nebulous, nebulae, nebula

gm and welcome to issue 65. Last week I wrote about building in public, then shared the very incomplete, mid-motion inOregon website I’ve been chipping away at between work and life things.

This week I’m wondering: where do I go from here? Do I start pitching, or, do I even pitch at all? Do I just keep growing inOregon in the direction that most excites me? Do I think of this thing as more of a lifestyle business, as opposed to the original “startup” direction I’d been focusing on?

I may not yet have answers to these questions, but I’m sure as hell going to overthink, dissect, and spiral on them in today’s newsletter. Shall we?

are you… a lifestyle business?

At this juncture, I’m sitting at 27 business entries for my product market fit survey, Instagram growth is at a slow but steady clip (organic and paid), the V1 website is truly almost done, and I’ve got my next content collection trip lined up for early May (hint: it’s here).

Earlier this year, I think over the course of a long-ass drive up to Bellingham, I learned about the clear distinction between a startup and a lifestyle business. Whether out of ignorance or a lack of exposure to the “business world” or both, I honestly didn’t know the diff.

During the 8hr+ drive (War and Peace was putting me to sleep, remember?), I was of course listening to StartUp. One of the guests, a young woman trying to turn her matchmaking service into a successful startup, had a sort of revelation that I’ve been thinking about ever since: what if… this is just a lifestyle business instead of a startup?

The podcast then went on to lay out some of the key differences between lifestyle businesses and startups. And a lightbulb didn’t entirely go off in my head, but it for sure flickered. And not dimly.

StartUp’s host, Alex Blumberg, had touched on lifestyle businesses versus startups in season one, when he himself was trying to turn StartUp (the podcast) into an actual startup—and pitching investors. One of the investors told him, “This sounds more like a lifestyle business, not a startup with massive, high-speed growth potential.”

Even though I’d had the idea of inOregon as “a startup” projected across the landscape of my mind for months, in both of those moments something glitched. In a good way. Like maybe what I’m building—app or not—is actually a lifestyle business.

And more importantly, maybe this is what I want it to be. As someone who’s been fucking full speed ahead on everything—always, all the time—building this thing by slowing down, reassessing, and pivoting a little actually sounds nice.

There, I said it out loud. Or rather I wrote it down for myself and a few others to read.

Admittedly, for probably multiple different reasons, my ego had barnacled to the idea of “this is going to be a startup.” But you know what? It’s fucking not. And that’s both ok and a huge relief.

Apparently, this realization/shift doesn’t mean I can’t still pitch investors.

I can, if I want to—wholeheartedly and with conviction. Only instead of VCs, we’re talking angel investors and the general public. And instead of trying to go in front of big men with big money and prove how this thing is going to grow exponentially (in record time, mind you)—and drive massive revenue with big returns for all involved—I can just… talk about what’s working.

The slow-blossom of paths that excite me. The relationships I’ve forged. The community I’m building. The sustainable work involved. The potential points of inflection and how, over time, this bitch is gonna fly.

And it’s this latter sentiment and framework—the opposite of high-speed growth at all costs—that doesn’t make me puke in my mouth. Which I take as a big a sign that a “lifestyle business” is more my speed and my values.

The following Google Search AI summary—search query: when do i pitch as a lifestyle business—kinda lights me up. Like, makes me smile. I didn’t realize you could pitch like this—focused on steady profitability, passion-driven work, sustainable growth over scaling.

I thought pitching was all fast growth and big returns—or nothing at all.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

I still want to do everything I’ve been dreaming up—the app (ignore page 2, that’s the elusive survey), the editorial features on small Oregon brands and businesses, the seasonal newsletter, the Instagram features, etc.

Only now, with this small-but-also-big reframe, I can think about these things with less urgency. Less pressure. Less profit-first energy. The whole “startup vision” was self-imposed, yeah. But what isn’t self-imposed these days? Either way, I love—and welcome—the undoing of it.

And now? I’ve got V1 of a website to complete, a winery experience to capture, a newsletter to flesh out, and a long list of angel investors to maybe start conversations with—and my own business to run and grow.

Which maybe, just maybe, feels like enough.

That’s it for issue 65. Thanks for hanging while I worked some things out on paper. Hopefully it shifted something for you too. Like—maybe if I just shift the framework slightly, from what I thought it had to be to what I actually want it to be, the whole shebang feels better. More me. Or something like that.

K, see you next week.

xoxo,

lw