We’re Making More Than Things
There are probably easier ways to build a business than filling your house with 3D printers while raising two boys and going to graduate school.
We apparently needed to find that out for ourselves.
We’re Ken and Ali, the family behind The Multiverse Maker. We make cupcake toppers, keychains, decorations, and an assortment of things that usually begin with, “Do you think we could make…?”
Ken spent 25 years as a chef. That’s a lot of time working while other people gather around tables. These days, he’s a stay-at-home dad, and we’re trying to build something that lets him be here with our boys. Something they can see, participate in, and perhaps understand a little more as they grow.
I’m in seminary, which means our household contains both discussions about God’s grace and discussions about why something has detached itself from the printer bed.
Both require some patience. Occasionally, some language.
We homeschool our boys, and building this business has become part of what happens around their education. They get to see ideas become actual objects. They also get to see that having an idea and making it work are two very different experiences.
Honestly, we’re still learning that ourselves.
We want to teach them dedication. Effort. The willingness to learn something you aren’t immediately good at. We also want them to know that work belongs inside a life. There should be room for your people in it.
That’s part of why we’re doing this.
And since we’re going to write about it, we want to tell the truth.
Starting a small business involves a surprising amount of trying to figure out which button you’re supposed to click. There are fees, photos, shipping weights, descriptions, and websites that seem determined to test whatever patience you had left.
Sometimes we make something we’re proud of and then have to figure out how to help anyone find it.
Sometimes we have to start over.
That part is hard. Especially when you’ve already put time, money, and hope into the first attempt. We’re learning as we go, and some lessons have been considerably more expensive than we would have preferred.
But there’s something satisfying about holding a finished piece that began as an idea. About getting an order and realizing someone chose something we made. About watching the boys take an interest in how it all works.
Those things count. We’re trying to remember to let them count, even while there’s more to do.
This blog is where we’ll share some of that life: what we’re making, what we’re learning, what’s working, and what has us sitting at the computer saying, “Well, now what?”
There will be products here because making things is part of our family’s story. There will also be boys growing up, parents figuring things out, and the ordinary struggles of trying to give your time to everything and everyone who needs it.
We don’t have a polished success story to tell you.
We have a beginning, some stubbornness, a lot of ideas, and each other.
Welcome to the family behind The Multiverse Maker.
Let’s see what we can make of this.