Introducing the Dance of Life Podcast Merch Store
Well, it’s finally here.
What originally started as a project to move all of my articles into a devotional, exploded into a rabbit hole adventure of learning to create an online store from scratch. Suffice it to say that I’ve been working 14 hour days for the last few weeks dealing with everything from designing, to coding to having fun with technology issues :) But God is good and has provided energy and mental focus for me to do something pretty great in a relatively short period of time.
But before I tell you about it I want to tell you a fun story, to show you how God uses all things for the good and how you can never predict what He will do.
About 6 years ago, in 2019, I started a clothing business with a friend of mine. I created tons of designs (still have one of the shirts), we had a website, an LLC, talked to local printers and spent a few thousand dollars to get nowhere. At the time print on demand and online stuff was not where it is today, and I had no experience with online marketing. My friend and I eventually went our separate ways due to changes in life, one of them being my faith, and it was a project that just seemed lost in the sands of time and for no reason.
Around that time and into the COVID sham, I also invested thousands of dollars into creating a personal brand with my podcast. I wrote books, hired a videographer to do crazy shots for branding and for content creation (like shots of me dancing for cool intros to courses I was making), signed up for marketing classes, went to personal growth conventions, created online funnels, automated email campaigns and Zapier triggers and did all the stuff you usually do as an “online entrepreneur.” It was a lot of money spent, a lot of activity, and frankly it went relatively nowhere because I wasn’t walking in the truth.
But it was great experience — although, again, I thought it was just a waste of time because it seemed like the majority of my efforts were wasted in the wrong direction.
Also around that time I invested a huge some of money into an Amazon drop shipping business. It was basically a program that created an automated store for you and managed it for you, at the exchange of skimming some money off the top of your profits. On paper it seemed like a genius idea, but it ended up being a horrible one because of several factors out of everyone’s control. Today Amazon is sticking to the FBA people because they’re greedy, and the people who sold me the program are still in a lawsuit against the ones who created it in the first place lol. So maybe they will finally pin the thieves down and we can recover some of our investment, but who knows.
Either way, I learned a lot about sales tax, commerce, drop shipping, and so on. Again, I thought just something that was a wasted effort and in the wrong direction.
Now fast forward several years and here we are, with this budding Fennec Fox community and a huge library of edifying content that is changing people’s lives and helping them walk the narrow road. I never thought I would be here, yet here we are all by God’s grace. And like I mentioned earlier, this whole shop thing wasn’t even planned. I was trying to create the devotional, but my old fulfillment company was giving me several issues and I realized they were way overpriced compared to other options. This frustration led to investigating how I can just sell my own books without dealing with Amazon or whatever else, and eventually I decided to just go for the whole 9 yards and create an online store.
It’s funny because I expressly avoided physical products for years, since they seemed to be a total hassle with shipping and taxes and so on, and also because of my previous experience trying to do something with physical products. But after many people asked for merch, and after I realized that it might be a good opportunity to help you break the ice with important conversations, and creating that devotional — eventually I hit the tipping point.
When I commit to something I try my best to honor that commitment. In freshman year of my Jesuit high school we had to memorize a 20 minute speech on history and, if we failed, we would fail the class and get kicked out of the school. My speech was on Alexander the Great, and how he burned the ships of his army against his famous fight versus Darius in the East. This forced his soldiers into a singular scenario — victory at the expense of the enemy and no other option but death.
This is where the “burn the ships” metaphor comes from, and it’s my attitude as well when I commit to something. If I am going to do it, I will try my best to do it well and stay on it because I hate saying something and then not doing it or doing it half-heartedly. So, naturally once I accepted the idea of starting a store to sell my devotional and other things, it was time to burn the ships and do it diligence with designs and shirts and magnets and, oh wait.. posters! No! Pet stuff too! :P
So now after several weeks of very hard work, I present you with the Dance of Life Podcast Merch Store. It’s a cute thing, full of cute and fun products that are sure to get the conversation going. My intention for this project is that it empowers you to reach out to people, because sometimes just trying to send them a video or engage on the important stuff can be hard. But, maybe with a cute fox it may break the ice!
There are also great resources like books and posters and postcards that are all very useful and edifying. Plus, for those with furry friends there’s even pet gear so they can be in the Fennec Fox Club too :)
The collections are organized by type and also by design. There are 10 designs currently, each with varieties of clothing or items. The types of things you will find are men and women’s fashion, hats, magnets, books, posters, totes and mugs. Collect them all for bonus points, and share them with your friends. The store will be linked to the main website, as well as other platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook.
I may even run some promotions as things go, based on if you watched content or not, so be a berean!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. As a special incentive to early adopters, I have enabled a 10% discount off your entire order with the code FENNEC2025 — so take advantage of the grand opening while it lasts! The code will expire on Friday, February 14th at 11:59 PM MST (Mountain Standard Time).
If you want to use this code I recommend going to my actual shop address and NOT Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. as I am unsure if their checkouts will allow entry of coupon codes or if it has synced up. So, better safe than sorry.
A final important note is that this is a ministry, not Amazon Prime. I have several print on demand suppliers and I’m a one man operation. Basically what that means is that returns are not going to be happening. If a product is damaged or you get the wrong one, I will happily send you a replacement, but it’s just too much of a hassle to deal with returns. All the information is laid out as far as sizes and measurements, so shop wisely. But I have tested the products and they are good quality and turned out great. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
Take care and keep those ears up,
~Tudor