Alright, now that I have a little more time, I’ll give a preface to the last post. Last week was an extremely busy week and I kept meaning to write every day but kept coming up with excuses. For example, a few of my friends arrived Sunday night so I was entertaining them all day Monday. They were both supposed to leave Tuesday morning but one lost his car keys so he was still here after I went in for a few hours to interview. So then I had to continue entertaining him for the rest of Tuesday. And I went to a concert Tuesday night as well. Then after a 6 day bender I was pretty burned out for the rest of the week especially with the 16 hour work day on Friday. Anyways, I can’t be making excuses because it was a really good week and I need to find 5-10 minutes a day to write regardless of what I’m doing.
I did have to entertain my friends on Monday but that morning, I was able to finally have my meeting with the lawyer I would be using. It was an awesome meeting especially since he is one of the best lawyers in the COUNTRY for social enterprises. He gave me a lot of extremely valuable information and I’m really excited to work with him. Especially since he said that this business is one of his current favorite ones :). However, my work on Tuesday didn’t go quite as well. Out of the three interviews I was supposed to have, only one person showed and he was my least favorite so far. Also on Tuesday, I worked more on my side income gig than I did Revival Chili.
I’ve mentioned this side income gig a few times but last week was definitely the most busy. I’m working for the place I interned at the summer before my senior year. I reached out to them for some work when I was fired and it has slowly been picking up which is good and bad. Now that Revival Chili is picking up it’s a little harder to balance the two but that just means more working hours in the day which is probably good for me. Anyways, I had a decent amount of work for them last week which took up most of my time on Wednesday and Thursday. I also spent Wednesday and Thursday preparing to cook a lot of chili for my event on Saturday and a few events I have planned in the next couple weeks.
The weekend before (8/20-8/21) I reached out to Cropolis (my local farm connection) to get some local meat and vegetables. They were able to turn it around real quick and find me everything I needed to make the chili. I asked for 30 pounds of meat and a decent amount of peppers, onions and tomatoes. It was pretty impressive to me how quickly they could turn it around and I’m excited to keep working with them in the future. So I picked up all the produce on Wednesday and also went to restaurant depot to see if I would be able to buy the other things I’d need for the chili. I found out I would be able to buy from them even though I didn’t have my business created yet and decided I’d do back on Thursday.
Thursday morning I had a meeting with all the main stakeholders that were helping make Revival Chili happen. We set a timeline for all the things that needed to happen to launch on 10/15 which was SUPER exciting. The meeting was really productive and I thought we nailed down a lot of details that we hadn't had the chance to talk about yet. The timeline we set was very accelerated but I think it’s going to be possible and I’ll be trying as hard as I can to make it happen. As of right now, we are only waiting on one small thing from the restaurant equipment supplier to get the drawings done which need to be submitted by 9/5 to the health department so we can be approved by 10/15.
So that’s all the logistical things with the business but I still haven’t explained why I was making the chili last Friday. A couple posts ago I mentioned a chili cook-off event that one of my roommates sent me an email about. And that was why I was making a couple different types of chilis. I didn’t need to make as much as I did but I thought it was going to be a bigger event than it was. The event turned out to be alright. I met a few good people there but it definitely was not as good as I was hoping for. I also thought there were going to be more chilis submitted but there was 6, which means I had half of them…
I ended up tying for first but it made a lot of sense to me because my 3 chilis were all spicier than I wanted. The other chili that tied for first had good flavor but was very basic - not any spiciness or sweetness. That was the best thing about the event, made me realize I need to have a basic bitch chili.
So that event was Saturday and I did not do anything on Sunday but yesterday was pretty busy. I had two more interviews which were both really good. I’m definitely going offer those two guys a job and I was really excited about the first one. It was nice to have two good interviews to start off the week after 3/4 skipping last week. I also went to a startup Meetup yesterday morning which was awesome. I met a lot of really cool people that can definitely help the business and will definitely go back in future weeks.
The main thing I did today was get all the financials done. Luckily, 068 shared a web app they use, LivePlan, with me and it made everything super easy. It asked straight forward questions about my products and labor then filled out the P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow for me. I also set up a mailing list on my website and got an rss feed ready so people on my mailing list are emailed when I post a new blog. It was a pretty productive day. I’ve also spent a decent amount of time the past two days working for the side gig so it’s always good to make money. I didn’t finish making all the chili last week so I’m going to do that tomorrow or Thursday which will be fun :)
Besides all that, I think I’m in really good shape right now. Obviously, the launch date was pushed back two weeks but I almost expected that. The summer is a busy time for everyone and I was gone for a few weeks as well. But now that everyone is back I’m going to start pushing really hard to make sure we hit these dates. I’ve been talking to the trailer design guy every day to make sure he has what he needs or knows how to get it. And I’ve been pushing the lawyer to make sure he stays on track so I can start catering events. So I’m feeling really good about it! I’ve been really busy but that’s something that I expected and it’s only going to get busier. I’m also enjoying it! Even though I’m at home most days, I have a place I can work out of if I want (the 068 warehouse). Also, almost all my housemates are moved in so it will start getting busier around the house in general and there will be a good energy. Anyways, I’m still really excited and can’t wait for September to start!