Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The sky is clear, the sun is warm, the mountains are in view, and I'm caught in the space between thick-throated tears and a thousand questions.
May 1st marks our last month of open possibilities.
J and I spent the past hour with Jem in the garden, facing the fact that one month from now we'll need to start considering some other venues for income. Maternity and EI both end at that point and we'll be in a rather interesting position.
I'm struggling with frustration and exhaustion while still believing in what we're doing. It's a really wierd feeling.... I believe this can work, I believe we can actually make it. But how? How does a family get from here to there? I know the obvious answers of loans and investors and that jazz, but that seems to fly in the face of some of the main ideas and factors which have led us to where we are.
J stated that we need to start looking for work for him, that maybe if we get stuff set up enough we can get there on the side. But how? If we're going to do this then we have to just do this, right?
A significant part of me just wants our own location. That's crazy. And selfish? I mean, why should we get a shop for our sweet business when so many families (wait, including us!) don't even have a home. I just keep feeling that if we had a main location, a place to roast and brew and sell, then people would see us and enter into the whole conversation as well.
Yesterday we met with a great little market wanting to run our beans. They also want 40% of the profit. So...? If we had our own place then it's on our terms, right? Then again, that's a HUGE comittment.
Five minutes ago I wasn't discouraged. Now I'm feeling the weight of it again. It would be so helpful if we had sleep in our bodies as well.
Anyways. Too much time here and not enough 'working'.
I will not be discouraged.
I will not give up hope.
We have something good to offer our world.
Time...work...belief...time....
2 comments:
Hey friend,
I'm really glad you're blogging through all of this. I am still working through a lot of the stuff we went through in our year of starting our own business. I really wish I'd blogged through it all because I think it would have helped me process quite a bit.
Anyway, I don't know if you want advice or not. I don't know anything about coffee and your situation may be completely different. But as you are thinking about the benefits of having your own place, I just encourage you to think through the practicality of it. If you do get a place for your business, you may find that you will then want/need a lot of costly goods, everything from furniture to wall decor to nice cups to a cash register... everything a paying customer would expect. It takes a lot to make a place go. I really hope to see you guys get there one of these days, but launching into a place of your own might take a LOT of collateral, even if the place itself were free.
We rented an office space for a while and it ended up being a huge expense and not much of a help. Honestly, finding a place that would run your beans and give you 60% of the profit sounds like a good deal to me if it would save you the expense and headache of jumping right into a coffee shop/store and needing to make an immediate profit that way.
For what it's worth,
Jamie
Thanks Jamie, I appreciate the thoughts and insight :)
Your conclusions seem to be where we're sitting as well. We WANT our own shop...but there's an important balance between "scary wisdom" and "outright recklessness". Hm, time for another post!
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