Front of a business card that says: Jeff Eddy, Business Border Collie. jeff@ordercollie.com. Scrappy Business Support for Makers, Artisans, and Indie Creators. Order Collie Systems. I'll Herd Your Business. You Focus on Your Craft!

This is my whole focus for 2026: helping solo creatives un-stick their business and get organized enough to bring in VA support.

I'm offering free 1-hour no-pressure consultations to walk through your current chaos and map out what's possible.

DM or email me and let's talk!

I know to a lot of you that feels out way out of your budget, but that is where some strategic business advice can help.

If you can free up 10 hours a month to actually CREATE or market yourself, you're not just breaking even. The mental health benefits of being able to create again are huge.

How to Thrive & Survive as a Freelancer Armour up for some real talk from some of our favorite creatives who learned how to thrive on the freelance battlefield the hard way.

Nice article with some solid tips for dealing with the business vs. creative side of being a freelancer.

However, it fails to call out that you can hire a Virtual Assistant to handle invoicing, scheduling, client follow-ups, and basic bookkeeping for $300-800/month.

A roundup of 12 logo designs: Weighted Wonders featuring a kettle bell that is also a dragon, SQEKR Technology showing a running mouse with a USB cable for a tail, Furry Chamber of Commerce showing furry paw hands surrounded by a circle with a floating briefcase over it, Skrunkle of a shaggy little coyote face holding a paintbrush in his mouth, M. Nies Photography featuring a stylized flying hummingbird, D.I. Yote Bites showing a smiling coyote howling into a podcast mic, Bunny's Registration System showing an app icon showing three furries looking like bathroom icons queuing in a line with the rear-most one waiving their hand to get attention, Forester Universe showing an anthro fox from the chest up reading a book, Ash Silverpine shows a werewolf paw surrounded by a circle of pine boughs, Dancing Jackal Books shows a jackal in billowy pants and shirt with a sash around his waist dancing with arms up, Scorched Glass by Nicole shows a stained glass half arch window design that is also a rising sun with tendril rays extending outward, Bear Cottage Gifts & Collectibles shows a grandmotherly teddy bear leaning with one paw on her cheek wearing a yellow sun hat and a lavender bow.

Logo design roundup for 2025! Here are all of the logos I've completed this year. 2025 had a very canine-heavy theme! If you're interested in hiring me for a logo design for 2026, get in touch! thornwolf.com/logo-design

#Logo #LogoDesign #BSNM

I'm going to be at Further Confusion without any specific obligations on my schedule.

So if anyone wants to grab some time to chat about Furry business challenges/strategies, life after corporate employment, and how to navigate existence with a brain full of squirrels... feel free to DM me.

So I heard the advertisement world gave us another “oh no, he’s cute” wolf.

(I needed to add the subtitles myself because *holy appropriate song*, Batman!)

The Anti-Planner is not an "ADHD Book". It's an Anti-Procrastination Toolbox.

It helps you quickly identify your reasons for not doing a thing and then gives you quirky, fun methods for addressing it. It's well-written, funny, and incredibly easy to implement.

EVERYONE needs this.

A hand holds a book called "Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about Al" by Rua M. Williams. The cover is burgundy with orange leaves, and behind the book is a blanket with similar colors.

This will be my thread for thoughts while reading Disabling Intelligences by @fractalecho.bsky.social this week.

I'm all wrapped up in a fleece blanket, I have my highlighter and page flags, and on page 2 I'm already love their writing style.

🧵

This "Official" Autism Stat Made No Sense...so I actually read the papers. YouTube video by Hank Green

Apparently I forgot to link to the video! 😀

youtu.be/BdpSfrD3Nzs?...

Very few people are willing to lay the blame at the feet of what is basically the foundation of our modern economy, so I don't expect anyone will be looking into this anytime soon.

But, we need to start wondering who is exactly using who when it comes to our individual choices of entertainment.

I am absolutely not saying that these things cause the actual neurodevelopmental disorder of Autism, but that the symptoms they have caused in people MIMC many of the diagnostic criteria.

Not only have we expanded the target window, the signal to noise ratio has plummeted over the last 15 years.

But my biggest disappointment, again, is the lack of any consideration that the expansion of diagnostic criteria to include more non-profound cases is only part of the situation here.

This argument presumes that people have not been changed by 1) technology and 2) COVID-19 themselves.

This video is all over the place and needed a good editor to make it coherent, but it is a good analysis (I spot-checked) of the many problems with the administration's Tylenol = Autism (and probably the ultimate Vaccines = Autism) "argument."

It's what you get when stupid people pretend to think.

But you'll never know if you don't ask.

It's hard to admit you need help. Often excruciatingly hard.

But if there are things you just can't manage on your own, you are failing all the parts of you that are wonderful by letting them drag your down.

We all have something to contribute to the world.

It's okay to be "Bad at Life." It's okay if you never learn how to be.

The important thing is that you embrace it and get help with the things your brain doesn't handle well.

Perhaps a friend is good at the things you are bad at. Perhaps they are bad at things you are good at.

3. See reality clearly. The stories we tell ourselves are usually worse than what's actually happening. Break out of your head.

You can do this. Learning is the first step. Trust yourself to take the next one.

What fear have you been putting off facing?

Discouragement - This one's harder. It's not about the task. It's about not trusting yourself to finish.

1. Talk to yourself like you'd talk to a friend. We're brutal to ourselves but kind to others.

2. Celebrate every win, no matter how small. Did something tiny today? That counts.

Intimidation - You don't know enough. The project feels too big. You don't know where to begin.

1. Break it into tiny pieces.

2. Study it until you understand it better. (But know when to stop studying and start doing.)

3. Find something to love about it. Even befriend the fear itself.

Happy Halloween.

Let's talk about the scariest thing in your career: the fear that stops you from starting.

Not spooky ghosts. The real fear that causes procrastination.

In my experience, this breaks down into two types: Intimidation & Discouragement

Jeff Eddy — “The Order Collie” A Minnesota-based Customer Success and Enablement professional with a background in IT Managed Services, SaaS Marketing Technology, and Professional Business Services.

Update on the job front! A colleague did a big broadcast to her email list, and now I have meetings this week with a community advertising magazine publisher, a national HVAC marketing coordinator, and (potentially) a public speaking coach.

(More about me here: jeffery-eddy.super.site)

A smiling gray-bearded man that happens to be looking for work, being licked by a neighbor's red-and-white Siberian Husky who probably isn't looking for a job. Behind him sits a man in a Bolt shirt who is hoping the first man gets some money coming in pretty damn soon so that they can continue to afford food for everyone.

Weekly reminder that I am looking for work!

In the corporate sphere I do Customer Success and Enablement, but everywhere else I am essentially a Business Border Collie.

If you have things that need doing which you are too busy to get done (or just hate doing) then I may be your huckleberry.

Cancel my calls, if you need me, I’ll be gibbering in the corner.

If you have never been Neurodivergent before, congratulations... you are now. You don't need an official mental disorder to suffer the effects of them.

We need to learn their skills and techniques now.

We need to listen to those who know this terrain intimately.

They are the leaders we need.

We even already have a war plan! People who are Autistic, ADHD, Bipolar, and/or suffer from General Anxiety Disorder or Depression have been fighting this battle for decades. They've written hundreds of books to help others like them.

Now we all suffer from the same symptoms they do.

More and more I see the act of reclaiming our minds from the late stage attention economy, pernicious algorithms, political PsyOps, and GenAI slop as the fight of our age.

We can't take our communities, our country, or our world back until we take back the sovereignty of our thought processes.

The sad, broken people behind GenAI don't have any of that either.

But rather than wanting to improve themselves (which they have more than enough free time and money to do if they cared to try) they want to make the rest of us dumber and more broken than them so that they can rule us.

Decades worth of speculative fiction plots have aliens that abduct / study / befriend humans in an effort to improve their own society which is threatened / dying because they lack the emotion / creativity / passion our brains have that makes us unique.

Turns out we didn't need aliens.

The first step in doing so is becoming aware of when you are being manipulated, and the quickest route to this is mindfulness and intentionality.

Learn to step out of your thoughts and examine them, and ask whether what you are thinking is serving you or someone else.

The worst part of all of this is that the emotional hollowing-out of people is exactly the intent of the people behind GenAI.

A populace unable to think for itself is easy to manipulate and exploit.

Defending the sovereignty of your mind is no longer just a good idea, it is part of the resistance.