When you own a business it’s a sort of anything goes type of situation. Act and react. There are good days. There are bad days. Sometimes there are bad weeks… And as of calendar year 2019, we’ve experienced what I would call a somewhat bad quarter. I mean, bad is a relative and vague term. It could mean a lot of things. In this instance, we’re just talking the overall stressors that come with managing a growing coffee company. Sometimes you trust people and give them responsibilities and they let you down. No hard feelings, you just learn, adapt, and carry on.
When you’re a business owner, a good day is when fewer things go wrong than usual. You have a bit more recovery time between the punches. Bad days typically mean that the punches keep coming and leave little time for recovery in between. The last few months have been challenging as we’ve been on the precipice of implementing a few major changes that will ultimately make us a much stronger company. Along the way, we had some personnel changes that resulted in a lot of training having to take place in a short amount of time due to issues regarding our trust in certain individuals being taken advantage of. This made the planned transition into these changes a bit more difficult than we had anticipated. That’s fine. It happens. Just brush it off and move forward. If it was supposed to be easy, everyone would be doing this.
The real kicker came when the main sewer in our building decided that it was going to stop working and we had to shut down for nearly a week for repairs and cleanup. Definitely not a fun situation. Alas, we took that shit in stride (see what I did there?!?). It was a great team building experience for our new team. There’s no choice but to carry on as it’s what has to be done. The longer you’re in business, you either break… or you get increasingly better at controlling your reactions to things. Desensitization. That, and having a solid crew of employees that were willing to put in the time to help deep clean and reorganize the contents of a business that’s been constantly adapting for the past 5 years. We took a catastrophe and turned it into opportunity. We made it our bitch. Hats off to everyone that pulled up their sleeves and made it happen!
The thing is… You know it’s going to get better. It’s not always going to be a struggle. There are always brighter days ahead. So, you take the good with the bad and vice versa. We’re A-Okay and stronger because of it; but, man… it was some bullshit for a little while. So yeah… There’s a little update of what it looks like behind the scenes. Don’t let problems get you down. Just make them your bitch. Cheers!
