Hi internet,
I'm starting a regular blog diary about me, a trained scientist, trying to start an online business for the first time ever! Seems crazy, right? Below is the link to my store and some background on how I got here....
My store is www.chemistalchemist.com
For 33 years, I worked in the pharmaceutical/biotech industry as a protein chemist. I rose to the rank of Director and had my own small group (at it's peak, I had 8 people reporting to me, many Ph.D. scientists). I loved my career and really enjoyed my job. I especially loved the people in my group and department. The industry has been sinking fast in recent years. It started in 2022 when inflation went up and then interest rates followed. That's like kryptonite for my industry. Biopharma is capital intensive so when the costs of capital go up, investors flee. This was exacerbated by AI. Once ChatGPT rolled out, everyone with money wanted to invest in the cool, new shiny thing. My company had once been that cool shiny new thing, and the stock reflected that back in 2021 when it went above $150/share. It fell below $7 in 2025, along with a lot of my wealth. 😟 Luckily I have a good amount of savings, and I did sell some shares, so I'm not on the verge of homelessness or anything...
I knew there was a chance, given how bad the stock market was, that I'd need to do something else. Back in late 2024, I happened on an article about the Print On Demand business. I was immediately intrigued. Also last year, I also took a health and wellness coaching class last year. I was planning!!
I was laid off on January 9th, 2025. That was one of the hardest weeks of my life. I loved my group and enjoyed my company. The thought of leaving them was very painful. I decided I had to leave the Boston area because living there was too expensive. Luckily I got a break on rent from my ex-husband and moved to Vermont.
After hurriedly moving (very stressful) and getting out of Dodge as quickly as I coud, I took some time to heal, to think. I tried looking for a job in industry. I had one interview. I had mixed feelings around it. I sincerely wanted to try something new, and something with flexibility.
I created some products on Printify to sell on Amazon and Etsy. I quickly discovered the limitations of these market places. Etsy is easier and more intuitive, but I learned that very few people actually work there LOL 😆 I asked a couple of friends to buy a few products from my Etsy store to test the platform and the Etsy algorithm decided that going from 0 sales to two within a day was growth that was too fast and it disabled my account with no recourse. This is how I figured out that no one actually works there. There's no phone number, no people to talk to. There's no way to resolve it. They only employ AI for trivial things.
Amazon is not intuitive to use. It's harder to create listings. You can have a listing, and not find it with the search engine, which is weird. I got frustrated and set it aside.
It should be noted that I was also dealing with a tremendous amount of fear and doubt about doing this. This lasted for months. I worried about looking foolish if I failed. I worried that people would negatively judge my product designs. I worried about entering a crowded product niche.
My store is called, Chemist Alchemist, because that's a bit of who I am. I noticed ages ago, my favorite musicians created music that they themselves loved. And the more authentic they were in their expression, the more people related to their songs. That philosophy always resonated to me. I unfortunately don't have musical talent, but I can express myself in other ways. If I make products I like, maybe others will like them? My early designs might seem rather basic, because I'm just learning, but I expect to get better with time.
For my store name (Chemist Alchemist), my degree is in chemistry, and I worked in science, so it's obvious where the "Chemist" side came from. Where did the "Alchemist" side come from? That one is harder to explain. I'll try to give a brief explanation. For my entire adult life, I considered myself an agnostic. I never focused on spirituality. Then, that all changed in 2023. I was shown, in a profound and deep way. that there is more than the physical world. I learned that we can transform and that I had been transforming all along, unbeknownst to me. I also know, without doubt, that there is something beyond the physical world. I learned a lot in the process about how things work (about who we really are and why we come here). That's a topic for another time and place. And this is really all I would like to say about how understood myself to be not just a Chemist, but also an Alchemist, a person who's undergone transformation.
My store is about how science and spirituality are actually the same continuum. If cold is the absence of heat, then the physical world can mean the absence of spiritual awareness (spirit is always there, but we forget it's there). Of course, that's a choice. Spiritual awareness is another choice. Chemist Alchemist is the understanding that the material and the spiritual (physical/metaphysical or earth/heaven) are very much connected. If we focus on the physical only, we tend to become unbalanced and unfulfilled. So, what do we do in that state? We distract distract distract. We sink into our computers, phones, TV shows, news, politics and pop culture. I include myself in that and this was my practice for many years. We may even engage in unhealthful and somewhat destructive behaviors.
Back to the store..
I'm at the stage where the store is built. Right now, I am paying someone to redesign it to look more professional. I'll pay someone to optimize for the search engine (SEO). I get some organic traffic, but have had no sales as yet. So my next step is to figure out how to market my store so people can see it.
Once my store was live, I had people pestering me. I'm always leery of unsolicited emails. Scammers look for new stores to gain access to the store and your information. I spoke to one or two of them, but got suspicious. Now I just block them right away. I use Fiverr now to pay for services related to my store. It's the easiest way.
On the coaching front, I've started a YouTube channel, to try to reach my target audience.
My coaching business aims to coach divorced women so they become personally empowered and learn how to build their dream lives. This includes using the principles of manifestation as outlined in the book "Reality Transurfing" It's not the health and wellness genre in which I was trained but the coaching principals still apply. The channel is www.youtube.com/@chemistalchemist11
So, if you're interested then, stay tuned!
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