My Plate Runneth Over And I’m Piling On More?

You know… having a blog and not updating it kinda leaves you with a 24 hour guilt trip that just doesn’t go away. Anyone who knows me knows that I am always on the run. It always seems like there are not enough hours in a day.

I run a home based catering business, manage more websites than I can handle in addition to being a driver cum homemaker to my kids… and what do I go and do? I set up an online store… that’s what.

Something had to give while I was scrounging for time to set up my online store, so it was HomeWithAndrew, then my other websites. When I first started working from home, starting an online store was always on the cards. I just never got enough motivation to get myself off off my ass and do it. Bad example to set for a work-at-home Dad. Yeah.

If I had kept to the schedule I set five years ago, I would have already set up 3 online stores. But who can predict the future. I never knew that running the catering business would take up soooo much of my time. It’s a vicious cycle of sorts. The more my catering business grows, the more time I have to put in, which means I spend less time on my online money making. But the original plan was to build my online network to a level where we would NOT have to depend on the catering business.

So why would I go and set up and online store when I already have too much on my plate? Well, it’s part of my strategy to NEVER depend on only ONE or TWO sources of income. My online store is a long-term plan to always diversify.

CoolCat t-shirts is a culmination of everything that I love : art, designing, web development, coding and t-shirts. I’m still learning the ropes, managing my store, but CoolCat t-shirts has brought me full circle. Ever since I was a small boy, I loved drawing on my old t-shirts. When I became a teenager, I would make simple templates and printed one-color designs on t-shirts. I experimented with all sorts of t-shirt printing techniques - even potato prints and t-shirt crayons! Then when I was in secondary school, I learnt the art of making silk-screen blocks, which was so addictive that I started a small t-shirt printing biz with a friend after school. The business didn’t fly. My partner had other plans and she was the one running the business side of things. So my t-shirt dreams were put on hold. Now almost twenty years later, the wonder of the Internet is making me salivate.

From my research, the secret to Cafepress success is patience. That, I have lots of experience. It’s took many years of patient building before my websites started to make substantial money. I plan to set up a few more stores and will probably pass on the designing tasks to my wife and daughter who thankfully share my passion for designing.

Anyway… I’d like to invite you to visit my new online store :

So here I am with my plate overflowing and I’m piling on more. And people say I’m so lucky I don’t have to work so hard. Yeah. Right.

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