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Shep 4 Newsletter — August 2026

Welcome to the second Shep 4 Newsletter! This is where I share updates on what I’ve been working on and what I’m planning to work on next.

This month we more than doubled our subscriber count from 6 to 15! If we keep up this doubling rate then every human on Earth will be a subscriber by 2030!

Review of Last Month

Last month’s Project of the Month was Project Zero Inventory. The idea was to sell items on my website store without having to keep any inventory on hand and instead relying on on-demand 3D printing. The reason this is interesting is because it significantly lowers the barrier to entry for new product ideas. Instead of relying on bulk manufacturing with expensive minimum orders before demand for the product has been demonstrated, I can instead test the market with lower quality 3D printed versions. If people buy the product and demonstrate demand then I can iterate and put out an order for a higher quality version knowing that people actually will want it. And if nobody buys the product I can move on without sinking any money into it.

Anyway, that was the project idea, but I ran into a major limitation: I don’t actually own a 3D printer. I have a friend with a 3D printer, and he said I could use it, but then timing didn’t work out and I was unable to print anything last month. For this reason, I’m going to extend Project Zero Inventory into August.

This was a learning opportunity for me because I realized that if I want to build projects in public each month, I need to pick projects that don’t have constraints that are out of my control, or better yet, I can present projects I have already finished.

Moving Forward

So the Project of the Month for August is still Project Zero Inventory. I already have some designs, now I just need to print them!

Articles

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading! I appreciate your support and feedback.

I’m going to leave you with an interesting fact I learned recently. Nesting chinstrap penguins don’t sleep through the night, instead they nap for a few seconds at a time for over 10,000 times per day (SOURCE).