Episode 3

The Hat Shop That Refused to Disappear

Published on: 15th May, 2026

A specialty hat shop in Tucson operates with two functions active inside the same space. The front of the store is used for retail sales, while repair work continues in an open workspace toward the back. Customers enter for different reasons throughout the day, with some shopping for new hats and others bringing in items for repair.

This field note follows the layout, customer movement, and daily operation inside the store, including how repair customers remain inside while browsing inventory and how both functions continue within a single open layout.

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About the Podcast

Design Your Growth: Field Notes
Observations of small businesses across America
Why do certain businesses always seem to appear next to each other?

Why does one location support the same type of business for decades—while another turns over every year?

And why do some small businesses quietly survive, without ever drawg attention to how they do it?

Most people pass by these patterns every day without noticing them.

Design Your Growth is a catalog of field notes built around those exact observations.
Each episode captures a single moment in the real world—something seen while traveling through towns, driving past plazas, or walking through local business districts. What stands out is documented as-is, without explanation or instruction.

There are no interviews. No guests. No step-by-step strategies. Just observations.

From clusters of similar businesses to unexpected location choices to long-standing storefronts that seem untouched by time, each field note isolates something that doesn’t quite make sense at first—but feels like it should.

These episodes don’t try to tell you what to do. They simply show you what’s there. And once you start noticing, it becomes difficult to stop.

New field notes are also available in visual form on YouTube and archived in writing on Substack.

Because sometimes the most valuable insights aren’t taught. They’re observed.

About your host

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Dawn Porthouse

Analyst, writer, and entrepreneur — EA, MBA, MPA — with years working as a CFO and tax advisor to small and mid-sized businesses. I've spent that time inside the numbers, watching how they grow, stall, and quietly veer off course long before anyone calls it a problem.

Deliberate Drift is where I examine those moments — the decisions, assumptions, and slow shifts that shape where a business actually ends up, not just where it intended to go. It covers both sides: the drift toward constraint and the drift toward unexpected advantage.

I also publish Design Your Growth, a quieter space for small business owners thinking through what expansion actually means for them before they move.

I'm a full-time RVer, traveling the country with my husband and our dogs. Most of my thinking happens somewhere between the road and the work.