We All Have A Banana Stand
It’s the project you let go stale.
‘No,’ you say. ‘I never sold a banana in my life. Never want to.’
It’s a metaphor, tally man. Your Banana Stand is the dream, the idea, the project you never started. Or if you did, you did a half-arsed job and let it go stale.
Your Banana Stand was something that excited you enough to spend time and resources to make it real. And along the way, you lost the excitement.
Your Banana Stand now slumps sadly in some dusty Internet corner. It’s alive still, but it’s in a weird half-life funk. Somewhere between ‘done’ and ‘not done.’
You’re not sure you can muster enough enthusiasm to move it forward. You’re not sure you want to let it go. And so it goes, day after day. No progress, no closure, nothing.
We all have Banana Stands like this. Me, you, everyone you know. Most of us keep it secret because we’re afraid of letting people know about it. Afraid of what people may think of it. Or think how dumb you are.
But most of all, we’re afraid of starting it and failing. If it never starts, it can never fail, right?
Maybe now is a good time to brave up and dust yours off. Time to tally your bananas.
‘Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.’ Winston Churchill
Banana Stands are everywhere
- Book manuscripts never completed.
- Blogs and newsletters abandoned by the million.
- Ecommerce stores that never booked a sale.
- Software projects that never made it to version 1.0.
- Subscriptions rarely used.
- Training courses never completed nor lessons applied.
‘Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Enough.
This newsletter is my Banana Stand
I’m Mark. I started this newsletter and named it The Banana Stand. I know how it feels to start something and never see it done. More than once. And this one, I want to see done.
The Banana Stand is a newsletter-centric business. Which means I’m transforming it from a casual hobby into a real, revenue generating business centered around this newsletter.
The casual hobby started on Substack in October 2024. Then life got in the way and it went into hiatus.
So now, I’m breathing life back into it. Right here, on Substack, in public. I plan to use every technique I’ve learned to make it succeed. To turn it into a newsletter-centric business. Structured to be most useful to creators like you.
This is my Banana Stand. What’s yours?
