Ana 🦋

Building Sweet Wick Co. 🕯️| Documenting my journey scaling a small business on Etsy 🌱

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

need a custom unique gift, Sweet Wick is the place 🕯️🖤 https://t.co/lpPIRKKwDF

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@americanreqiuem @aributerasun showing cheeks and shitting on men is putting on a show? 🤣 I get where she’s coming from but she’s comparing herself to someone who’s been in the industry for years and is pretty much a legend. If a different male artist tried this it wouldn’t have worked

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

I think I know why everything sucks...

...and it's because everything is fake

We are getting fake college degrees that cost 4 years and six figures that teach you fake education and get you fake jobs.

We are eating fake food, with fake ingredients, funded by fake research.

We are scrolling through fake lives, with fake relationships, who take fake, curated vacations to promote brands that make fake products.

We are voting for fake candidates, who run on fake promises, inside a fake system that was never designed to fix anything.

We are raising kids in fake schools that teach fake history, fake science, which quietly produce fake adults who can't think for themselves.

We are watching fake news, about fake crises, produced by fake journalists, for fake outrage.

We are borrowing fake money that was printed from nothing, to fund a fake economy that would collapse in an afternoon if people stopped pretending it was real.

We are buying fake organic food that's just a paid label, and drinking fake juice with two percent juice in it, and putting fake cheese on cheeseburgers that's just "cheese product" on fake burger meat.

We are donating to fake nonprofits where the moeny never makes it to the people and then funding fake foreign aid that buys real weapons to prop up fake governments.

We are going to fake therapy that teaches fake coping skills instead of telling you hard truths.

We are buying fake furniture made of fake wood that's actually compressed sawdust and glue that looks like wood, ships in fourteen boxes with instructions written in a fake language that isn't quite any language, requires tools it doesn't include, takes 4 hours to build, wobbles on day 1, and is totally destroyed in 6 months.

We are downloading fake "free" apps that charge a subscription after three days for AI features that don't work, hidden behind a paywall we didn't see, protected by a privacy policy we didn't read, buried inside Terms of Service written by lawyers specifically so we wouldn't read them, that we agreed to by tapping a button the size of a thumbnail, that gave a company we've never heard of the right to sell our data to companies we'll never hear of, to build a profile on us we'll never see, to influence decisions we'll never know were made.

IT. IS. ALL. FAKE.

And we all yearn for what was once real.

Don't you remember? Did you forget?

There was a time with a simple handshake between men was a contract.

When bread went stale because... well, that's what real bread does!

When kids played outside all day until it was dark, and nobody tracked them.

When a family could live off a single income.

When music was made by people who LIVED something real and you could feel it.

When schools was HARD... and that was the point!

When doctors knew your name and your family, they even came to your house,

When you bought something once... and it was yours forever.

When the chair your grandmother bought once lasted 70 years and she passed it onto your dad.

And now nothing is real, and that's why everything sucks.

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@KTheCopywriter 2 weeks in 🤣

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@hub_stranger 2 parts??? when’s volume 2 dropping

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@audiencon I’m sitting at 90 followers

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

it totally is! congrats on your sale I’m always excited to hear about other people’s successes in this little community I’m building, I didn’t realize I was inspiring others and for that I can’t quit 🥺 I’m tackling on a lot prepping for the busiest season for business owners and taking 2 college classes as well but I want to keep inspiring others so I’ll continue with the challenge and just try my best!

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@BreesIsaiah 😭😭 well now I can’t but crap I wish I did this challenge before I got super busy

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@rene3zhang cali is a dream😭 or New York either one would be perfect

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@mdnlabs going to a coffee shop!! I’m packing some orders first before I leave since my post office collections time closes at 2pm today

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@NoahKingJr yess $100 in sales 🥳 I technically don’t get paid until next week but still

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@Maheen_Khan675 yess I need it to recharge

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@Vincijr2 yes I made 3 sales and upsold one for $25 so a very successful day! what did you sell??

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

$84 in Etsy sales today 🥳🥳

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@Tech_girlll morning??? it’s night time for me I’m in CO

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@weswinder night owl for sure but I want to try early mornings

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@mdnlabs thanks! I realized the music community is big and so is the need for custom gifts! I’m excited to see how my business does this Christmas

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

I made my Etsy account in July but I didn’t know what to sell lol so I added a few different products and did POD with printify, then candles is what worked for me and I made over a thousand during Christmas time so I invested that 1k and purchased all the supplies I needed to make candles and ship the candles from home around February! I increased my profit from $5 per order to $12 shipping everything myself

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@mdnlabs here’s an order I packaged today! I sell individual candles but I started including bundles too about a week ago and I sold one today :)

[Ana 🦋 @buildwithana]

@Mr_Juni2 family for sure!