PRODUCT SHOTS

plastic. We hand-treat each pad with a layer of silicone, and we personally plant one tree for every pad we sell. Each of our boards is extra thick so they perform well in the grass, and they have a pebbled surface finish to better simulate the feel of the ice. All of that said, we’ve taken a single sheet of plastic and wrapped so much meaning into it that kids and parents all over the country choose us over substantial legacy suppliers. It’s a fun product line.

08

My best advice would be to audit your time and figure out what you need to give up to make it happen. If you go through the process of writing down your activities in any given week, hour by hour, I think you’d be surprised by how much time you have outside of work. The other thing that most people don’t recognize is the power of incremental progress. If you spend just 5 hours a week, that turns into 260 hours of work over the course of a year. That’s 6.5 weeks of work at 40 hours per week. Bump that to 10 hours per week and stretch it out over 3 years and that’s equal to nearly 10 months of work toward your project. Imagine what you could do with 10 months of dedication! You have no idea, really.

You must be willing to do it one hour at a time, though, and you must be willing to delay the gratification. Once you understand how much time you have and the impact of a few hours a week, it really becomes a question of what you really want. Do you want to work on your project for an hour or do you want to watch Netflix? Do you want to make a few hours worth of progress, or do you want to go golfing? How important is TikTok to you? What if you deleted it? How important is alcohol to you? What if you didn’t drink for a few months? What do you really want and what can you live without? These are the thought processes that worked for me. Motivation is a function of meaning and meaning is all about sacrificing things now for a chance at something better in the future.

Lastly, what can we do as a community to help you and GEMSHO succeed?

I would love to compare notes with anyone in our community that is active in the e-commerce space and seeing some success. I’d also be happy to connect with anybody that is active in the e-commerce space and isn’t seeing success. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’d like to connect. We love to help and we’re always thrilled to learn!

We’re also open to hearing from retailers, distributors, and anyone else that’s interested in selling, distributing, or buying personalized/custom barware for events or as a gift!

If anything, I think I would maybe offer myself some encouragement. Something like, “You’re on the right track, keep making healthy sacrifices, and the results will follow.” It would be tempting to want to warn myself of some impending mistakes but I’m not sure that would be helpful. Some lessons need to be learned firsthand if they’re to be respected. Going back maybe 15-20 years, I think I would have offered myself the advice I shared in the last question.

Where to Buy: JEM GLASS

Unglued in Brewhalla at 1702 1st Ave N, Fargo, ND 58102 jemglass.shop amazon.com/jemglass etsy.com/shop/GemshoGlass Mint m1nthockey.com

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