Practice inspires practice (and joy!)
It’s not just our startup’s name—it’s the core concept
When Ben and I first began working on our startup, we used the codename “Flowstate.” But after a few weeks, I hit my breaking point: we needed a real name! So, we dove into searching the USPTO and available domain names for something that felt like the right name for a startup focused on enabling creative hobbies and creating joy.
After brainstorming and churning through some meh options, we landed on the name Practice for a few key reasons:
It is a simple word that doesn’t feel gimmicky. We quickly ruled out compound words (hobbyjoy 🤢), misspellings (flowst8 🤮), and the blatant untruths (hobbybrain.ai 🫠) because we wanted something that felt authentic and memorable.
We didn’t want our name to box us in since our vision is big—we want to help people find joy through creativity, starting with forming the perfect creative habit (a Practice!) that sustains and inspires them.
The word itself encompasses the complete experience: it’s a noun and a verb, and when we talk about what we’re building, we naturally say the word practice (lowercase P).
And, we just loved the name. It “clicked” and felt right.
We tried it out for a few days, gathered feedback from friends and family, and went for it. Although practice.com wasn’t available (thanks, Mark Cuban!?), we secured a relevant, related domain (practicemaking.com) and incorporated in startup-friendly Delaware.
We’re still working on our trademark filing*, but unless some unexpected legal hurdle appears, Practice is here to stay.
* are you a trademark attorney or do you know one? If so, please send me a note at erica [at] practicemaking.com. Thanks!
Practicing creates a flywheel of joy
We hadn’t initially made this connection when we chose the name Practice, but when you practice (lowercase “p”) a creative hobby—or anything, for that matter— it inspires you to stretch, grow, and…keep practicing. It becomes customary and habitual, and the word itself implies repetition.
This means that once you find the right hobby and start practicing it, it creates a flywheel of more practicing and resulting good vibes that can spill over into other areas of your life.
And as you build this creative practice, you create visible progress that’s incredibly satisfying. The growth is evident in a single session (“I knit five rows!”), at the end of a project (“I made a scarf!”), and over time (“The scarf I made today is so much better than my first one!”). You create tangible, visible artifacts of your progress, which inspire you to continue practicing.
This is why we plan to emphasize progress tracking in Practice. And I personally cannot wait for the full product to be live so I can use it.
A case study: my practice
I started making my first miniature house in January 2023. I’ve told this story before, but the tl;dr is that I had just been laid off and wanted to take a break from Zoom and screens. My friend’s daughter wanted a dollhouse, so I dove in.
I studied art in college and had done many crafts before, so I had a good foundation, but I didn’t know much about making miniatures. After a lot of Googling and YouTubing, I got started—and while I wasn’t great at it at first, it immediately brought me so much joy and satisfaction.
Over the past 18 months of making minis, I’ve learned new skills, experimented with different materials, and become better at capturing my work (with photography help from my friend Joe and my wonderfully supportive, patient, and talented husband, Alex😘). Looking at the photos of my progress, I can see how much I’ve improved and identify ways to make my next projects even better. It all makes me want to practice even more.
The progress of my practice is most evident when I look at the mini rooms I’ve created. Here are three living rooms I created over the past 18 months:
While the fancy photography makes it hard for me compare my 2024 projects to my first attempts in 2023, each picture represents hours of practice that have brought me, and others, so much joy. And they show how my craftsmanship and skills have blossomed. Seeing this progress motivates me to keep going and build my practice further. I can’t help but wonder—what will I learn and be able to make in the next 18 months?
Why I can’t wait for Practice to launch
As I scrolled through my camera roll to find these before-and-after shots I kept thinking, I wish I’d had Practice when I first started this creative hobby. I wonder how many hours I’ve spent building my mini skills. And I wish I could’ve captured all the steps in my journey and my learnings.
I’ve tried to use Instagram for this (kind of). It’s become my portfolio, and I’ll sometimes share behind-the-scenes content there—but it’s not really the full story of my creative practice. Plus, it doesn’t feel like it’s for me since I’m beholden to the algorithm and platform norms. So, my Instagram is mostly quick videos of the final results and glossy finished shots, rather than the messy middle of projects where I’ve experienced the most growth. It doesn’t capture all the points of frustration and triumph, or how each session made me feel. I can’t easily reflect on my progress over time. And, I’m not just practicing my creative hobby “for the ‘gram”—it’s because I love making things and the joy they bring!
That’s why I can’t wait for the day when I, and others, can easily track, celebrate, and share our creative growth with Practice.
You too? Shameless plug alert: join the waitlist today!