PP 118: The Daring Adventures of Life with Amy Braswell

Amy and I have a fascinating discussion about batching, delegating, creative inspiration, understanding our limitations and productivity tools!

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Resources Mentioned

Episode Transcription

Kim: Welcome back to another episode of positive productivity. This is your host Kim Sutton. And today I am thrilled to have Amy Braswell, from Paper Finch Design with us. Welcome Amy!

Amy Braswell: Hi! Thank you for having me.

Kim: Oh I’m thrilled to have you here. As I said, Amy is from Paper Finch Design where she is the owner and designer. And if you haven’t checked it out yet you will definitely have to before I jump into the episode I want you to know that everything that we talk about can be found in the show notes at the Kim Sutton dot com forward slash PP 1 1 8. Amy thank you again for being here. Could you give the audience the idea of what you do and how you got to be the owner, or how your journey was that you started Paper Finch Design?

Amy Braswell: Of course yeah! At Paper Finch Design I create inspirational and geographic art prints and HomeGoods to help people tell their story. I like to work around my mantra so to speak.

Mantra however you pronounce it. Is that quote by Helen Keller that, “life is a daring adventure or nothing at all”. So I like to help people celebrate their daring adventure of life. I do a lot of state and city prints so that people can celebrate where they’re from or where they’re going. I do a lot of adventure and positive quote art. I just try to keep things very celebratory bright and happy. I’ve been doing that for about six years. I knew when I got serious with my now husband, that I wanted some sort of job where I could work from home and at the time I was bartending which was not a very I don’t know healthy is the word I want to use job for a new marriage. We are two hours and we were just on opposite schedules so I thought about what I really enjoyed doing. And luckily my husband at the time owned a he’s still my husband. But at the time he owned a vacation rental website and I got to start working with him on that and doing some work one on one with the graphic designer I realized I loved it. So I went back to school for a couple of years to kind of learn the software and the basics of design. And then right out of the gate I started Paper Finch because I knew I wanted to own my own company and be able to work from home and have a flexible schedule. And then here we are six years later.

Kim: Oh I love that. If you could go back to let’s even say 10 or 15 years, would you do anything different? Do you think you would start Paper Finch Design earlier if you could?

Amy Braswell: I don’t think so. I mean I would love to be doing what I do now back then because I’d be so much farther along and I look at designs I did five years ago and I cringe Of course. I would love to be even more polished but at the same time I wouldn’t be where I am today if I wasn’t where I was 10 years ago. I didn’t know my husband 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have my son so no. I mean business wise it would be awesome to be another few years ahead, but I like my life. So I think I would have to say no I do it all exactly the same.

Kim: I love that response. I actually saw on Facebook earlier this week they posed a question they said in one hand I have a blue pill that will take you back to when you were 10 having all the knowledge that you have now, and then the other hand I have a red pill which will fast forward to when you’re 45. I realize that doesn’t apply to everybody because some people already 45 and put $50 million in your bank account. So I asked my husband, which one would you do? And we both agreed that we would go back to when we were 10 years old and we would have a place that we would meet like 20 years earlier than we did.

Amy Braswell: Wow. But that’s tough because then I think we wouldn’t have our son.

Kim: Oh I agree! We just agreed that we would make the kids that we would have had off, of others together. But you know you’re so right. How was your journey starting Paper Finch Design? Where did you get started, and what obstacles did you overcome as you were building your business?

Amy Braswell: That’s a funny question for me. Because my story is a little bit complicated I guess and so settle back for a minute.

I will say right out of the gate I got pretty lucky. I had the time to work on it to build my own business. Luckily I was in a two income household. My husband was supportive so I was able to kind of take the time and build my business and I didn’t have to do a day job and come home and work until 1:00 in the morning building Paper Finch. So, I was very lucky in that respect. I just started designing and I started out doing well gosh not at all what I do now. I started out thinking I’m going to sell scrap a digital scrapbook supplies so, I would hand color and hand vectorize which – don’t worry about that. I would take..

Kim: Oh, I understand that—–

Amy Braswell: I would take—

Kim: You were taking my language —

Kim: OK. OK.

Kim: Oh my gosh.

Amy Braswell: I would take old clip art and vectorize it and color it and sell it for like a dollar because I’m thinking oh we’ll have 100 people buy it. That’s $100 and I don’t have to do anything. Well I quickly learned that was not exactly the most profitable way to grow. So, I started doing wall art that I mostly do now. So business was actually going pretty well and I was starting to make sales almost daily which was huge to get into my personal story a little bit. We got hit pretty hard with a lot of life things.

Amy Braswell: So, it’s funny that you asked if I could go back ten years and my answer about me being farther along in my business than I would be now. The growth from like year two to six has been kind of slow because we went through a bunch of infertility and it puts life in perspective and it slows your life down when you’re having to focus emotionally and mentally on something that big. Not to mention the time involved. I’ve kinda came out of the gate really with a lot of momentum and then hit a little bit of a plateau and now I feel like I’m on a growth pattern again. Was that rumbly enough for you? I tend to rumble.

Kim: Oh, I rumble. That was perfect.

Amy Braswell: OK.

Kim: I don’t know if you know but, in 2005 was actually when I started my own entrepreneurial journey and I was selling scrapbook supplies online on eBay. But I started by making handmade die cuts.

Amy Braswell: Oh gosh.

Kim: And I greatly undercharge for them, like a dollar for six. And these were die cuts that could have taken me two hours to make six.

Amy Braswell: Are die cuts are time intensive?

Kim: Yeah. Some of them had 13-14 pieces that all had to be glued together for one.

Amy Braswell: My gosh.

Kim: So, while I thought it was a great opportunity and I too could make a lot of money I never thought about the fact that I’m selling six of these die cuts for a dollar that are taking two hours and there was just no way to scale that.

Amy Braswell: Right.

Kim: Before we jumped into the recorded person of our chat. We were talking about how you have a wholesale coach and love for you to share a little bit about that journey and what it means to your business and the joys… maybe joys is the wrong word but the excitement that goes along with approaching the wholesale market.

Amy Braswell: No joy is a good word, as well as stress, and tears. So I have been doing wholesale for a couple of years but, very small batch wholesale and I haven’t been aggressively pursuing it. It’s just kind of been stores who’ve reached out to me and said: Hey! are you interested in wholesale? And I had to quickly throw together numbers and terms and whatnot. So having told myself that this is the year. I’m going to really buckle down and it’s kind of I mentioned the infertility this is kind of the first year we don’t have fertility going on, a move going on all kinds of stuff. So this is the year. So I hired a wholesale coach and she is amazing. Her name is Carolyn Keating, little shout out to Carolyn and she helps me get focused. She’s a former sales rep and buyer for a large multimillion dollar company so, she’s been out there in the world doing it. And now she coaches small business owners and I’m such a rule follower that it really helps me to hear like: “this is how it’s usually done, this is how you do it” because it’s scary to go sell yourself. You know it’s one thing to put your work on Etsy and kind of hide in your office and be like I hope someone buys this. It’s another to write someone and say hey my stuff is great. You need to put it in your store. And that is so awkward for me which is most of the stress of wholesale is just putting yourself out there. It’s like dating. It’s really intimidating.

Amy Braswell: But, she’s been awesome and we’re just kind of in the middle of the meat of it to really kind of overhaul my wholesale line. And it’s a whole different world than retail. So, it’s been interesting to just learn working with buyers and corporations instead of one on one with the customers which I never want to give up. I never want to stop doing retail because I really do love working with my customers one on one but it’s just a whole other facet to my business and it’s fun to always be learning and growing.

Kim: And you’re working on your brand new website.

Amy Braswell: Yes .

Kim: I would love to chat a little bit though about the wholesale process. Because I’m wondering? What systems you’re setting up to make sure that you’re not taking on more than you can handle? Because I can hear listeners out there thinking wow that’s so exciting but there’s so many ways that you need to protect yourself. How are you making sure that you’re not getting too many orders?

Amy Braswell: Right now, that hasn’t been a problem but, hopefully it will be soon. I am doing a lot of research into product fulfillment. In fact, I mentioned earlier I offer our prints and like HomeGoods. All my HomeGoods go through manufacturers. So that’s nice. I know all the designs. 100 percent of the designing is done by me. But then I will have a manufacturer to put it on pillows, put it on mugs, put it on a canvas print so they handle the manufacturing side of that. At this point I’m still doing all my own art prints in my own studio but, I got my eye on the prize so I’m looking into like what you said: what will happen when I start getting so many wholesale orders that I can’t keep up? And so I have got some systems in place and some ideas of what I’ll do. I think I’m probably going to offer two choices and have different price points and one would be a larger batch kind of poster printing and the other one. OK, I’ll hand produce them in my studio. But it’s going to be a little bit more money so it’ll kind of keep the numbers in check.

Kim: Oh my gosh. Did you hear that?

Amy Braswell: Was that a dog?

Kim: Well that’s the dog but, there was just a big cat fight in the background when you were talking.

Amy Braswell: Oh I didn’t hear that at all.

Kim: That’s fabulous. Awesome. I am so sorry Amy. This is…. I’ve never had the blooper reel hit three times.

Amy Braswell: Oh, this is right up my alley. I loved the blooper reel. Takes the pressure off. I can just be myself and be goofy and dorky like I am. So. Pressure’s off.

Kim: You just took a huge stress off of me for you because looking back at when I had my scrapbooking store I dreamt of the day that I could get these little die cuts into one of the local scrapbooking stores. But I wasn’t really thinking about it you know. How am I going to produce thousands of these? And I’m so glad to hear that it is not all going through your hands because I could imagine you having like an assembly line and staying up all night. But with that said, Is there a typical day I should ask in the day of Amy so that you stay focused and productive without getting burnt out?

Amy Braswell: Yes, well more or less. I have been trying before my son came along. It was very haphazard and I think it kind of showed in my productivity and in my growth. And once you have kids it changes everything. I was never a scheduled person but, I’ve become a bit of a schedule person. So now, I really do try to stick to Monday through Friday quote unquote regular working hours. And I try to limit my weekends to spend time with him. I’ve really been good at going unplugged on the weekends but, I try to do a bit of batch work so I’ll sit down and say: “ok for two hours, I’m going to work on files or work on mock ups or do social media”. I try to keep it in batches because I have learned that if I don’t tune out everything else and focus on one task it’s very much I get the squirrel moments which my husband makes fun of me for I get a little distracted. So, that being said in the life of a small business owner you’re constantly scheduling calls or meetings or something comes up. You got to put out a fire so, I have structure with a lot of flexibility and I just told my husband last night that I don’t know what it is when my to do list is the longest is when creativity always strikes. So, I have to pause and I’ve learned to strike when the iron is hot with design inspiration because sometimes I’ll go a long time with nothing new in my head. So when something jumps in, I have to immediately get it down on quote unquote paper.

Amy Braswell: Everything I do is digital, so that I can at least go back and reference it later when I have the time to fully flesh it out. So I try to give myself a schedule, but give myself lots of grace and wiggle room within that schedule for creativity or putting out fires.

Kim: If I were to give you a white sheet of paper right now, what would happen to it?

Amy Braswell: Probably a To Do list. Yeah probably my To Do list or maybe some doodling. I have to say though, I don’t sketch too often. I found myself doing it the other day and it was a nice release but honestly, I would probably end up writing my To Do List which is sad. As an artist that makes me sad. But honestly that’s probably what I would do.

Kim: Oh no, I don’t think so. The first thing that my 14 year old does when he gets home from school, is he brings the mail in and for some reason it just always gets dropped on my desk. But I found that the backs of envelopes I hardly look at the mail, isn’t that bad? But I use the backs of the envelopes for lists and notes and that is so not at all productive. Because I sometimes use envelopes disappear before I do anything but, white paper usually equates note or to do list.

Amy Braswell: I feel like as an artist I should say, I would sketch but I probably would not.

Kim: Where do you get most of your new ideas?

Amy Braswell: Gosh. It’s usually off of something I’ve seen. I’m very visual which I guess would be seem obvious. So maybe a color palette I saw somewhere or a font I really liked and I’ll just go off of that. And like I said I don’t really sketch but I kind of sketch on my computer which is nice because if you don’t like what you can do is just (inaudible) and it’s gone.

Amy Braswell: So, I might pull up a font or a phrase and then I just start playing around with it and I see what visually sticks and I can be kind of impulsive. So sometimes I’ll release the design and then a couple of months later change it and re release it because I realized a way I could make it better. I don’t sit on it and wait till it’s absolutely perfect which I maybe should but, that’s just not my style. But when I’m feeling kind of stuck creatively, I usually go somewhere. I’ve found that I get sick of working at my house in my studio, so I’ll go to a coffee shop or a park or something and I’ll see or hear like a snippet of conversation or I’ll see someone’s outfit or get a dose of sunshine and vitamin D. That always helps me.

Kim: I have been seeing the expression wanderlust all over lately including on your podcast form and I’m more wondering if you could explain it to me and to any listeners who might not quite understand what it means.

Amy Braswell: And I don’t know if there’s like a true definition, but mine is just that urge to get outside and explore life.

Amy Braswell: I know for travel companies and travel bloggers it’s all about the urge to travel and see the world. But I think it can also, you can have wanderlust in your own town too. It’s just kind of that desire to get out really explore the world, look around, experience life, learn new things, see new places, and it’s just that drive to keep exploring.

Kim: I find wanderlust. I know this isn’t at all what it means but, I find a problem when I go to websites. Do you find that you get stuck if you’re visiting the font or font squirrel? Does it draw you in forever?

Amy Braswell: Oh yes. You go down the font. Rabbit Hole and I’m a sucker for buying new fonts. I have so many on my computer And I keep meaning to go and organize them so I can find them again but, I can definitely go down the font rabbit hole very easily.

Kim: What is one tool that you use on a daily basis that you would absolutely not want to go without?

Amy Braswell: Well, I have so many. I mean obviously, my Adobe suite because that’s how I do all my work. But one tool that I’ve discovered recently that I love and can’t live without now is called Wunderlist. It is an app so I can access it on my phone or my computer and it’s just like a list making app, but it’s so easy to use and it’s shareable. For instance, I have one list that’s groceries and my husband and I can share it. So if somebody stops by the grocery store, you can see what the current list is. Even if someone just added bread 5 minutes ago and you can sort it into all these different categories so I have one for personal and one for work. And we even keep one that’s like, movies to watch if we hear a good movie. We just keep a little list so that when Friday night rolls around and we say let’s rent a movie oh what should we watch. We can pull up our list and pick one out. But when you check out you can set timers and you can attach files and you can comment on it. It’s just so user friendly and has become such an important day to day thing in our household. And then you get this satisfying little ding when you check something off which is always nice.

Kim: That is awesome. I have heard of it before but I’ve never used it. So I love it I have to check that out. My husband, God love him. He cannot remember the grocery list. He’ll buy everything but what’s on the list.

Amy Braswell: And you can attach a picture that’s like: “this is the brand I want. Look for this brand”. So, it’s awesome.

Kim: No we’re definitely going to have to use this. Have you heard of a Forest— Forest app?

Amy Braswell: I have not.

Kim: It’s a way to stay on focus for blocks of time and you can set your time so I use it for about 25 minutes. And while you are staying focused it grows a tree. And at the end of the twenty five minutes you’ve basically started a forest and you can share your trees with other people but it’s really a game of fighting productivity and I love it.

Amy Braswell: That sounds amazing and like something I need.

Kim: You can get it on your computer. I know it’s available for Chrome and I also have it on my iPhone. All you listeners. I will put it into the shownotes and you can find it in dot Kim Sutton dot com forward slash pp 1 1 8. Yes Forest is awesome. And also Focus is available on the Mac and Focus that will is another great productivity app or web site that I found that will play music for set periods of time and when your focus time is done, it will ding.

Amy Braswell: That’s fantastic.

Kim: Yeah but Forest will actually, you can blacklist websites that you know you’re not supposed to be on during that 25 minute focused time. And that’s my problem. You go over to one of those sites. It actually has a transparent black overlay over it and says: “Are you sure you really want to be here”? And quickly drives me back to what I was supposed to be doing.

Amy Braswell: I’m definitely downloading that as soon as we’re done. Because that sounds like something I need in my life for sure.

Kim: I would love to know and for any husbands with entrepreneurial wives that are out there I would love to know, the one thing that your husband does best in supporting you while you’re building your business?

Amy Braswell: Well he is an entrepreneur himself. In fact, I think that’s where I got the idea I mentioned earlier that he used to own a vacation rental website. And his day job, he works for himself as a software developer. That’s a tough call I would, I’m tempted to say he provides inspiration because I know it can be done and he understands how that the ebb and flow of owning your own business how sometimes things are slow and then sometimes you have to put in some evening hours. So yeah, inspiration and understanding. Just understanding the lifestyle is probably the biggest thing that he ever does.

Kim: Have you ever collaborated on any projects?

Amy Braswell: Not really because he is not creative at all but that being said, he actually kind of inadvertently gave me the idea for one of my best selling designs. So I do credit him for that. I say thank you honey, this one has been a great seller and you came up with it. And then he has been active kind of on the research and my wholesale journey which is good. He loves researching so, if he offers to help I try to put him on tasks like that. OK, research this or research the best price point for a mug printer for me please. He’s been very helpful with that.

Kim: When we started the business, and I say we because it really was going to be the two of us. My husband was going to be part of it, but we quickly realized it just wasn’t where his passion was and he had other passions and it would be better if he focused there. So he is chief emotional support.

Amy Braswell: Yes. I say my husband is my CFO as well because he helps me keep my numbers in check.

Kim: So you are on Etsy right now. Do you have any words of wisdom for people who are considering starting an Etsy shop?

Amy Braswell: My first instinct would be to say that it takes a little time. Don’t expect success overnight. Etsy is amazing at bringing in traffic but it does have its own little set of SEO Tips and Tricks. Do a lot of reading. Go to the forums. There is a lot of helpful advice in the forums and plug away and you should see Etsy can be a formulaic and as long as your product and photography are good, I think you’ll start to see sales. You’ve just got to put in the time.

Kim: What marketing methods have worked best for you as you’ve been growing?

Amy Braswell: That was apparently thrown me for a loop because I just lost all the thoughts in my head.

Kim: That happens to me eight times a day.

Amy Braswell: Great! Social media has been really good lately. For a long time I concentrated, I put all my eggs in the Etsy basket so my main marketing was just getting on Etsy. Getting in the forums, talking to other sellers, teams were a little more active back then. Etsy’s changed a bit in the last few years, so I’ve had to kind of readjust my marketing which is I find to be a blessing because it’s reminded me not to put all your eggs in one basket. So I’ve been busy diversifying Paper Finch the last couple of years. So social media has been really big. I just started a little microblog on Instagram where every four days I find a gorgeous photo of somewhere around the world and then I write a little travel blog about it. And that’s been awesome for engagement and just kind of getting the word out about Paper Finch without having to actually travel the world and take all those gorgeous photography which let’s be honest would not be a bad gig. And then I’m pretty active locally too. And in some Facebook business groups. So I think that just kind of helps spread awareness about the Paper Finch brand.

Kim: You’re starting to do some coaching or consulting now as well, Right?

Amy Braswell: I am.

Kim: What type of coaching and consulting are you doing?

Amy Braswell: I work with small business owners in the creative space and I help them look at scaling their business and kind of get the steps in place to be ready to start scaling and, I help small business owners look at their content with new eyes and I help them figure out how to repurpose old content in order to save time and basically scale. I mean, that’s what scaling is you know? To be able to produce more with less work.

Kim: Do you have a favorite tool for repurposing content?

Amy Braswell: It depends on the career. The medium that the creative person is using whether they’re a photographer, a stylist, a designer. I have kind of a checklist that I use with them and I just say: “OK, You maybe wrote a blog post. Have you done this and this and this and this? Have you talked about it here? Have you turned each image into different Instagram posts”? I guess my most consistent tool then would be that checklist or a second set of eyes can help so much and that’s what I try to be for people. Because sometimes you just get so locked into your own brand and your own habits and patterns that you don’t realize: “Oh wait, I could take this that I’ve already done and do this with it”. And the work’s already done. And that would be another income stream for me.

Kim: Oh my gosh, I hear that. I get so close to what I’m working on that I just don’t see the obvious sometimes, to the point that my loyalist mouse will not be functioning properly and I won’t even think about changing the battery. Positive Productivity does not always mean perfection or total productivity. I just need to buy a box of batteries and keep them right on my desk.

Amy Braswell: I think you’re absolutely right that positive productivity is not mean perfection.

Kim: Oh no absolutely not. You are working on your web redesign. What has that journey look like to you?

Amy Braswell: It’s been so much fun for years would send people to my Etsy shop because I was just kind of embarrassed at my website as a designer. I didn’t think it was very pretty and it was a little clunky. And God bless them, my husband built it. He’s not a web designer. I really appreciate him putting in the time and I was probably being annoying, “change this, no do this” but he’s not a web developer. And as my inventory grew it just got kind of overwhelmed. I wasn’t on the right platform or had the right set up so, I hired a designer to do my web site and it’s just been so much fun. She’s got such a good creative eye and we’re actually good friends. I made friends with her as a business colleague first and we’ve become friends so I just, I knew her work ethic and her talent. And it’s just been so much fun to take what I know my brand could be and put it on a Web site. And it’s been interesting to learn like, OK there’s some systems I should have put in place way back when to make it a little bit easier to keep up with my inventory. And so, I’ve had to kind of go back and redo a few things so it’s been eye opening but it’s just been so much fun and I can’t wait till it goes live.

Kim: Amy, did you ever struggle with not charging enough for what you were selling, and how did you get over that? If so.

Amy Braswell: Oh absolutely. I struggled big time with impostures syndrome where I just thought, oh no one’s going to pay for this. I’m a fraud. And someday, somebody’s going to discover that this is so easy and I don’t know what I’m doing and so I would weigh undercharge especially for custom work. In the beginning I would do anything and everything somebody asked me to do just to get a sale under my belt and just to make a little money. It took me a few years which I feel like is probably longer than a lot of small business owners to realize a few things.

Amy Braswell: One was that I didn’t have to take every job that came my way that it actually was more important to pay attention to what was on brand. Because sticking to work that was on brand would actually strengthen my brand and enable me to charge more down the road saying, yes to everything and anything really watered down my brand so people didn’t know who I was or what I could do. So I would just keep getting those same going, “OK well I notice you’re a designer can you do this for me”? Instead of, “hey I like what you’ve already done, let me pay for it”? Which is really the better business model in the end.

Amy Braswell: And I also finally came to terms I have a hard time describing this without sounding conceited and I don’t mean to I think this is something that applies to any type of person creatively, professionally, scientifically, if something seems so easy to you it’s probably because you’re just good at it and it might seem really hard to someone else. I have to hope that if someone’s doing brain surgery on me, they at least somewhat think it’s easy. I finally came to them, I’m not comparing myself to a brain surgeon by any means. I tend to over exaggerate my comparisons to make my point. My best sellers are my skyline’s, skyline designs that I hand draw. And I, for years would say this is so easy somebody is going to start doing this and charging laughs and everyone going to go over here and buy their stuff. Well there’s plenty of other skyline art and home decor out there but, I found it easy because I had put in the time I had learned the skill and I practiced at it. My average customer couldn’t sit down at the computer and draw a skyline from scratch. And I finally embraced that and it was able to give me confidence which is just always a good thing to have and be a little bit more positive about my brand, but also charge a little bit more. I realized my value and my worth and I still struggle with it. I mean I talked earlier about how awkward it is for me to sell myself to wholesale shops or vendors.

Amy Braswell: I have the sales on Etsy to prove it that people want to buy my work daily. I still struggle with it and I constantly think about adjusting my numbers.

Kim: It’s because, I’m always right in me.

Amy Braswell: No, not at all. I do pride myself in my customer service, so I will go to great lengths to make someone happy but I don’t think the customer is always right. I will tell people no. If somebody sends me another design like from a different designer and says: “Can you do this? I will say no”! Because I’m not copying someone else’s work. Or, “Can you use this logo? No, because that’s illegal”. I mean that’s just the first thing that came to mind is I won’t compromise and other designers work, I won’t break the law. I’m getting better at not letting customers take advantage of me. Kindness goes a long way if someone’s nice. I will bend over backwards. I’m working with the bride right now that I went above and beyond what I normally would do for an invitation and that’s fine because she’s awesome and funny and was very nice to me and a little bit of that goes a long way but, the customer while they have a lot of power and control and I want them to be happy. They’re not always right and they’re never right when they demean you. Which luckily I have not encountered very often at all. In six years my customers have been amazing. But I’ve heard some horror stories.

Kim: I’ve heard horror stories.

Amy Braswell: I’m sure.

Kim: Yeah. When you are looking to get into creative mode, What’s the first song you will put on?

Amy Braswell: Oh, that’s a good one. Right now, I have a whole Spotify playlist that’s called “feel good” and I play it when I need to get jazzed up. When I’m deep in work mode, I tend to do acoustic chill. But when I really need a spark, I play a lot of 80s or old school rap. But right now my very favorite song for some reason is Geronimo by…. I could totally forget who sings it. It’s a song it’s about a year old.

Kim: Amy, I can’t remember singers names for the life of me. So listeners we will put it into the show notes for you.

Amy Braswell: It’s Sheppard. I just did a little quick google, Geronimo by: Sheppard. Through some reason that song just really gets me happy. That’s been my go to lately and I get obsessive over songs all obsess over one for months and then suddenly switch it will be another one.

Kim: So, you have a son who is almost two? Do you ever get that Disney song stuck in your head?

Amy Braswell: We’re not in it too much right now. Right now, his favorite is “I’m A Little Teapot” so I have to sing I’m a little teapot 87 times a day. He’s big into Elmo. So I get Elmo’s World stuck in my head. But we do live within driving distance to Disney and we’ve been a bunch. So I’m fully prepared and accepting to have the Disney song start coming at me because I’m OK I’m a Disney fan. I think he’s into Elmo because it’s tiny little 10 minute episodes and that’s all his little hyperactive mind can even handle. We don’t even usually make it through one of those which is good. I don’t have to do the screen time battle because he could care less. Yeah wheels on the bus and I’m a little teapot are big hits around this house right now.

Kim: I have to share and I don’t like to push my husband’s buttons. I will do everything not to. But if I want to for any reason, all I have to do is start singing. This is the song that never ends. I don’t know. That one strikes a chord. And I’m sorry listeners if it’s stuck in your head.

Amy Braswell: I call that an ear worm. You hear it and you’re like “oh no, now I’m done”. That one has not made its way to our house, but I know the song you’re talking about. I know my husband well enough to know it would take me about three cycles of it before he would give me the look and be like “Stop, Quit it”.

Kim: All I have to do is, sing the first two chords which is bad news any way for me to be singing and that’s it. Amy, Where can listeners find you on line?

Amy Braswell: They can find me on Paper Finch dot com P-A-P-E-R, F-I-N-C-H. Finch like the bird, or Paper Finch design on Etsy. I’m also on handmade at Amazon, kind of working on growing site. I’m in a handful of shops around the country but, I’m not going to list all that out it’s on my website. The different retailers you can find me in different brick and mortar.

Kim: Fabulous. Thank you so much for being here today Amy. It’s been a pleasure.

Amy Braswell: It’s been so much fun. Thank you.