the edge, unsure if they’re ready to start, Rodney and Kory have one piece of advice.

“Honestly it’s never gonna be the right time to start. You just have to be willing to make sacrifices, like giving up going to the gym or yoga, or seeing your friends after work. It might be waking up early or not taking a lunch break at work and working on it. You have to make the time, because no one else will and no one’s gonna push you to start.”

How They Built Their Business: 4 Lessons to Take Away

Now comes the real down and dirty part where we pick apart Rodney and Kory’s business strategy. We drill down on some of their best tactics, discuss their shift in strategy, and break apart the most important lessons they’ve learned along the way. 

In this section, we’ll be covering:

Using Instagram to test product niches

Their low-ticket to high-ticket product strategy

Lessons they learned about pricing strategies

Figuring out Facebook advertising

Let’s get into it.

Use Instagram to Test Product Niches

Before they’d even started their store, Rodney and Kory were thinking about the smartest, most cost-effective way to go about taking that first step. 

So many dropshippers find themselves in the same situation. If they’re playing with a small budget, they look for ways to drive traffic for free, or stretch their budget further.

They might spend time on Reddit or Facebook groups, dropping in links to their store to drive traffic. They might opt to use influencer marketing before jumping into ads. They might try testing products using just $10 a day on Facebook ads. Some of these low cost tactics work well, but some of them can be difficult to pull off. 

So if you don’t have much cash to spare and are looking for a way to get things off the ground, follow Rodney and Kory’s example.

Test your product niches using Instagram. 

“We did our research and knew the horror stories of testing advertising on Facebook and how much money can be lost in the process. So we created several Instagram profiles in different niches to test audience engagement,” Kory says. 

They started off with Instagram accounts built around basketball, jewelry, tech gadgets, holiday accessories, fake house plants, and fantasy gaming. As they grew the accounts with organic content, they paid close attention to which audiences responded most strongly. 

Rodney explains their strategy: “Essentially, we wanted people to stay on our Instagram page as long as possible. We wanted them to go to our Instagram page and just continually scroll. So we tried to build a community around it.”

Even once it became clear that their fantasy gaming account was surging ahead, they didn’t jump immediately into paid advertising. They used their Instagram audience to test different products, to see which ones people were most excited about. From that, they were able to determine which products were worth putting money behind. 

Their paid advertising chops have increased significantly since the beginning, but they still rely on organic Instagram content to drive free traffic to their store.

“A lot of our sales come through Facebook ads, but the organic Instagram content is almost like the engine in the background, just continually churning,” says Rodney.  

The Low-Ticket to High-Ticket Strategy

When they started out, Rodney and Kory stocked their store with low-cost items. They figured, the cheaper a product is, the faster it would sell. 

And for the most part, they were right. 

They were able to generate thousands of orders of low-cost items over the holiday season, but that came with a price. They were swamped with the extra work that was required to fulfill and manage customer service requests for that many orders. 

After Chinese New Year sent everything crumbling down, they redefined their approach and switched to higher-ticket items. It was through this that they were able to reduce their workload, and increase their margins. 

It might have happened by accident, but turns out this approach is a pretty good strategy. 

By focusing on low-ticket items at the beginning, they were able to draw in a huge amount of visitors to their site. Some of those visitors were just browsing, others added to cart, and a lot of them made a purchase. 

In the background, as visitors came streaming into their store in search of low-cost items, the Facebook pixel was working away, gathering data and refining its classification of the ideal buyer for their store. The more data it gathered, the smarter it got at knowing who to target with advertisements. 

So by the time they were ready to switch their store to focusing on higher-ticket items, they had already refined their targeting to attract the perfect customer. They were also able to grow their email list to over 40,000 subscribers, allowing them to tap into another free marketing channel. 

The Psychology of Pricing

As a customer, when it comes to understanding price – from knowing if you’re about to snag a deal or are getting ripped off – there’s a lot going on in your head that you probably don’t realize.

As a marketer, it’s your job to try to understand what’s going on inside your customers’ heads. 

Would a customer be more tempted by a $10 product with free shipping, or a $8 product with $2 shipping? 

When Rodney and Kory started out, they wanted to make the price of the product seem as attractive as possible, so they hid their costs in the shipping price. But they ran into a problem. 

“We realized if they’re ordering more, we were actually making less,” says Rodney.

Imagine this. You’re selling a product for $5, plus $5 for shipping. The product costs you $4 to buy from the supplier, and you pay your supplier $2 to ship the product to your customers.

So if you sell one product, you’ll make $10 revenue, and $6 of that goes to your supplier. 

You’ve made $4 profit. 

But what if someone wants to buy 10 of them? Now, you’re getting $50 for the product, and $5 for the shipping, so $55 in revenue. 

This time, the product costs you $40 and $2 for shipping again. For ten times the amount of product, you’ve only made $13 in profit.

Ouch. 

Since then, they’ve switched strategies. They now offer free shipping over $50 (more on that below) and make sure the cost of the product is covered by the product price, plus a healthy margin.

But Rodney and Kory don’t have a blanket rule for pricing their products. They’ve learned through trial and error that each product needs to be thought about individually. 

“We sell a bunch of items in our store, probably close to a hundred by now. But each one has its own pricing strategy that works for it,” says Rodney. 

Certain products can be sold for a higher price with better margins, which gives them the flexibility to offer them with discounts. They could add the products to their spin-a-wheel app with a deep discount, or offer them at a cheaper price as part of a bundle. 

  “People love to think that they’re getting a deal,” says Rodney. 

The pair also realized the psychological significance of setting a threshold for free shipping. They implemented a “free shipping over $50” rule in an attempt to increase their average order value. 

They created bundled items of related products and small add-ons to upsell people. Like the chewing gum that sits next to the register in the supermarket, shoppers found it easy to toss a few smaller items into their cart so they could claim the free shipping offer. 

“We saw a huge increase in our average order value, which was massive. I think our average order value before that was $12-14, and now it’s about $35-40,” says Rodney. 

With higher average orders, they were able to pour the profits back into advertising to quickly grow the business. 

“The margins you make on an order like that – you don’t have to hold your breath until you make your next sale,” says Kory.

Facebook Ads: You’ve Got to Go Your Own Way

Rodney and Kory were both complete beginners when they first stepped into the world of online advertising, and as Kory puts it, “We got our asses kicked with Facebook.”

“We had zero clue how to do anything with ads when we first started,” says Rodney. “On Instagram we were just using the promote button, which we realized is not good, you shouldn’t be doing that. We were just pumping money into that with no real targeting.”

At the beginning, things looked like they were working. They were making sales, and money was appearing in their bank account. But they weren’t paying attention to the finer details. 

“We were just pumping more money into it thinking it’s working,” says Kory. “Then we realized that we needed to set up set rules to kill off certain ads that aren’t performing well.”

They started to look closely at their return on ad spend (ROAS), which tells you how much you’re getting back for the amount of money you’re putting in. “We didn’t even know what ROAS was for the longest time,” says Kory, laughing. 

Along with this, they also worked to refine their design and copywriting skills, so they could start creating ads that looked like the type of ad they might be tempted to click on themselves. 

“We started to become better with Photoshop, and slowly tailored it to get it to the quality that we wanted. We kind of became obsessed with it,” says Kory. “We started to get really good at learning what the algorithm wants to see in the ads, so we’d have a better chance of getting approved, or being shown.” 

But even as they began to master Facebook advertising, they often found that the strategies shared in video tutorials or articles didn’t always work for them. 

“There’s a lot of free information out there about Facebook ads,” says Rodney. “It’s a great start, but unless you’re selling or mimicking exactly what that person in the video or the blog is talking about, it’s only relevant to your store to a certain extent. That was one of the issues we found.”

“We figured, we need to learn the base idea of how it works. We’ll just get a general understanding of how the strategy works, then we’ll need to tailor it to our store,” says Kory. 

And in the end, they’ve found that most of their success comes down to good old fashioned trial and error. 

“We’re still always testing new ideas,” says Kory. “Whenever we find a new product, we’re thinking about something we’ve learned from the past in terms of branding it or putting it out there. What do we think is going to work the best for this product? And then if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, we try something else.”

Want to Learn More?

How to Start a Dropshipping Business in 2019

20+ Trending Products to Sell in 2019

The Ultimate Shopify Dropshipping Guide

The One Product Store: This Entrepreneur’s Simple Formula for Success

The post Here’s to the Crazy Ones: How These Two Friends Built a Business No One Expected appeared first on Oberlo.

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