thread Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖 in Square Readers Book Club

Introduce Yourself: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

PessoAlumni — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 20:01:58 GMT

Hey Square Readers!

Thank you so much for joining our Square Readers Book Club!

Don’t forget to click Join Group at the top of our Book Club Group Hub.

I would love to learn more about you all, so here's a space to introduce yourselves and to meet some fellow Readers.

So tell us a bit about yourself here in the comments.

Tell us:

Your name & location
Your business name (and website)
What you're hoping to learn and gain from Book Club
Your favorite book (business or fun)
A picture or two of you or your business

And of course feel free to reply to each others’ intros, especially those nearby or in the same industry as you.

Looking forward to meeting you all, and reading with you,

Pesso

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

PessoAlumni — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 13:01:39 GMT

I’ll kick things off!

My name is Aylon Pesso, but you can call me @PessoAlumni.

I’ve had a few businesses in my life, and I’ve also been a small business consultant and advisor. My biggest one was that I used to own and run Pesso’s Ices & Ice Cream in Bayside, Queens, NY, US with my dad for the last 18 years. I made every flavor of homemade Italian Ices & Ice Cream myself right in the back of our shop, until we sold our business this past year and I shifted over to working for Square. Here I come up with new ways to use my knowledge and experience as a small business owner to help sellers like you. I advocate for your needs within the company, and I create content and programs directly for you, just like this Book Club!

My main goal here is to help you run your business better. By curating business books specifically for folks like you, and giving you the motivation and space to read and learn both from the books as well as from other business owners. I hope you’ll share your experiences and knowledge along the way too! And I’m also looking forward to learning more from the books and from you all.

My favorite fun book right now is An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green — I highly recommend just jumping in to reading it without knowing anything about it. It’s a fun ride!

My favorite business book when I was first starting up some new businesses was The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. It’s not all super applicable but it got me into the mindset of simplifying and automating as many processes and decisions as possible.

Is there anything else you want to know? Ask away! I’m pretty much an open book.

Looking forward to meeting you all!

Pesso

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

TheArtChild — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 17:50:41 GMT

Hi, my name is Alicia but I go by August. My business is The Art Child, LLC where I teach therapeutic art techniques and ideas to toddlers, teens, and adults. We also teach at Renaissance Faires, Schools, and More! I am a travel-based artist, and teacher. We are technically in our 3rd or 4th year but I have rebranded since 2020. My goals with this company are to create an established household name where parents, teachers, and other adults can find helpfulness with helping children express themselves, and hopefully more!

I am hoping to read more business style books! I love reading them, and others. It will be fun to share our opinions on different things and to see where everyone is coming from. I hope to learn a lot from others, and I hope my opinions can help others too. My current favorite business book is Negotiate the Difference by Chris Voss. I've read it about 3 times.

Photos are from the Delaware Renaissance Faire 2022.

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

Helen — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 20:18:35 GMT

I’ll go next!

Helen here, I’m a Seller Community Manager at Square. 👋

My autobiography, vol 1: I’ve been on the Community team for a few years and my current focus is content strategy for the Community. You might have noticed posts by me on a variety of topics, here’s one example - Business Basics: Great Books for Every Business.📚

I live in northern Nevada ☃️ but in a 'past life' I worked in book publishing in the U.K. I worked on business books, books about copywriting, and books about how to write well, so needless to say I’m a big fan of this book club already!

A selection of books from my bookshelf! I haven’t read 'startup' yet, but it was recommended to me!

That’s enough about me. I’m looking forward to learning more about everyone who has joined the Book Club. Not sure what to share? Check out the questions in Pesso's first post for some inspiration.

New to the group? Please click Join Group at the top of our Book Club Group Hub to become a member!

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

YBF — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 01:33:41 GMT

Why can't I reply too the original posts? Do I need to do another step?

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

PessoAlumni — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 01:49:17 GMT

Hey @YBF - did you try scrolling all the way down to the bottom and clicking into text box?

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

YBF — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 01:52:32 GMT

My name is Aimee, I opened a flower shop November of 2020 after 30 years as an HR manager. www.YourBeautifulFlowers.com because I wanted to share more joy with others.

I'm here to learn from everyone else and share as much as I can in the process.

My favorite book is the one in my hands, same with flowers. 😉

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

norskpdx — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 19:26:34 GMT

Hi everyone, my name is Karen and I have two businesses. The main one is norskpdx, which is a Norwegian-language teaching, translation, and genealogy service. I grew up trilingual (German being the other one) in Vancouver, WA, USA, where I live again as an adult with my husband and our cats. I teach children and adults via Zoom. My website for norskpdx is https://norskpdx.square.site/

My other business is a digital art and hands-on craft shop called Trace Elements Art. I sell small spiral notebooks and teach people how to make them and decorate them using designs they stamp and die-cut themselves. That part of my shop is on hold right now due to health reasons (I'm asthmatic so I don't want to risk COVID-19) but I'll start that again next year. The part of Trace Elements Art that I'm focusing on right now is making kits of digital scrapbooking resources. They also can be printed out to use in traditional scrapbooking and other crafts. I offer two kinds of licenses: personal/S4H/S4O and commercial use (CU4PU.) Right now, I don't have a CU4CU license listed in my shop, but if you're interested in that you can contact me to see which kits could be licensed under that. My website for Trace Elements Art is https://trace-elements-art.square.site/

I also have written and illustrated two children's books: Three Feral Kittens and Meet Tabby the Therapy Cat. Both are self-published and are available through Amazon.

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

HCLMMT — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 19:47:05 GMT

Hey all! 👋🏼

Name: Hailey Corton

Business: Wexford Medical Massage

Location: Wexford, PA (North of Pittsburgh, PA)

What we offer: Certified Medical Massage Treatments (a specific, tailored approach to bodywork) along with Health and Nutritional Coaching, Yoga Therapy and traditional Massage Therapy.

Business Stage: Open for 7 months and increasing clientele slowly and steadily.

Business Mission/Goals: To bridge the gap in healthcare for those suffering from chronic pain and disease. Wellness is possible when Eastern and Western healthcare work in unison.

Book Club Goals: Join a community of business owners (of all kinds and backgrounds) and learn from each other; both from the books we read and the discussions we share about them.

Favorite Book (fun): Men in the Boat and A Wrinkle in Time

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

zomprintshop — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 17:32:19 GMT

Hello,

I'm Stephanie with Zom Print Shop (zomprintshop.com). My husband, Matthew, is the owner and we are a small, family-owned silk screening service business located in La Vergne, TN. We are in our 3rd year of consistently flowing business and have been running for around 8 years. Our goal this year is to double if not, triple our gross sales from 2022 and focus on how we can improve with marketing, taxes, and converting prospects to leads.

What I'm hoping to get out of this book club is more knowledge on business in general and in areas that we may be blind to even knowing about as well as expanding our knowledge base on the basics of running a business. May even meet another business that we could exchange services with or be of service to. As for a favorite book, I do not have one, and the last time that I sat down to truly enjoy a book was as a young lady. I have recently read How To Raise A Reader by Pamela Paul and Maria Russo though.

Nice to meet you,

Pesso

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

CareyJo — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 19:27:44 GMT

Hi! My name is Carey. My husband has been in the HVAC field for nearly 25 years. He has worked for several companies during that time, however, we've also owned two HVAC companies during that time, currently on the second. I've been self-employed for more than 35 years, I started at 19 and our business is my ninth. I'm getting ready to open my tenth. Our first business was open more than four years but the crash of 2009 pretty much killed us. We've learned a lot about what we didn't want for this go-round and we're doing things differently. We've been in business this time for six years. I'd say we're seasoned entrepreneurs. We used to average about 300k a year in sales but in 2021 we started to grow and surpassed 400k for the first time. In 2022 we hit the big one! We passed half a million and it felt amazing!! What's more amazing is that we do not have employees - it's just us. Yep, you read that right. It's just he and I. I run the business and he does the work. He is currently working on funding some of his dreams too. He won't be able to sit idle in retirement and he's only got 10 years left to work our business. So our goal is to get his dream up and running to keep him busy so he can retire from HVAC in 10 years. My tenth business will be what my dream has been for a long time - event planning and holiday decorating. We live in Montana, USA. We have six kids, 16 grandkids and we are constantly busy. We travel a lot too. My goal for the book club is just simply to learn something new. My mindset is that we learn something new everyday and I'm always looking for ideas. My books right now are of Christian nature, studying. One of my favorite past books is Your a Badass at Making Money by Jen Senciro. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend! She has several others in the series as well.

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

CareyJo — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 19:20:48 GMT

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

CareyJo — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 19:24:50 GMT

Aimee,

Beautiful bouquet! I do flowers 'on the side' so to speak... it's one of my favorite things to do when planning an event. I actually did all of the flowers for my daughter's wedding a couple of years ago. I've bought so many flowers at my fave local shop that they've literally tried to hire me three times! I refuse to work for someone else though, it would take all the fun out of it.

Carey

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

Krome — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 13:03:06 GMT

Hello! I am Melissa Peters and I own and operate Krome Salon & Spa (kromesalon.com) in LaFollette, TN. My salon is currently a hybrid structure (some commission stylists and some renters) but gradually working toward full commission. While the salon is certainly profitable, I always feel like there is room for growth.

I do love to read, but I struggle staying tuned in to business related books. I am hoping that this community will not only help me discern what is good business advice, but also keep me focused and accountable to complete the book and possibly implement the information.

I can’t wait to get started!

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

CarissaD — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 14:03:56 GMT

👋🏼 my name is Carissa. I am the cofounder of The Living Well Collective Co. Under this corporation, we run 3 counseling dbas, each with a specific focus.

I mainly work with Every Girl Living (one of our dbas and my baby), which is concierge mental health and wellness practice geared to empower women struggling with depression, anxiety and other life issues heal, grow and conquer life’s challenges. To learn more, https://www.everygirl-living.com. We are located in Jacksonville Florida but serve all of Florida through telehealth.

We reincorporated as a for profit in April 2021 and have been all in ever since. Both my husband and I work full time in our businesses with 4 part time staff and an intern.

Our goal is to grow our businesses to the point of have other counseling offices nationally. We want to create a company that clients talk about and employees are eager to grow with. In June, we are moving to a larger office.

For Every Girl Living, in each office, I’d like to have 3 psychotherapists, 2 yoga teachers & personal trainers, 1 psychiatrist, 1 general physician, 1 registered dietician and 1 client liaison plus admin staff. My dream is Every Girl Living be a one stop shop for women’s health and wellness.

From this book club, I’m hoping to learn and network. I want to hear from other business owners as well as read some great business books that will help me be a better business owner.

I don’t have one favorite book. I tend to have favorites genres. For fun, I love reading chic lit mysteries. They are usually funny and light hearted. I can laugh and take a moment to not take life too seriously. As a trauma therapist, I hear a lot of sad real life stories, so these books help me not feel so heavy.

The photo I’ve shared is of our EGL team. I’m on the far right.

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

missrucker75 — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 14:46:47 GMT

My name is Monique Rucker and I am the owner of Anointed Hands Concierge Phlebotomy Services. My website is www.anointedhands=phlebotomy.com. I am located in Commerce, Georgia; however, I provide mobile services in my area and the Atlanta area. I collect laboratory specimen for different physicians, process and ship them. I have been operating this business for six years and I also own a post-secondary school, Advanced Medical Academy that instructs students on the proper collectin and processing of laboratory specimen.

My goal is to train more competent Phlebotomists to enter the healthcare field. I was once in a book club and I just hope to learn things about the books read and the others in the club. I would like to be able to build relationships with others that are interested in reading as I am.

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

PessoAlumni — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 14:52:01 GMT

Hey @missrucker75 !

Thanks so much for joining and sharing. That's so cool that you've built a business around this, both in collecting and in instructing others! I love that you're in a growth phase for the school and looking to teach even more. What are your goals for the phlebotomy business?

My goal for the book club is definitely that -- to help other learn some solid business strategies, and to form our own little community of engaged business owners to connect with!

So excited to have you here and looking forward to having you in our book discussions!

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

PessoAlumni — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 14:58:23 GMT

Hey @CarissaD !

Thank you so much for joining and sharing!

That's really impressive that you're essentially running three different counseling businesses with different focuses. How do you manage to balance them all?

I absolutely love what you're doing with EGL. It's such an important mission and so wonderful that you're able to do it both in person and remotely to women across FL. That spread of a wholistic practice with so many varied practitioners is so incredibly valuable and can really make a big impact.

And even more amazing that you're in a growth phase and looking to expand nationally. Congrats on the upcoming new office move! What are some challenges with a national expansion? I'm guessing licensing would be a big one.

How has the shift to For Profit been so far?

We're definitely here to support that Book Club goal! Any particular areas of being a business owner that you're looking to work on and improve in?

Heck yea, gotta love the chick lit realm! I'm glad that books have helped you decompress and escape after really rough days. Gotta find the joy and fun where ever possible.

Thanks so much for sharing! It's so great to meet you and can't wait to have you in our book discussions!

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

PessoAlumni — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 15:04:32 GMT

Hey @Krome !

Thanks so much for sharing!

I'm not too familiar with the Salon world -- what's the advantage of moving towards more commission and less renters?

I love your growth mindset! What does that look like for you?

I can definitely understand how hard it is to stick to and get through business books -- a lot of them can be a trudge, and I'm always more likely to pick up a novel than an informative book. We'll definitely give you (and me) the accountability here, and I'm also so excited to learn directly from the books as well as hear everyone's thoughts and insights from them too!

It's so great to have you here, and can't wait to see you in our discussions!

Re: Post Your Autobiography 💁📖

CarissaD — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 15:35:37 GMT

Thanks, Pesso for the response. And balance is a big focus for me this year. How we ended up with essentially three businesses is because EGL is mine, the marriage counseling (called the Marriage Foundry) is my husband’s and the pornography addiction program called Salvo, is ran by my husband, myself and our son. So, we all get to do what we love and are good at. I didn’t mention, my husband and son are both therapists too.