It was fall in the Pacific Northwest.
One of those gray mornings where the clouds seem permanently attached to the sky.
Halloween was less than a month away.
My wife and I had stopped at the little coffee stand near the end of our neighborhood, the kind of place that somehow makes rainy mornings feel a little warmer. As I waited for my drink, a thought crossed my mind.
There weren't many T-shirts that combined all the things I loved.
Coffee.
Horror.
Halloween.
The smells and flavors of autumn, mixed with monsters, ghosts, and everything spooky.
As someone who enjoys a hot cup of coffee year-round and can happily watch horror movies in any season, I thought:
"Somebody should make these shirts."
Then another thought followed.
"Why not me?"
So I did.
I started with simple designs.
A smiling jack-o'-lantern holding a coffee mug.
Then came slasher pumpkins.
Zombies.
Demons discussing their favorite roast.
The undead enjoying a warm cup because, after all...
Coffee is life—even for the undead.
Creating the designs was exciting.
Every new idea became another shirt.
Every shirt became another possibility.
It felt like rediscovering a creative part of myself that had been sleeping for years.
I thought that would be the hard part.
It wasn't.
Finding a company to print the designs and ship products turned out to be surprisingly straightforward.
Building a website wasn't too bad either.
The real challenge arrived afterward.
The internet is an ocean.
And everyone is shouting.
Millions of creators.
Millions of stores.
Millions of videos.
Everyone hoping to be noticed.
I quickly learned that creating a product is only half the journey.
If nobody knows it exists, it might as well not exist at all.
So I started learning.
SEO.
Social media.
Marketing.
Video creation.
Algorithms.
Things I had never imagined when I sketched that first coffee-loving pumpkin.
Today, I'm still learning.
I'm still trying to help the right people discover what I've built.
Getting visitors to a website is hard.
Convincing them to trust you enough to click "Buy" is even harder.
The road ahead looks rocky.
But every new skill I learn brings me one step closer to the people who will love what I've created.
And quitting?
That's not part of the story.