This week a good handful of friends have asked if I regret closing Manic Trout last year. So I thought it a nice time to talk about reinvention. I’m a fan of it. In my late twenties, a male friend I’d known since our teens told me that I’d reinvented myself more times than Madonna. […]
How often do you push yourself through fear and do things that scare you? And I don’t mean things like walking alone in a dark park at night. I’m talking more about the risks that we shy away from emotionally and on more of a “less likely to kill you” level. Like walking up to […]
An interesting side effect of deciding to close a business after 15 years is how many people congratulated me on being able to quit. At first, I was surprised by this but then I thought about it and realized how hard we are about the concept of quitting. It also seems to be an incredibly […]
About six months ago, I made the incredibly difficult decision to close Manic Trout, my handmade jewelry brand that I had poured my heart into for 15 years. I wrote about the closing here and have been in awe of how many people have reached out since I wrote that post to let me know […]
I started Manic Trout 15 years ago when I was in my mid-twenties with the excitement of having a way to sell my art and digital work. It was mostly website designing with my paintings and jewelry as a side part. After a few years, I stopped designing websites and eventually stopped painting. All of […]
I started Manic Trout in January of 2003. For years, I worked full time as well so I could put all of the income from the business back into it. In 2011, I moved to Austin, TX and took the leap to full time and have been enjoying solid growth since the move. Since 2003, […]
I joke around with friends of mine who have related businesses that kids these days have it so easy to start a handmade business. There are shelves of books, hundreds of blogs, dozens of groups and even droves of websites on which to sell that are all dedicated to specifically guide you as a maker […]
I am one of the many, many people who can’t seem to turn off the thoughts in my brain when it comes time to go to sleep. This means that more often than not, I am lying in the dark, flipping the pillow to the cool side, and wishing I could just go to sleep […]
There are many things I have learned in building and running a business for 10 years and many things I of course still need to. There are also things that I am trying to figure out how to learn such as allowing myself to have a life. For eight years, I worked full time and […]
© 2020 All rights reserved Sierra Bailey & Doers Shakers Makers
