I thought about a book today.
Not because somebody offered me a commission.
Not because it appeared on an affiliate dashboard.
Not because a company asked Taylor’s Things to promote it.
I thought about it because I genuinely believe more people need to know it exists.
The book is called Healing Wonders of Herbs by Herminia De Guzman-Ladion.
Growing up in Jamaica, this was one of those books that belonged naturally in the world I knew.
Herbs were already part of everyday life.
Bush tea was normal.
Somebody knew what leaf was used for what.
Somebody’s grandmother knew another plant.
Somebody else knew an herbalist.
And when you needed to know something, you either knew the answer or you knew somebody who did.
Healing Wonders of Herbs was one of those useful references that fit naturally into that world.
Decades later, it came back to mind and my first thought was simple:
People need access to this.
I did not know whether there was an affiliate program.
I did not know whether Taylor’s Things could make a penny from sharing it.
I just knew I wanted to point people toward it.
And that is the perfect definition of a Taylor’s Things Global Find.
It usually starts with a question
A lot of these recommendations begin the same way.
Somebody calls me.
Messages me.
Or we are having a conversation and they ask about something useful because they believe one of two things:
I probably know something about it.
Or:
I probably know who to call.
Sometimes I know the answer myself.
Sometimes I do not.
But I know somebody who does.
That is a very Jamaican way of solving a problem.
You may not know the answer yourself, but somebody in your circle does.
So you ask.
You make the call.
You find the person who knows.
Eventually the question becomes:
What was the source?
Where did you get it?
Where can I get one?
Who sells it?
What is the name of that book?
What brand do you use?
Where did you find that thing?
And once I have pointed one person toward the source, another question naturally follows:
How can somebody else in the same or a similar situation get access to it too?
That is where Curated Finds comes in.
Instead of giving the same answer one person at a time, Taylor’s Things gives that useful information somewhere to live.
Curated Finds are things I already recommend
That distinction matters.
Taylor’s Things is not opening an affiliate marketplace, sorting products by commission percentage and asking:
“Okay, what can we convince people to buy?”
That is completely backwards.
Curated Finds are things I already have a reason to talk about.
Things I use.
Things my family uses.
Things I grew up with.
Things I bought with my own money.
Things somebody I trust introduced me to.
Things that solved a real problem.
Things I already recommended when there was absolutely nothing in it for me.
Sometimes that recommendation comes from years of personal experience.
Sometimes it comes from family.
Sometimes it comes from somebody who knows far more about the subject than I do.
Sometimes I make a phone call, get pointed toward the right source and immediately think:
Other people need to know about this too.
That is a Curated Find.
But first, turn the package around
Before anything becomes a Curated Find, it has to pass one test first:
Turn the package around.
No compromise.
What is actually in it?
What does the ingredient list say?
What are the specifications?
What is the company promising?
Does the product itself support the story being told on the front?
If the front says one thing and the back tells another story, it does not become a Curated Find.
It does not matter how popular the brand is.
It does not matter how slick the packaging looks.
It does not matter how many five-star reviews it has.
It does not matter how useful the product might otherwise seem.
And it certainly does not matter how much commission is attached to the sale.
The first curation test is honesty.
The product has to survive being turned around.
That standard is there because I have already watched products I trusted keep the same promises on the front while the ingredient list slowly became something else.
I have already seen NATURAL, PURE, HEMP, BOTANICAL and every other reassuring word imaginable printed in giant letters while the small print told a much more complicated story.
I am not interested in bringing that same nonsense into Taylor’s Things.
If we cannot reconcile the marketing with the actual product, we stop there.
If it cannot pass the turn-the-package-around test, it cannot become a Curated Find. No exceptions.
Then we ask whether it is actually worth sharing
Passing the first test does not automatically earn something a place.
Honesty gets it through the door.
Now the product itself has to make sense.
Is it useful?
Is it well made?
Does it offer reasonable value for what it is?
Do I have real experience with it, or does somebody I trust?
Would I use it?
Would I give it to somebody in my family?
Would I point somebody toward it knowing my name is attached to the recommendation?
And finally:
Would I recommend it if there were no commission attached?
If something is listed in Curated Finds, that answer is already:
Yes.
By the time it appears on Taylor’s Things, those questions have been answered.
We are not using the store to figure out whether we like something.
It is in the store because I already believe it is worth sharing.
The commission is the side benefit
The commission is never the reason for the recommendation.
It is simply a possible side benefit of connecting somebody with something I was already willing to tell them about.
The real benefit for me is much simpler:
I pointed somebody in the right direction.
Maybe they found the book they had been trying to locate.
Maybe they discovered a product that solved a problem.
Maybe I saved them hours of searching because I already knew the source.
Maybe I knew who to call when they did not.
That is useful whether Taylor’s Things earns fifty dollars, fifty cents or nothing at all.
If there happens to be an affiliate relationship attached to that recommendation, great.
But the recommendation existed first.
It always does.
I already do this in real life
That is probably the easiest way to explain Curated Finds.
This is not behavior created for the store.
I already do it.
Somebody asks:
“Wayne, where did you get that?”
If I know, I tell them.
If I do not know but I know somebody who does, I make the call.
Then six months later somebody else asks the same question.
And eventually I am thinking:
Why am I giving this same answer one person at a time?
Put the source somewhere people can find it.
Explain why I am pointing them there.
Share it.
Taylor’s Things gives that habit a permanent home.
Healing Wonders of Herbs is the perfect first example
That is why this book belongs here.
I wanted to share Healing Wonders of Herbs before I knew whether there was any money attached to sharing it.
The recommendation already existed.
I remember the book because it was useful.
I remember it because it belonged naturally in the herbal culture I grew up around.
And decades later, when it came back to mind, my first thought was not:
“Can I monetize this?”
It was:
“People need to know where to find this book.”
That is a Global Find.
If Taylor’s Things also earns something for pointing somebody toward a copy, great.
That is the side benefit.
The real result is that somebody who needed the source now knows where to look.
Sometimes the useful thing is already in our lives
Taylor’s Things makes things.
We develop VitalLeaves products.
We work with Jamaican artisans.
We build software.
We repurpose computer hardware.
But every useful thing in the world does not have to originate with us.
Somebody else has already made plenty of things worth owning.
Somebody else wrote the book.
Somebody else designed the tool.
Somebody else found a better solution to a problem.
Good.
If it is useful and worth sharing, Taylor’s Things can point toward it.
That is what Global Finds means.
Our own experience matters
Firsthand experience has value.
If I tell you:
I use this.
That means something.
If I tell you:
My family uses this.
That means something too.
If I say:
I grew up with this in Jamaica.
That gives you context.
And if I tell you:
I did not know the answer, so I called somebody who has been working with this for thirty years and this is where they pointed me,
that matters too.
None of that means personal experience replaces facts.
It does not.
If something makes a technical claim, we can verify it.
If something makes a health claim, evidence matters.
If there are ingredients, read them.
If there are specifications, check them.
But there is also value in knowing why a real person recommended the thing in the first place.
A search-results page cannot always give you that.
Sometimes the source is a person
This is especially true with the kind of Jamaican knowledge that keeps showing up throughout Taylor’s Things.
Sometimes there is no convenient first answer on a website.
The answer is:
“Hold on. I know who to call.”
The herbalist.
The mechanic.
The person who has been making the thing for years.
The auntie who knows where to get it.
The friend who has already tried five versions and knows which one is worth buying.
Knowledge moves through people.
Then Taylor’s Things takes the next step:
How do we make that source easier for other people to reach?
Sometimes that becomes a VitalLeaves product.
Sometimes it becomes a Journal article.
Sometimes it becomes a relationship with a Jamaican artisan.
Sometimes it becomes a Global Find.
Different result.
Same beginning:
Somebody needed something useful, and somebody knew where to find it.
Global means global
Jamaica is the root of Taylor’s Things.
It is not the border.
Some of what we share comes directly from Jamaica.
Some of it does not.
Healing Wonders of Herbs is a beautiful example of why that distinction matters.
The book itself did not originate in Jamaica.
Yet it became part of the world I knew growing up there.
Useful knowledge traveled.
Then decades later, a Jamaican living in America remembers that same book and thinks:
Somebody else needs access to this.
That is exactly the kind of movement Taylor’s Things encourages.
Useful things travel.
Knowledge travels.
Ideas travel.
Good products can come from anywhere.
Jamaican roots. Original ideas. Global finds.
That phrase has never meant everything in the store has to be Jamaican.
It means Jamaica is the perspective we start from while remaining open to useful things from everywhere.
A recommendation still has boundaries
Healing Wonders of Herbs is also a good example of another important distinction.
I can recommend a useful herbal reference without claiming that every traditional use described in the book is a clinically proven medical treatment.
Those are not the same statement.
The book is valuable to me as a source of herbal knowledge and traditional information.
That does not make Taylor’s Things the author, doctor or scientific authority behind every statement printed inside it.
The same applies to anything else we recommend.
I can tell you why I use something.
Why my family likes it.
Why I think it is useful.
Why I believe it is worth knowing about.
And where appropriate, I can tell you where the limits of that recommendation are.
That is just telling the truth.
A product can change
Passing our curation standard once does not give a product permanent immunity from being looked at again.
Products change.
Companies change.
Ingredients change.
Quality changes.
Prices change.
Ownership changes.
We already learned that lesson with the hemp body butter I first used years ago.
The promise on the front stayed familiar.
The ingredient list did not.
So if a Curated Find changes enough that it no longer passes the same test that got it listed, the answer is simple:
It no longer belongs in Curated Finds.
The recommendation is for the thing we believe is worth recommending.
Not permanent loyalty to a logo.
Sometimes we earn nothing
And that is completely fine.
There will be useful things I share where Taylor’s Things has no affiliate relationship.
No commission.
No arrangement.
Nothing.
I still want people to know about them.
Because Curated Finds is not:
Find commissions.
It is:
Find things worth sharing.
If the recommendation also generates revenue for Taylor’s Things, that is a welcome side benefit.
But the money is attached to the recommendation.
The recommendation is never attached to the money.
When an affiliate link is used, we disclose it plainly. Taylor’s Things may earn a commission from an eligible purchase at no additional cost to the customer.
That is all the complication that part needs.
This is how something earns its place
I thought about Healing Wonders of Herbs today because I remembered something useful.
I wanted to share it.
That came first.
Everything else came after.
Before anything like it becomes a Curated Find, we turn it around.
Does the reality match the story?
If not, it stops there.
If it passes that test, then usefulness matters.
Experience matters.
Quality matters.
Value matters.
The source matters.
And the final question is already answered by the time it appears in the store:
Would I recommend this if Taylor’s Things earned absolutely nothing from it?
Yes.
If Taylor’s Things earns a commission for pointing somebody toward it, great.
If not, I still pointed somebody in the right direction.
That is the reward.
That is also the standard.
If it is in Curated Finds, it passed the turn-the-package-around test, and I was already willing to recommend it before there was anything in it for Taylor’s Things.
That is what makes it a Global Find.
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