Can I share something with you? [About our Making Stories Collective]

Hello friends! I sent out the following lines as a newsletter this week, and wanted to put them on the blog as well. They explain our recent launch of the Making Stories Collective, and I felt it was important that they not only live in said email, but also here, on the blog.

Hanna Lisa x

Dear Reader

I haven't been that nervous to send out a launch email in a long, long time. You see, what I'm about to share is pretty personal (yes, even for me), and it comes with its own package of feelings - shame, relief, pride, fear.

I am sharing it because transparency is incredibly important to me, and because as long as I'm not talking about it, I'm perpetuating a problem in the industry. And, maybe most importantly, because some things here will have to change, otherwise we won't be around much longer.

You see - I'm not able to pay myself.

There's a lot of complicated feelings inside of me, sharing this. A lot of shame, and "what will people think", and "I'm a fraud because I claim to run a sustainable business, but no business that's not able to pay its owner is sustainable."

There's also an immense amount of privilege behind this statement, because it means that Making Stories existed for the past few years because my partner was supporting me financially. That is by far not possible for everyone - and not for us anymore either -, and by not paying myself, I've perpetuated the problem of fair compensation being extremely difficult to achieve in our industry.

So the thing is this: I will need to start paying myself. I can no longer do this work for free. Plus - I'm worth it. The full-time work that I put into Making Stories is worth that I pay myself for it.

I also want Making Stories to continue. This is my life's work, and I truly believe that we make the world a better place because we exist. But in order for us to continue, I need to start paying myself.

We have a lot of new, and really exciting things lined up for this fall, but the first thing that we'll do is this:

We're launching the Making Stories Collective.

The Collective is a monthly membership - like Patreon, just on our website - that you can join if you love what we do and you want us to stick around.

With your Collective membership, you can...

... support our work,

... get behind-the-scenes content created just for you,

... get early access to new products and restocks,

... get exclusive Collective products,

... get 10% off our entire webshop, always.

We've put together three Collective levels for you:

Join the Collective

I so, so hope that the Collective resonates with you! I am brimming with ideas of behind-the-scenes content I want to create (interviews with awesome yarn makers anyone?), and I cannot wait to see the first members join.

I am also incredibly nervous. While I know, deep in my heart, that openness and honesty and transparency is the right way for me to run this business, sharing this has been hard. I hope you hold this gently, in the palm of your hands. Thank you for being here, with us.

Hanna Lisa x

PS: If joining the Collective is not for you right now, you can also support our work by sharing about it - be it forwarding this email, or using Instagram to spread the word. Thank you.