The architect I almost contracted before finding my prehab unit, called me today saying he had bees in his house. I thought surely he just had some fly in the window and his wife was scared so he called me to help. (its "swarm season" so there was a chance a swarm was in or around their house.) turns out, he has had a mutli-year nest in his ceiling and wall above their bedroom. I was planning on offering bee extraction services eventually, but I have not prepared all of the required tools and legal stuff for it. so good thing this was someone I know! called the carpenter to help me know what was ok and not ok to cut. collected about half of the bees and the queen. unfortunately I could not cleanly connect the comb to frames so most of it was wasted. still work to do there, but it will have to wait until tomorrow morning. the vacuum in the video is a special type that won't harm the bees (except when I accidentally crush a few because I'm reaching above my head with both hands and can't see...)

Had a meeting with the city business collective/association. as part of city promotions they'll be putting my product in a nation wide sales catalog (online and printed), their take is 20% which is exactly what I planned for in my budgeting. (EDIT: current price per gram is 15yen. 100g bottles = 1,500 yen. -10% tax, -20% store cut, -8~10% bottle+label) Honey bees are absolutely everywhere the last few weeks! been great for marketing/instagram photos. The neighbor to my office keeps telling me people are showing up at her door thinking she is the beekeeper wanting to buy honey. That's great and not so great at the same time for a variety of reasons! haha. poor old lady, she just wants to sit in her garden and drink some tea in peace. (her garden is incredible.) Not sure I have the budget for it without borrowing from family, but I'm considering buying 723 meters squared of land. It's an abandoned rice field that is connecting one of my plots of land anyways. + easy expansion + prevent a farmer from using chemicals next to my bee hives. ー money & taxes ー can't use the land until at least next year. ー rice field, so it likely has very poor drainage which will greatly limit the type of plants and trees I could plant if I want to do more than just place bee hives on to the plot.

I stopped dicking around. I sold about half of my supply. I had to make some more. I made ~$300 this past week. I have reinvested or will be reinvesting most if not all of it back in. I’ll be expanding my production capabilities and will be adding one or two more products with a quicker pathway to market. This has really proven to me that if i just do it and quit making excuses, that i have a real opportunity here. With a little marketing/advertising i should be able to easily make $1000+ a week within the year(again assuming i don’t dick around). Also, i have a neighbor who owns a business. He seems to be interested and might be taking me under his wing a bit. But we’ll see.

small update this time! sign is up! (the Neighbor kept getting my business related mail, so I had the sign put up earlier than planned) Since the Iran America war has started, I have not received any updates on equipment that was being shipped from Europe. Was originally delayed since the Ukraine Russia war prevented shipping from the north. luckily I can manage without the equipment, but 1 of the products I intend to produce will be extremely labor intensive without the equipment. For those that don't know, us Japanese people LOVE gossip/rumors. and because I stand out so much, it's easy for me or things related to me to become a point of conversation. This is such a huge asset when trying to market, a few conversations and business card exchanges here or there and not only most of my city, but a decent amount of people in the northern and southern cities to me are aware of my business already. (i attached a funny meme about it)

I made 2 more slabs of soap. I now have Lemongrass, Vanilla, Lavender, and Eucalyptus. 40 bars in total, 10 of each. As you can see, i redid my lavender slab, it looks much better now. I’ve also wrapped them. Now i just need to figure out how to make the “labels”. That’ll take me a good minute, i can never get tech. to work right for me, but it’s gotta get done. And then i just have to figure out the best way to sell them. It’s a bit cold for farmers markets at the moment, but i plan on attending those in the upcoming months. And i do plan on selling online, but i don’t have a following and i expect that to take some time to build. I’m debating whether or not i should download tiktok. I don’t really want to, but i think it could be a good way of driving traffic, better than YT shorts anyway. Other than that, I’ll probably just start by selling to family, friends, friends of family and friends, acquaintances from various social gatherings/functions that i or my family attend, as well as neighbors. And lastly I’ll probably try reaching out to various people such as teachers that i’ve had in the past. I’m also considering door to door sales or selling on a street corner but after consulting the AI’s i might avoid that as it “degrades the premium presentation of the product”. So instead i may try to sell small batches to localized shops, barbers, and salons, etc. Will keep you all updated.