Squirrel Publishing: My First Business, Years Before PowerNet

Long before PowerNet Online, before I was wiring up modems in Menasha at midnight, I had a much smaller business with a much sillier name: Squirrel Publishing. It was my very first company, and I ran it out of Neenah, Wisconsin while I was still in high school, somewhere around 1995 to 1996.

There was no website. There could not be. This was before the web was something a kid could just put a business on. Squirrel Publishing lived on a Macintosh, a phone line, a printer, and a hand-drawn business card. That was the whole operation, and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world.

The business card

I made this card when I was about sixteen. It sat in a plastic sleeve for thirty years, which is probably the only reason it survived at all. The cheerful squirrel holding an acorn and the little napping cat were part of the brand from the very first day. I scanned it front and back, and as far as I know it might be one of a kind.

The flyer

This is the flyer I handed out to drum up business, printed, of course, on Squirrel Publishing’s own equipment. Reading it back now makes me grin a little.

Desktop publishing at a low cost to YOU! I am a high-school student who is offering complete publishing services. Top quality work with professional layout and drawing programs; videotaping and photo manipulation. Please give me a call any time for more information!

What can I make? Flyers, Brochures, Menus, Agendas, Cards, Etc. 10,000 stock graphic images; can scan any image that you provide. Complete print jobs or camera-ready art. I also offer Macintosh Computer Lessons!

Transcribed from the Squirrel Publishing flyer, around 1995 to 1996

Ten thousand stock graphic images felt like an unimaginable library at the time. I would do flyers, brochures, menus, agendas, business cards, camera-ready art, image scanning, and even a little videotaping and photo work. And if you wanted to learn the Mac yourself, I taught lessons too.

How a squirrel became PowerNet

Here is the part I love. The Squirrel Publishing flyer listed a phone number, 725-4063, and one of those early AOL email addresses. That very same number, 725-4063, would soon be answering as powernt.net, the first version of what became PowerNet Online. The kid doing page layout and Macintosh lessons was about to help wire up the whole Fox Valley for the internet.

I put together a little tribute page for Squirrel Publishing with the full-resolution scans, as part of the larger PowerNet Online archive I have been rebuilding. If you want to see the card and the flyer up close, it is all there.

This is part of Nostalgia, my collection of the old things I have built, lost, and rebuilt.