That’s not necessarily the point, though. Mostly. 

Did you watch that Netflix movie from 2021, “Don’t Look Up,” with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence? 

They’re trying to warn people about a comet that’s going to hit earth and nobody’s listening, really.

SPOILER ALERT: if you have not yet seen it and care about the ending, please scroll past the picture of my beautiful eggplants and START READING AGAIN AFTER THE PALATE CLEANSING PICTURE OF MY ZINNIA SKETCH.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The movie is a satire and in it there is a truly terrific scene of Ariana Grande giving a concert for the end of the world. 

The spoiler is that at the end of the world: Leo and Jen are gathered with their family, eating, chatting about the most normal things.

They ate, they laughed, they sat around the table, and . . . I guess they had a last supper. 

What struck me was how at the end of the world, at the end of . . . a lot of momentous things . . . all you want to do is be around the people you love. That really is all that matters. 

Ha ha! Writing this newsletter in the copy of the last newsletter I see that I have been posting pictures of the eggplant plants frequently. Last time there were no fruits. This time there are three lovely softball sized 8 Ball fruits. I’ve eaten two. They’re good. 

BACK TO IT

During the last supper at St. Elmo’s, we played a “game”: Go around the table and name Katie’s one-time or current hobbies until nobody can think of any more.

• Ice skating
• Reading
• Horseback riding
• Sewing
• Knitting
• Collage
• Decoupage
• Flute playing
• Running
• Needle felting
• Cycling
• Wet felting
• Puzzles
• Gardening (flowers)
• Flower arranging
• Cooking
• Crocheting
• Stand Up Paddleboarding
• Pine needle basket coiling
• Diorama making
• Traveling
• Urban sketching
• Pastel painting
• Gouache painting
• Watercolor painting
• Making friendship bracelets
• Shark tooth hunting
• Embroidery
• Re-enacting
• Visiting museums
• Gardening (vegetables)

Some people would find that “game” insulting. 

I found it delightful. 

Look at all of the things I love. 

Look at all of the things the people I love remember about me. 

Look up at their laughing, smiling faces. 

Look up. 

My dad died at 10:55 am Eastern on Sunday, May 18, 2025. Two hours after I took my first Zepbound shot and while I was right in the middle making a sunflower painting and filming it. (Not the one above.) Some strange and beautiful things happened that morning.  You can see the painting and read the caption here. In any case it is fun to watch the video! If you’ve ever wondered how I draw, there you go.

Nothing Small about It

Thanks to GreenProfit and Square for sponsoring!

Amanda, Ben, and I are getting ready for  this big day at Cultivate. On Saturday, July 12 we’ll welcome lots of you for what I call a “Stealth workshop” and what American Hort wishes I’d quit calling a workshop because it comes with your All-Access Pass. But if you hang with us all day, you’ll get a workshop. 

That’s because we have been:

• Crafting the day with an intentional story arc. While you can drop in and out (and we encourage if you need/want to), if you stay all day, it will be transformative.
   
• Adding hands-on activities so it will feel a little like summer camp and let you FEEL what you’re learning. You’ll remember better and have more fun when you participate, rather than listening to us drone on.
   
• Creating a space that allows YOU to co-create the story arc of the day with us and the story arc for yourself/ your business. Your life and your business is an unfolding story. But the ending isn’t written. You get to keep writing it one day at a time. Don’t like where it’s going? Change the plot! We’ll help!

Compared to other businesses, some of your businesses might be considered “small” by, I dunno, IRS standards?

But in your life, your business isn’t small. If you own a business you know the feeling of living with a brood of cicadas in your chest. You know the dread of a dropped account, of a month in the red. 

You also know, you KNOW, but maybe you’ve forgotten, or can’t feel it anymore, a kind of freedom to create the days you want to live, the place you want you and your staff and your customers to inhabit. 

The place that supports you and your people, rather than the other way around. 

A place that you’re excited to go to and so is everyone else. 

A place that keeps you up with exciting ideas and works you to sleep with the peace of a job well done. 

PS HERE WE ARE GETTING READY WITH MEG (A SPECIAL GUEST AT THE BURNOUT SESSION. THIS IS WHAT WE REALLY LOOK LIKE, LOLOLOLOL O L)

Amanda was not awake yet.

Meg is in Brazil.

The Work of Art

Sunday I texted my friend Amy. 

I had a whole one-sided conversation with her before she woke up. 

I’ve honestly been feeling a little like a dilettante [ Merriam-Webster: A person having a superficial interest in an art or a branch of knowledge] because I do so many different things. I learn about so many different things. I try so many different things – for fun, in art, and for work. 

Amy wrote back something very wise:

“I kind of think that there are artists who feel unsafe with change and experimentation, and some of them are quite successful because they can do one thing over and over. 

“Then there are artists who feel unsafe with stagnation. They’re only OK when they’re headed away from one thing and on to the next thing. They can stay in one place for a little while, but then they start looking around and going ‘what’s next?'”

[Emphasis mine]

* MIC DROP *

She also wrote to me: 

“I think social media does a number on us, by making us feel too scattered while simultaneously making us rush to get to a place where everything feels completed. It’s too easy to close the loop-start a painting, finish it, take a picture of it, post it. Like that’s a finished thing. Probably the loop should just stay open for a really long time. Before the Internet, an artist might never show their sketchbooks, except to their friends, and they would only show their art publicly once every couple of years when they had a gallery show. Otherwise, everything was process, nothing was complete.”

[Emphasis mine]

* PICKS UP MIC –  DROPS IT AGAIN *

Her words made me think of this entire interview between writer and podcast host Ezra Klein and Adam Moss, author of The Work of Art.

I especially like this part:

Klein: “. . . there is something that may come out or it may not come out, but there is often a sensibility buried somewhere that is trying to come out for a long time. Whether you can let it out is a question and socially dependent and a million other things. But there is something buried in people that for better or for worse, it’s often hard to get away from.”

Moss: “Gregory Crewdson, who’s a photographer who makes these very unusual photographs which are kind of like film stills, and they’re giant and very beautiful, he was just apologizing, in a sense over, and over again for the fact that all of them inhabit a certain kind of common sensibility, which I thought was marvelous, but he says you’re just constantly trying to escape it.”

[EMPHASIS MINE]

When I used to paddleboard a lot there were about 20 of us that went out together often. On days I went by myself I could recognize one of my fellow paddlers simply by their silhouette while paddling much before they were close enough to me that I could see their face. 

Let’s look at a couple of sunflower paintings of mine. 

Left/top, the one I made May 18. 

Right/bottom, the one I made yesterday. 

If you look at them, really look, I think you can tell they are made by the same person. 

There are similarities in the way the petals are drawn. 

The way color is used. 

The values (lights/darks).

The energy. 

“There is something buried in people that for better or for worse, it’s often hard to get away from.”

It comforts me to think that it is OK, and in fact, is probably beneficial for me to have that unending need to experiment, iterate, and discover. 

While at the same time containing a dependable core sensibility, a way I hold my pen, draw a line, show up for work, organize my business, serve clients, that is undeniably mine. 

And that as long as I continually forge my path along that line, I’ll be ok. My business will be ok. My people – family, friends, clients, my team – we will be ok. 

This will come as no surprise

You don’t have a life changing event and not take a closer look at the way you’re doing things. 

And I’ve had two, right on top of each other. 

– Leaving a company I founded, one I believed wholeheartedly in and still do. One I learned so much while building and that I know has the potential to help so many people but not be a place I could stay 

– The death of a parent. 

In those moments of extreme change, questions come up: What’s next? 

In my June Green Profit Tech Connection column I wrote about Shopify Collective opening up to everyone on Shopify. 

That’s a much bigger deal, a bigger change in the online commerce world than I think anyone in our industry understands. I’ve been doing some work with my own clients in Collective. It is one tool involved in the company I left. I have a non compete preventing me from starting a company like the one I left, but I don’t want to do that, and Collective is only one part of that company. 

Let me repeat: Shopify Collective is an amazing tool that can be used by anyone on Shopify. 

For a hot minute I wanted to hang a shingle to be the Collective guru. Because I could. I could spend all day every day getting businesses set up on Collective and really help them. 

But we are NOT going to spend a lot of capital becoming known as the gurus and make that the only thing that we do over and over and over again.

Because FINALLY, dear reader, I think I get it that doing something the exact same way over and over and over and over again is not my way. 

Doing something ONLY because there’s a market for it isn’t my way. 

In fact, at this point in my life (and that could change, circumstances etc.) for me, doing the same thing over and over and over in the exact same way simply because there is a market for it is a path to nowhere.

The fire in my belly

It is not from Zepbound. That’s working really well for me, actually. It quiets my brain in ways I never could have imagined. 

The fire in my belly is the need to continue iterating the personal, the bespoke, the craft, the art. 

My team and I built the best machine in our industry to deliver the most impactful and hassle-free (as much as possible!) bespoke email marketing you can get. 

I say machine because it is our extremely organized processes that are still flexible enough to adapt to each client that allow us to make one-of-a-kind marketing emails for a factory price. 

We built a machine to help us manage the everyday so that we could continue to make art. 

Making Actual Art

To make a long story even longer, when I started painting in 2020 I strongly resisted the urge to ever sell anything.

I DON’T WANT TO TURN MY HOBBY INTO A JOB. I DID IT TWICE. 

The second time (paddle/surf industry) it went very spectacularly wrong. 

After lots of business work with the amazing Megan T. Morrison (Go to her Cultivate session on Intuition, even if you’re a dude. ESPECIALLY if you’re a dude.), I can now see that the hobby wasn’t the problem. The way I did it was the problem. 

Gardening was my hobby then it was my job and I don’t love plants any less. In fact, I probably love them more. 

Then when I was on the phone with Ben Futa last week, I said something that might define the rest of this part of my life, however long that lasts: 

Art and gardening go together. They make sense. Because if people make art in, around, or about their gardens THEY WILL WANT MORE PLANTS IN THEIR GARDENS. 

Back to our friend Adam Moss. In the interview he said, “one thing I know from my own experience is that you make kind of wonderful things when you’re young, when you don’t know any better.”

Dare I say, “When there’s no pressure to show it to anyone? When nobody is judging it?” And yes, before you know any better. 

Ever since I started making art, I’ve been thrilled with whatever I’ve made, even if, and especially if what I made was a mess because I WAS DOING IT. The actual joy and experience of doing it is what delights me. 

I strongly dislike being around highly self-critical makers or falsely humble people. That sort of non-joy serves nobody, least of all yourself.

Back to the Beginning

I was supposed to manage public gardens. 
What I miss most about my days spent in that part of our industry is being in community with others. 

I miss teaching second graders about butterflies and helping toddlers pull carrots out of the ground. 

I miss showing adults how to prune a shrub properly. 

I miss helping people create beautiful things, beautiful environments. 

It is some consolation that today my team and I help the people who help people make beautiful environments. 

But I want more. 

I want more for myself, more for my team, more for my clients, and more for their customers.

As the circulating meme goes, I want AI and the algorithms and the data to do the crap work so I can make the art. I want that for my team, my clients, and their customers.

A Seat at the Table

It should also come as no surprise that I’m going to show you a picture of something happening at Koetsiers.

This is The Table.

It’s a place for people to break bread, have classes, learn new things. 

A table to enjoy something adjacent to but not planting. (This is not the bloom studio.)

An invitation for warmth and welcome. 

Craig and Melinda contacted me last fall to talk about The Table. They shared their vision and their hopes. 

From what I can tell they not only met, but exceeded their dreams for this space. 

A literal open table for their community. 

The community showed up. 

I’ll be popping up at this table, hopefully this fall, to make good on a promise made last fall. 

To do what I hope to do when I grow up. 

To bring art to this thing we call commerce. 

To have, not a last supper, hopefully, but a first of many there for me, and one in a continuing tradition for the folks at Koetsiers. 

My invitation to you is: look up. From your phone, from your day-to-day, from your cereal bowl.

Who’s there? Who’s not?

Who do you want to invite?

What do you want to bring?

There are things only you can provide in the way only you can do it.

Your people are waiting.

Go.

---

Handy Links

Each newsletter always has a mix of fun and functional links.  Here they are! Have a link to share? Send it to me!

Cultivate schedule

Ezra Klein Interview

Tech Triangle of Success Article

I literally keep the long handle version in my living room so I can run outside with it whenever I want.

Think you can’t grow vegetables? Think again. Grow them in this.

Open & Awkward: Shop Talk with Katie and Amanda: The Podcast is going strong with season 2 AND as of last week we have new theme music by “L”, Amanda’s kid’s friend. 

HAPPY CUSTOMER

One of our clients texted me this today after a meeting and I wanted to share (with permission) because it is EXACTLY who/what/how/when/why I and my team do what we do how we do it:

“Oh my gosh. Katie that was amazing. Seriously. Thank you. You’re so good at this, all of this. Every time we have a meeting I’m like damnit, you’re a person who has put in the work and it SHOWS. Thank you.”

Your’e welcome. It is our utmost pleasure to put in the work.

Thank you for being at my table

I wouldn’t want to do life with anyone else. Thank you to all of you who have helped me remember that when I forget. 

Want to sit with us?

 Please take a look at this page and RSVP. Can’t wait to see you.

Talk soon,

ART PS! 
ART PS! 
Thank you to those who contacted me about creating a painting for you! I am enjoying working on them. 
Picture 1 is something I want to do when I grow up. (Sign up here for more info.)
Picture 2 is one of my little art cards I make and sell locally for fun.
Picture 3 is another piece of art: my garden. (My side sun-ish) garden.
Picture 4 is an unfinished painting of that garden. I add to it every few weeks. Who knows. Maybe I’ll finish it and hang it. Maybe I’ll cut it up for collage. That’s the fun part. Not knowing the end at the beginning.