G4 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022
in October 2021. Through
Kickstarter, I sold more than
200 games. Then I sent 200 or
250 copies to a board game
distributor.
Are you still a starving
artist?
I was until recently. Over
Thanksgiving, my brother
posted on Reddit a photo of my
game, and I got a crap ton of
orders. It was a hectic post-
Thanksgiving week. I went to
my dad’s warehouse to ship over
100 games out. In the end, I
basically broke even with the
Kickstarter money. I didn’t take
a salary in 2021. Even so, I’m
happier with my life now than
when I was working for a
company. I can spend time with
my girlfriend and family — and
my cat, Lou.
What’s holding you back?
I vastly underestimated
shipping costs, especially with
all the transportation problems
globally. I now work with a
couple of companies that ship
for you, and I get better rates. I
also realized that it’s cheaper to
use standard box sizes instead
of custom sizes.
What’s next?
My next game to come out is
called Love, Career & Magic, a
game based on a Japanese
reality show. This time, I’ll have
a marketing campaign in place
before launching another
Kickstarter. I need to build up
my following. People have
signed up for my email list, and
they follow me on social media.
Lee’s takeaways:
Consider crowdfunding your
start-up costs and market your
product to donors.
Look for ways to reduce
business costs, such as standard
box sizes and bulk shipping.as accounting and human
resources, and tap professionals
for help.
Get exposure online through
marketplaces like Etsy and use
the platform for marketing to
larger vendors.
Expand your product line to
attract new and returning
customers.Wonmin Lee
Q ueens in New York City
Old job: Consultant with a
major technology company
New venture: Pegasus Games
You’ve known for a while
that you weren’t cut out for a
desk job, right?
The time I spent working for
a big corporation was very
taxing on my mental health and
my soul. In June 2016, I quit my
job to do my own thing — learn
coding and launching a website
with my brother. After about
two years, I got burned out from
coding, and we sold our website
to a competitor. I wanted to do
something with my hands, so I
created Welcome to Sysifus
Corp, a board game about
corporate life. I wasn’t trying to
get crazy rich. I was more like a
starving artist who wanted to
know if it’s possible to make
something I was proud of.
How did covid-19 affect your
game business?
The pandemic accelerated its
release. Right now, there is like
a movement of people not
wanting to work. It’s anti-work,
down with corporate America.
I took advantage of that. I
posted a Kickstarter campaign
in early 2021 that raised about
$18,000 — enough money to
order 1,000 copies from the
manufacturer. The final retail
version of the game came outproducts that I created for its
Black History Month collection
across 855 stores. Until
December, I wasn’t getting a
regular paycheck because I
needed to take care of my
employees first.
How do you fulfill all these
production demands?
I have two part-time
employees, but I mainly employ
subcontractors who are paid by
the hour. I have such a great,
supportive community in Cedar
Rapids. I am surrounded by
people who are willing to learn
with me.
What are your biggest
challenges?
In the beginning, I had no
business sense, no idea of
markup or how much my time
was worth. But I didn’t set out
to be a business manager and
lead all these people. I realized
that I needed to be in design —
that’s my best fit. So I’ve added
people with different skill sets
to help me with marketing and
shipping. I also contacted
women I knew with corporate
jobs and outsourced HR and
accounting to them.
What’s next?
I can see our business
growing across different niches
in decor. I’m working with a
strategist to figure out where we
want to be in five years. Do I
need a line of credit? Do I need
investors? I’d love to continue
expanding — there’s so much
room in a creative business.
Luter’s takeaways:
Know your weaknesses, suchSometime in 2015, I came
across an ad for a local farmers
market. I had never upcycled
anything — where you take old
furniture and decor and make it
better — but I had seen it on
Pinterest. I bought power tools
and asked for help using them. I
started upcycling anything I
could. A month later, I thought I
could really do something with
this.
So you were able to work a
full-time job and run a
business?
It was hard. With this side
job, I was answering emails and
calls from the bathroom and in
the car. Then the pandemic hit,
and I got laid off. I thought it
would be for a month or two.
But they said, “We can’t bring
you back.” When you’re used to
stability and then there’s no
stability, it’s tough. I was on
unemployment. But I thought,
“Okay, God, you gave me two
hands.”
When did business really
take off?
I already had a place on Etsy.
At the start of the pandemic, a
lot of people were working from
home and wanted artwork for
their Zoom backgrounds or
were tackling to-do lists. I
tripled my sales the first year of
the pandemic, which floored
me. Last August, Etsy named me
the artist of the year or some
such. A lot of companies search
on Etsy and Pinterest to
discover artists and see what’s
new out there. In February,
Target featured some of mywas a lot — and they very
eagerly said okay. Clearly my
amount was not correct. I called
a friend who was an agent and
asked for help negotiating. She’s
been able to help me with
contracts and seeing pitfalls I
didn’t see coming. Even though
my agent takes a portion of
what I bring in, her 10 percent
cut was made up a hundredfold
in a month. Now I have over a
million subscribers and am full-
up with sponsors.
Are you profitable?
I am making far more than
what I was making at Disney. I
wouldn’t have ever guessed that.
What’s next?
All of this could go away any
given week — there’s always that
fear. What happens if YouTube
changes its search algorithm or
how it shares its advertising
revenue? My strategy is
sublimating YouTube. I have a
cookbook in the works. I’m
thinking about moving into
podcasts. I’m just starting to
grow on Instagram and Twitter.
If something happens with
YouTube, all of my eggs aren’t in
one basket.
Miller’s takeaways:
Seek revenue from sponsors
and advertisers; hire someone
to help with negotiations and
contracts.
Diversify your offerings and
delivery platforms to expand
your base and protect you from
downturns.Candice Luter
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Old job: Account executive at
a commercial design firm
New venture: Candice Luter
Art + Interiors
How did you discover your
passion?Given a chance to chasetheir dream jobs,they didn’t sleep on itKATHRYN GAMBLE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST SARAH BLESENER FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTRIKER BROTHERSKATHRYN GAMBLE F OR THE WASHINGTON POST SARAH BLESENER FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTemployers to pay for 40 hours
even when workers are giving
more, the 40-hour week isn’t
consistently and equitably
applied. There’s no reason to
expect that a shorter workweek
would be either. And as with
income distribution, those in
greatest need would probably be
least likely to be allowed to enjoy
the benefits of a shortened
workweek.
Despite those concerns, it’s
clear we need to rethink how we
allocate our time, individually
and as a society. When it was first
implemented, the 40-hour
workweek was a huge
improvement over the 80- to 100-
hour weeks people had been
working before — the “work until
you drop dead in your shoes”
school of management. But now,
after decades of increased
automation and innovations that
let us work ever more efficiently,
why are we still trying to wedge
more productivity into the time
we’ve supposedly saved?
[email protected]socialization occurs at the
workplace.
Compressing five eight-hour
days into four days of 10-hour
shifts, as Belgium is doing, may
not help with stress, even if it
results in a three-day weekend.
As noted above, productivity and
quality, not to mention worker
health, may suffer during those
longer individual shifts.
Shorter workweeks won’t help
workplaces that are already
running lean. One of the causes
of the Great Resignation is that
workplaces have made workers
do more with less for too long. A
workplace that is chronically
under-resourced and overloaded
would have to add staff or cut
back on projects and
expectations to make a shorter
workweek possible.
Finally, there will always be
exceptions. Whether through
legal carve-outs, such as the 7(k)
work period rule that essentially
moves the overtime goal posts for
emergency workers, or FLSA-
exempt status that allowschildren, giving parents
opportunities to be more present
and less exhausted during family
time.
Overall, four days’ labor, three
days’ leisure seems more
balanced than the prevailing five-
and-two model.
But, of course, shorter
workweeks have their downside.
They don’t work equally well
for all jobs. For task-based work,
the amount of time you spend
shouldn’t matter as long as the
work is finished and is up to
standard. For jobs that revolve
around client schedules, timed
processes or billable hours,
however, there’s no way to reduce
work time without affecting
output and profitability.
They could put colleagues out
of sync with one another.
Workers clearing their desk so
they can bolt have little incentive
to support their colleagues. That
can foster resentment, whereas
shared workloads can boost
camaraderie. Also, downtime is
often when bonding andprovides incentive to buckle
down and streamline our work
habits.
The other part is that minds
and muscles can function only so
long before fatigue kicks in and
starts affecting long-term health.
After a certain length of time,
most workers start getting
diminishing returns on their
efforts. After 50 hours in a week,
stress-induced damage starts
appearing in the form of high
blood pressure, irregular
heartbeats, insulin resistance
and other dangerous symptoms.
And some kinds of work are
best done in sprints of less than
eight hours a day. Research has
found that for tasks requiring
sustained deep concentration
and a state of “flow,” more time
does not produce deeper or
better-quality thinking. For those
kinds of jobs, six-hour shifts may
be optimal.
Working fewer hours per day
would bring many parents’
schedules more in sync with
those of their school-ageexperiment has largely been
hailed as a success, with an
estimated 86 percent of workers
expected to adopt it.
Now Belgium has announced
it will allow workers to request
permission to compress their
work hours into four days.
Companies in North America are
following suit; a coalition of
British companies is expected to
replicate the experiment this
summer. In the United States,
U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.)
has proposed a bill that would
reduce all standard workweeks to
32 hours, requiring overtime pay
for anyone working beyond that.
Perhaps the biggest argument
in favor of a shorter workweek is
that it doesn’t seem to harm
productivity, counterintuitive as
that may seem. Part of this is due
to the human tendency to stretch
or condense the time needed to
complete a task based on the
time we have available. If we
know we have eight hours to fill,
we’ll pace ourselves; the promise
of an earlier quitting timeI don’t know
about you, but my
two-day weekends
consist of one day
of recovery from
the previous week,
and one day
scrambling to
prepare for the
next one — not
much time left for
actual leisure. If
you have likewise concluded that
two days is simply not enough
weekend, you’ll be thrilled to
hear that the concept of a four-
day workweek is picking up
steam.
With the “Great Resignation”
still in full swing, and work-
induced burnout an official
occupational hazard according to
the World Health Organization, a
growing number of employers —
and countries — are rethinking
the standard 40-hour workweek.
Iceland led the way in
experimenting with shorter
workweeks, without pay cuts,
over several years. The
4-day workweek is introduced in Europe. I t’s time for Americans to c onsider it.
Work
Advice
KARLA L.
MILLER
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Candice Luter started
upcycling old furniture after visiting a farmers market in 2015.
Once the pandemic hit, she put her skills to use. Wonmin Lee
knew he wanted to do something with his hands. His latest
game is called Love, Career & Magic, which is based on a
Japanese reality show. Max Miller makes far more money on his
YouTube cooking channel than he did as a Disney employee. “I
wouldn’t have ever guessed that,” he said. Luter holds one of her
pieces featured in Target’s Black History Month collection.DREAM JOB FROM G1
Max Miller
Burbank, Calif.
Old job: Film sales and
distribution for the Walt Disney
Co.
New venture: Tasting
History, a YouTube cooking
channel
Where did you get the idea
for Tasting History?
I was always bringing historic
food into the office. At a
company Christmas party in
2019, I brought a medieval
elderflower cheesecake. A co-
worker said to me, “Hey, you
should put this on YouTube.” I
put out my first video at the end
of February 2020.
When did Tasting History
become a full-time gig?
After the pandemic struck, I
was furloughed. Nobody was
going to the movies anymore.
But I knew that I was starting
the channel at the perfect time.
Everyone was at home, and
there was room to grow there.
My start-up costs were fairly
cheap — about $2,000 for a
camera, tripod, light ring and
microphone. I had rather
immediate success, hitting
150,000 subscribers in just four
months. By April 2020, the
channel had pretty much
replaced my income at Disney.
When the company asked me to
come back in 2021, I decided to
focus on the channel and made
a video called “I Quit.”
How do you make money?
About four months after the
channel took off, a company
called Curiosity Stream reached
out and wanted to sponsor the
channel. I had no idea what to
charge. So I decided to ask for a
certain amount — I thought it