Mirth and Company — A Beginning
EntreBurnor is about the journey our family will take through various entrepreneurial endeavors. Setting out to build businesses and brands was not necessarily always the plan, especially not in the midst of adopting two newborns, in two separate adoption actions, at the same time, but life is rarely about the expected and mundane.
For my part, building a business has always been a dream. Truthfully, I wish I had taken a bolder path out of college where I had all sorts of support and safety nets but I had a plan at the time and I saw it through. (One major topic to explore later is judging decisions based on results and wishing to revise past behavior. In the wise words of Pop from Luke Cage, “ Never backward. Always Forward! “) I’ve tried here and there to start something but nothing has gained steam. If I’m being honest with myself, I’ve been timid. However, there is no reason anymore to be timid. (Not that there ever was a good reason.)
My main project has grown directly out of fatherhood and I could not love it more. I’ve always told stories. Alyse will tell you that I would tell her absurd stories when we were dating, especially long distance, though nothing came of them. However, when Calvin, our first, was about 18–24 months old, I began to tell him stories at night to calm him down and settle him for bed. He loved these stories and, as he got older, began to ask to incorporate various of his stuffed animals and toys into the stories. Each began to appear as their own characters until over the years quite a tapestry of stories has developed. As I began to write them down, Alyse enjoyed them just as much as Calvin did, and when she shared them with family and friends others began to encourage me to share them further. Never one to turn down an invitation to communicate more, Mirth and Company or MirthnCo is my over-complicated effort to comply.
Given that I am comfortable and happy with my day job, I have the freedom to experiment with methods to share and publish my stories. These experiments may not be earth-shattering but I hope to build with them into new models and formats for publications. Neither the traditional model of funneling into publishing houses nor the newer model of self-publishing into a vast sea of ambitious unknowns greatly appeal to me. I would rather build slower and smaller and build brand and content along the way. Bedtime podcasts, Twitter stories, Instagram or TikTok segmentation, NFT’s, etc are all fertile grounds for experimentation. My goal is to eventually turn Mirth and Company into its own brand of story subscriptions that has its own set of characters to know and love.
I will, of course, link to launches, releases, and write about new experiments on here. One step at a time but always forward, never backwards!
Originally published at https://entreburnor.com on January 20, 2022.
