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Smell Like a Bear? There’s a Bear for That…

‘Who makes soap? Body wash? Toothpaste? Mouthwash? Shampoo? Conditioner? Deodorant? Beard products?’

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By: Purple Bear

Ever since joining the Bear community, when I meet a high-morality person with a skill or small business, I like to support it. Even when they tell me, ‘Nah, man, I’ll just give you some!’ But that’s part of why they deserve to be supported. I’ll accept the generosity of a gift, but eventually, I want to send my energy to my in-group. Not some stranger. Not some foreign entity. Not some commercial product using ingredients you’ve never seen in nature. I want someone real with something real to support. And there’s no one more real than the Bears! No exaggeration. 

So with that mindset, look around your home. What are you buying from the store that, in all honesty, you don’t need to be this commercial-constant staple in your day-to-day? Is it made in your nation? Can you identify the ingredients? Would your ‘continuing to buy it’ not only feed a problem outside of you but feed a problem inside you? Wouldn’t it be great if you could just ‘have a Bear’ for all these things you keep getting by habit? And not only is it healthier or of higher quality, you just helped a good family. 

For me, the simplest thing was hygiene products. Of course, we guys will just buy whatever so we can go back to work without people nagging about how work makes us smell. But the ‘just buy whatever’ can easily be switched to ‘just buy Bear stuff.’ Easy, right? 

So I got on the app and said, ‘Who makes soap? Body wash? Toothpaste? Mouthwash? Shampoo? Conditioner? Deodorant? Beard products?’ And in minutes, someone commented with an answer. So one great confidence you can have is there’s a Bear for everything good and valuable! And every connection is a bridge worth trying to build. 

Maggie’s Home Essentials was the most frequent answer to my question. Maggie is @MaggiesHomEssentials on the Beartaria app and has her website here with all her products that Bears and non-Bears can shop. All her stuff is homemade and natural. You can look at each item on her site and see the small number of simple ingredients, all readily recognizable in nature. Now, sure, her designs have pretty flowers on them. But guys, they get the job done! The people nagging about your post-work smell will stop their whining and leave you alone! And look what you’d be supporting: The in-group. 

I made a post on the app reviewing some of the things I bought from Maggie over the course of a year, and the Beartaria Times Editorial staff were nice enough to reach out and suggest I turn it into an article. And here we are. As for my review post, here it is: 

“I wanted to review some @MaggiesHomEssentials products I bought this year. Most of these come in different fragrances for men and women. I’m a man, so the scents I went with are mostly sandalwood, I think. Except for the toothpaste, that one is peppermint.  

Shampoo: It does the job just fine. It’s watery, but it lathers (Castile base with coconut milk), so you’ll get plenty of use out of it despite how small the current bottle size is. 

Conditioner: Also does the job. Maggie went out of her way to make this liquid version of her ‘conditioner bar’ when I suggested it. It’s much better than the bar, in my opinion. 

Deodorant Stick: The paste is excellent, though it’s a bit softer than expected, so you might notice the stick squish faster than a commercial stick. This brings me to the… 

Deodorant Paste: This is just the paste in a little container, which is better for how soft it is, in my opinion. The stick kind of makes you accidentally use too much if you’re rough with it 

Deodorant Spray: Another way to get the job done, albeit not as manly. Just do it quickly! 

Mouth Wash: Our own natural mouthwash! This was another one Maggie went out of her way to make. This first one has a kind of salty taste to it, but it works fine. No burn. 

Body Wash: This one crushes as a general body wash, but it also works as a shampoo if you want something that has multiple uses. This one also lathers, if I remember correctly. 

Mustache Wax: I mainly got this out of curiosity because I’ve never messed around with beard products. If you like beard wax, I’m sure you’ll like it. I guess I just don’t need it. 

Beard Balm: I still don’t quite get the point of balm, but I’m glad I tried it. It’s firmer than I expected, but I guess this helps with split ends and stuff. I’m not sure. Sorry, haha. 

Beard Oil: I like this one best. I wore it to a Bear’s wedding! The lid has an eye dropper, so you can put as much or little in your beard as you like. I may use this more, allegedly. 

Charcoal Toothpaste: Finally, some stuff I know for sure doesn’t have any bad ingredients in it. If you know, you know! You might have a spoon or something near the sink to get it out. And rinse really well!

Bar Soap: Good bar soap. This was a free gift in one of my orders. She does that a lot! 

Exfoliating Pine Tar Soap: I’ll be honest I haven’t tried this yet, but it looks cool, and it has good stuff in it, like goat milk and charcoal. You know, the good stuff! But in soap! 

Conditioner Bar: I much prefer the liquid conditioner, mainly because you have to keep the bar in the fridge. But I also found this one very waxy and hard to fully get off the hair and hands after putting it on. I guess if you want your hair to be a little shapable or have that sort of wax sheen to it, this is fine. Me, I’m sticking with the liquid version. Which also has a LITTLE bit of that wax feel but not nearly as bad. Maggie is accommodating on the app, so just message her for feedback, and she’ll crush new methods! 

Overall Opinion: Maggie’s products are great if you’re looking for alternatives to stuff you buy at the store. She listens to feedback and suggestions from her customers and even throws in free gifts with your orders! Good stuff. I’ll buy from her again for sure.

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FROM HOBBY TO SIDE HUSTLE

A hobby is a rewarding and enjoyable way to spend your free time. It can also be an opportunity to spend quality time with family and friends.

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By: Woodworking Gunny Bear

If you attended the Beartaria National Festival, you might remember a beardless dude hocking handmade wooden items and making toy tops for your cubs…that was me. Despite the lack of facial hair (some habits from military life have stuck with me), I have taken up several hobbies that are traditionally enjoyed by men with sweet beards. I have also been able to parlay a couple of those hobbies into a viable means of making additional income for my family. Along the way, many lessons were learned, and more than a few mistakes were made. Hopefully, my experiences will help other bears make a smooth transition from a hobby to a side hustle. After all, the best kinds of hobbies are hobbies that pay for themselves.

Step one: Choosing a hobby.

Many of us already have one or more hobbies, but I am often astounded to find so many men and women whose only activity between work hours is watching T.V., playing video games, or surfing the internet. While there is money to be made as a competitive gamer, my experience is more applicable to hobbies where creating something is involved. If you haven’t yet chosen a hobby, the most important thing to keep in mind is that it is supposed to be a hobby, not a job.
While some hobbies easily lend themselves to being a side hustle, this shouldn’t be your primary concern when deciding how to spend your free time. The main consideration should be, “Do I actually enjoy this?”

A job that you enjoy never feels like work. As for myself, the hobbies of painting landscapes and woodworking have proven to be fun, rewarding, and profitable.

Step two: Figure out how to make your hobby pay for itself.

Initially, I never thought about selling the fruits of my hobby-related labors. I started painting landscapes many years ago. As with most “maker” hobbies, I soon had stacks of completed projects taking up space in the garage. Eventually, my wife decided that it would be a good idea to hang our favorites, then give the rest away as gifts. Once all of our friends and family owned one of my original pieces, I then needed to figure out what to do with the thirty(ish) completed works still taking up space. My wife suggested that I sell them, to which my immediate reaction was laughter. Despite my doubts, I went ahead and put up a few cardboard signs stating, “Original art for sale.” I then stood some of my nicer pieces up in the driveway…and waited. To my utter amazement, people started showing up, browsed my impromptu “art exhibit,” and walked away with one or more of my Bob Ross-inspired paintings. The money made from that sale had just paid for all of my paint, brushes, and canvases. There was even enough left over to buy a quality easel and take my family out to a nice dinner.

A few years later, my wife and I took up the hobby of woodworking. We have subsequently enjoyed countless hours of fun together and have paid for our tools and materials many times over (our first purchase with craft fair money was actually a chicken plucker). Admittedly, artwork and wooden toys, tools, etc., are fairly easy to monetize. The difficulty arises when the hobby doesn’t culminate in an easily sellable product. For example, if your hobby is fishing, you probably won’t enjoy hauling your catch to an open-air market and selling trout fillets. However, there is definitely a market for hand-tied flies and custom-made lures. In other words, you may have to find a specific aspect of your hobby that is monetizable. Some other examples would be an avid hiker offering guided nature walks or a crochet hobbyist selling scarves and beanies. Even a minimally skilled leather worker can find a way to earn a fist full of nickels by selling a few “What would Jesus do?” bracelets. The key is discerning which aspect of your hobby results in something useful or appealing to someone else.

Step three: Find your market

Once you have your potential product identified, your next step is to find your market. This will largely depend on what your product is. Internet sale sites such as Etsy or Craigslist, craft shows, farmer’s markets, and swap meets are all great places to sell physical goods. Alternatively, things like guided hikes, surfing lessons, or digital items may be more successfully monetized via social media sites and word-of-mouth endorsement. Casting a broad net will help to quickly identify the best places to market your product.

Step four: Learn from your mistakes and make the most of your successes

I have made many mistakes along the way and have also had my fair share of success. What’s important is that you look at both as lessons and apply them to your craft. The best lessons are learned from someone else’s mistakes. In this spirit, I will convey some of my knowledge so you can learn the easy way. The following are a few of my lessons learned…

  • Don’t skimp when it comes to essential tools. I can’t count how many “cheap” tools I went through before finally breaking down and shelling out the money for the more expensive, well-made version.
  • “Free” and “used” may be four-letter words, but they are good ones. You can save big by keeping an eye out for materials and quality used tools at thrift or antique stores, garage sales, and online. We have acquired some of our most beautiful wood from neighbors who just cut a tree down and were looking for someone to haul it off. We have also saved hundreds of dollars by opting for quality used versions of many of our most expensive tools.
  • Remember that you can sell one million things for a dollar or one thing for a million dollars, but how many people carry around a million bucks? We do make a few expensive items, but they don’t always sell. We also make a bunch of inexpensive items that sell consistently. Those cheaper items always pay the bills, and when the expensive ones do sell, it’s gravy.
  • Get the family involved. My wife also enjoys woodworking. She specializes in different areas, which increases the number of unique items that we can offer. Additionally, our daughter sells her artwork alongside our wooden crafts. This teaches her about labor/work ethic, finances, and business practices. It also turns a festival or craft show into a fun family affair.
  • Don’t get burned out. Remember that this is an activity that you chose because you enjoy it. I reached a point where I was doing commissioned pieces, staying up late to fill orders, and quickly realizing that my hobbies had somehow become work. I made a conscious decision to shut down the wood lathe for a time and to stop doing commissioned paintings. I focused on settling into our new farm, and until this year’s Bear Festival, I didn’t try to sell a single one of our creations. Because of this year-long break, along with the knowledge that I was making things for other bears, my hobbies had become fun again. We now participate in just a few craft fairs a year and can focus on the making, not the selling.

A hobby is a rewarding and enjoyable way to spend your free time. It can also be an opportunity to spend quality time with family and friends. Lastly, it can be a means to supplement your income while doing something fun. Happy hobbying. 

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The Beartaria Times Partners with Classical Learner

Beartaria Times is proud to announce we have partnered with Classical Learner Homeschool Company!

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Classical Learner and The Beartaria Times have partnered to bring more community value! This partnership will allow anyone who signs up with ClassicalLearner.com/Beartaria an exclusive three-day free trial of Homeschools Connected and will be supporting The Beartaria Times!


“Classical Learner is a company born in Beartaria, education by Bears for Bear cubs. Many homeschool companies do a great job, but only one operates in synchronicity with the spirit of Beartaria. It has always been my goal to turn Cubs into Bears, and this new partnership moves all of us much closer to making that dream a reality.” 

Brett Pike – Classical Learner Bear – President of Classical Learner

When you become a member of Classical Learner’s Homeschools Connected via ClassicalLearner.com/Beartaria, you not only gain access to the curriculum, the courses and the homeschool network, but you help fund Beartaria Times. Your support of Classical Learner assists in the development of new and relevant courses and resources, that all of our children will benefit from over the next decade. Beartaria truly is a hill to grow on.

We have always supported Classical Learner and are excited to launch this partnership! We hope that our ongoing support contributes to all the amazing things Brett is doing with classical Learner!

We will keep our readers posted with new developments coming from Classical Learner and Homeschools Connected!

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Classical Learner Launches New Homeschools Connected Portal

We are pleased to report that Classical Learner has launched a new Homeschools Connected members portal.

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Homeschool consultant and author Brett Pike started the company Classical Learner. Brett started this path to top-tier Homeschool services by offering consultation to homeschool parents to help sculpt and nurture Homeschool programs for families just starting their journey.

He began to post videos online that went viral, talking about the issues with the public school system as well as various subjects and methods for implementing a Homeschool education.

Brett’s philosophy focuses on critical thinking over memorization, stacking skills, and getting Children Entrepreneurial experience in the real world.

He attests to utilizing a child’s passion for stacking skills leading to entrepreneurship.

For example, at the most recent Beartaria Times festival, he talked about a child passionate about photography. Parents can nurture that skill into the experience needed to start a business and then stack additional skills such as marketing, web design, graphic design, sales, and more.

His online presence is multiplying with his unique ability to design lesson plans that bring education into the real world.

Instead of just learning math, he encourages reinforcing that math with living practice.

Want to know the area of a rectangle?
Make a garden box and reinforce those math skills, along with carpentry!

His methodology and philosophy are highly sought after as the go-to Homeschool program for parents wanting to nurture their children’s education with real-world skills and entrepreneurship.

Classical Learner launched Homeschools Connected in 2021. He brought together Homeschool families across the U.S. into a private discord where they could connect with other local families and access his courses and daily lesson plans.

His company’s growth brought strategic reinvestment in the areas his members hoped for improvement.

Elementary Lesson Plans ClassicalLearner.com

To better cater to a more productive user experience Classical Learner launched the Homeschools Connected portal that will allow members to navigate a clean, user-friendly design to better experience courses and well-organized lesson plans.

“The launching of the Homeschools Connected platform is a special achievement because its creation is the result of our initial members’ belief in me… and their support which made investing in the platform possible. Building Homeschools Connected on discord was a good start, but it wasn’t the right platform for the full curriculum we are building now. The new Homeschools Connected portal is organized, easy to navigate, and will allow us to expand in previously unimaginable ways. These achievements are what winning looks like; it’s about building parallel systems so that parents, children, and good people don’t have to rely on the beast system.”

Brett Pike

High School Lesson Plans ClassicalLearner.com

We are incredibly happy for Brett and Classical Learner!

Many of our members on The Beartaria Times App are also members of his program. We believe in his vision and love seeing his success.

We encourage all Homeschool parents to try it and join his Homeschools Connected Community. We can only see him grow and continue to offer highly valuable products and services in the future.

Sign Up Today.

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