Day 4: Kerstin Martin (Part 1)

Oct 4

ALL the reasons why this is an impossible ask!

Here is my dream: to have my Eule business planner published by Leuchtturm under their Leuchtturm1917 brand!

For those of you who don’t know, Leuchtturm is a German company (Leuchtturm means lighthouse) and one of the leading producers of high-quality stationery in the world. The Bullet Journal by Ryder Carroll, for instance, is exclusively available from Leuchtturm1917.

I want the same for the Eule Planner! There. I said it 😳

I’ve been using Leuchtturm journals for years and their quality is exceptional. Now, I really appreciate my printer in Ohio and what they’ve been able to do for me at a very affordable price point given the low volume of my first print runs. I am very happy with the quality of my current Eule planner and I love it. Alas, it’s not a Leuchtturm1917.

I shared this dream with Eli when we started preparing for this community project and she said “Why not approach Leuchtturm and make that your big ask as part of this project?”

Oh sure. That immediately felt a little too impossible to me and I quickly came up with a solid list of reservations as to why this was a bad idea and would never work! Here they are:

Am I too small? Will Leuchtturm even consider working with someone like me who only has a modest social media footprint? Ryder Carroll already had a huge following when he approached Leuchtturm in 2014.
Am I too late? There are so many planner companies already (I went down quite the rabbit hole once I started researching this 🐰) who have been doing this successfully for years. It’s a crowded market and I worry that I’ve missed the boat and that no-one is going to notice or be interested in my little Eule planner.
Am I being disloyal? My printer company in Ohio has been great to me considering that I am starting out with such low print volumes. Other companies wanted $60-$70 per planner but with my Ohio printer I was able to sell the 2019 edition for only $35 and still make a profit. The people there are super nice and I feel terrible about not including them in my planner growth strategy.
Am I too old? Who am I kidding, right? I am 56 and surely don’t have the energy for yet another big entrepreneurial project!
Am I complicating a good thing? I already have a thriving business with my Squarespace courses, why make it more complex by adding a retail element to a purely digital business?
Can I handle a No? This is such a big dream of mine that a No would most likely devastate me, right?
Who do I think I am? I know nothing about publishing and I’m undoubtedly biting off way more than I can chew.

See what I am doing here?

Doubting myself.
Making assumptions.
Speaking from a place of fear.

This is the trifecta of good reasons to not ask for impossible things!

Do It Anyway

If there is one thing I have learned over the last five years of growing a successful online business it is to feel the fear and doubts and do it anyway!

So that’s what I shall do.

Over the next couple of weeks I will reach out to Leuchtturm and find out what the process is for submitting a proposal and then do that. I sure hope there is a process! I have my doubts but I will give it a sincere effort and I expect that in the very least I will learn a thing or two along the way.

I look forward to taking you along with me on this journey!

Kerstin xo

Kerstin Martin is a Squarespace web designer and educator with a proven track record of helping more than 1,000 entrepreneurs thrive in their online businesses. She is also the creator of the Eule Planner, an analog business planner specifically designed for digital entrepreneurs.

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