💛 we can't do it alone 💛

Ideas on how to support your favorite small businesses, makers, artists, and self-employed weirdos!

Welcome to Gathered Threads - the special email love letter for paid subscribers of the Thread + Sprout substack. However TODAY this one is free for everyone! Not a paid subscriber yet? You can join anytime!

Thank you so much for being here in whatever capacity you can. Your support truly means the world to me 💛

Hello my dear email subscribers. How are you doing today?

How is your heart? How does it feel to be in your body? Are you able to take a moment to check in with yourself, investigate what is going on with you and offer yourself the nourishment you may be needing?

Today I feel some deep sadness, anger and just a base layer of melancholy. About a lot of things - I mean, come on, there is a looooottttt to be sad and mad about these days - but one thing in particular that is weighing on me is seeing multiple small businesses/makers/artists announce that they are closing up shop over the last few days.

It is always a hard time to be a small business/maker/artist/self-employed weirdo and it is especially hard these days. The economy is shit, the price of everything is just going up and up and up, capitalism is draining us all, it feels more impossible every day to market ourselves, our collective mental health is…really going through it, etc etc. I know that we are all feeling it.

Seeing my fellow small business owners post about closing up their shops and knowing that they have probably spent many hours trying really hard to make it work, pivoting, taking risks, not paying themselves, and crying with sadness and/or frustration, not to mention the amount of money they have probably spent trying to make it work, feels so disheartening. I also know that they have probably spent many hours over the years of doing business rejoicing in what they do, leaping for joy at every sale, connecting with beautiful human beings, doing what they love and taking pride in their work

In light of all of these small businesses closing up shop, I thought it might be good to share some ideas on how to support your favorite small businesses, makers, artists, and self-employed wizards while they are still in business.

And it doesn’t all have to be financially!

I believe it takes creativity, resilience, patience and forethought to be a supporter of small businesses.
It means understanding you may not get free shipping.
It means planning ahead for gifts so that you don’t end up going to amazon the day before.
It means remembering to check in on them on social media and engaging with their posts.

But we all benefit from it! You get the benefit of enjoying unique, different, thoughtfully made/curated/crafted things and we (the small business owners) get the ability to pay the other small businesses we support, pay for our groceries and rent, buy our animals food, and do what we enjoy doing. Which is just so much better than giving billionaires more money to just like build hotels on the moon or whatever they’re doing these days.

Okie so on to the list of ways to support your favorite small businesses, makers, artists and self-employed fairies! ✨

First and foremost…

• Buy things from them! When you can and it isn’t a big financial strain on you and when it’s something you actually really want and/or need.

• If you can’t afford their bigger/more expensive products but do have smaller offerings that you like, you could buy those (like prints/stickers/digital downloads)

• If they have subscription services like a paid Substack or Patreon, consider joining - these are usually like $5 a month and even if you only join for a month or two, it’s still supporting! 

If there is an artist or self-employed person you really like and want to support financially you can also see if they have a KoFi account or something similar or just reach out to them and ask if you can buy them a coffee and send them $5-10 on Venmo! It may not be a lot in the grand scheme of things but sometimes this can be the difference between us eating lunch and not…

Can’t support monetarily at this moment? Here are other things you can do…

• Engage with their content on social media! This can include liking and commenting on their posts as well as responding to their stories. This also includes sharing and saving their posts! These two actions seem to reaaallly help with getting more people to see their content - so sharing to your stories or sending directly to someone else you think might like them is a great idea!

• Share about them off of social media! Tell your friends, cousins, strangers, and coworkers about the cool artists you like! 

• Subscribe to their emails and actually open their emails when you get them! This helps to teach the email servers that these emails are not spam :) (I know, it seems crazy, but all of us sending newsletters like these can actually see how many of them are opened and clicked from 😳)

• If you have things made by them - share photos of those things on social media (if you feel comfy doing so) 

• Leave a review if that applies to them

Some other things that can help…

• On social media - you can turn on post notifications and add people to your favorites so you make sure you see their content

• If they have in-person events near you, go to them if you are able to! 

• Tell your favorite artists, makers, self-employed weirdos that you like what they are doing! Little love messages like this really go a long way in making us feel seen and like all this hard work is actually worth all the effort (we save all of yours in a folder titled “Love Notes” 🧡)

• If you are forgetful about brand names, keep a list on your phone of your favorite makers/small businesses/artists so that when you are looking for something you can refer to that as options of where to get the thing rather than going to Jeffy Bezos

Most small businesses buy things from other small businesses so when you support one, you are helping to support a whole chain of small businesses and it makes the world a brighter, more interesting place.

Alrighty, I know this was a lot of words, so thank you for reading if you made it all this way! I so appreciate all of your love and support for me as a self-employed weirdo. I honestly do a little dance every time I get a sale, text my mom about nice messages I get and notice when people take the time to engage with my content.

Thank you for being here! You’re doing great! Keep on keeping on my friends!

xoxo

Justice