I would make excuses as to what’s taking me so long to write but the real reason is that not a lot has happened in the past week. With the long weekend for Labor Day, most business people checked out early Friday then didn’t do anything on Monday. I also spent a decent amount of time working on the side. I spent most of last Wednesday prepping to make the chili on Thursday. I also followed up on some emails with t-shirt people and possible catering events.
On Thursday I spent all day making chili. I didn’t get anything else done on Thursday because that pretty much took up the whole day - but it was awesome :). Spent the morning browning the meat and cooking the vegetables. Then threw them all into different pots and diced the tomatoes so they could join the other veggies. I made 5 different types, 2 beef and pork and 1 chicken, all with different spice levels. They all turned out really well and I was extremely happy with the way the spice combinations worked out for the different pots. My housemates also did some testing and they were pretty helpful.
I was originally making those different types so I could go on to the Pittsburgh University campus on Monday and do some testing on college kids. Unfortunately, the people I were emailing about that never got back to me even though I emailed them about a month in advance and followed up several times. But it’s all good, I just froze most of the chili and will be using it for an event next week instead!
I did not do a whole lot on Friday except for a few meetings with important partners. I met with my lawyer and he should have filed my incorporation which means I’ll be an official business really soon - woooooo!! He has extremely good relationships with many groups in town so PNC will be reaching out to me soon to set up a business bank account. I also spoke with my house designer and 068’s CEO to nail down some logistical stuff about the buildout. The designs have now been submitted to the health department and are ready for construction to start. This prompted me to get on the phone with the solar panel guy and get him the information he needs to give us a quote for the installation. We are still waiting on the quote but the fact that all of this is moving is super exciting for me.
The last person I spoke with was my hiring partner. We had been trying to touch base during the week but weren’t able to until Friday. He wanted to inform the people we interviewed if they would have jobs or not. As I have said previously, I liked a lot of them and would love to be able to offer them jobs. The only problem is that they wouldn’t be able to start until October 12th. A lot of them are recently out of jail and need a job like right meow. This means that they might not be able to accept a job offer from me because they wouldn’t be starting for a month. We were hoping to have this not happen by lining up catering events. But because of everyone’s vacation and some of the barriers of committing to events, I don’t feel comfortable promising them an earlier employment than the launch of the trailer. It definitely sucks and I wish this wasn’t how it had to be but I guess that happens sometimes.
Since Friday I haven’t really done anything else except follow up on emails. I took the three-day weekend off and there just hasn’t been a lot to do the past two days. Right now is more of a waiting game than ever. The building needs to be started but that’s not really in my control. I’ve have to pause on a few other things because I want to get my business bank account going so I can stop charging things to my personal card. Also, with most things in place now, I’m just waiting for it all to be ready and it’s still too far from launch to start going full force into promoting. I feel good about it though. I have the most important frisbee tournament of the season this weekend and after that frisbee will (most likely) be over so then it’s full focus on the business. Then it will be about a month before launch which means I’ll definitely start promoting by going to events and other things.
Well that’s about it for now, I’ll have some time in the car to write on Friday and will update you all again, happy hump day!