The First Couple Things I Did to get Started

It's the middle of a day on a Saturday, I'm drinking an espresso and listening to the new EP by my favorite punk band "drinking boys and girls choir." Think classic TonyHawksProSkater NOFX or SUM41 but most of the vocals are sang softly in Korean. getting pumped up

Right now I'm trying to appreciate the time I have off before really jumping into everything.

Last week we became official in FL, and this week we have an EIN with the IRS. we are real we are a business!!! I'm planning on signing a lease this Wednesday, meaning once we deliver proof of insurance, they deliver the space. 

This took a ton of fumbling around very slowly with some things I thought I needed to do, but had no way to do quickly and effectively, because they all kind of touch on each other. It was a learning process with a lot of back and forth, and that was okay. Baby steps count, they’re progress, there is a correct path you’re waddling along.

Getting started I assumed I would need to do three things first.

1. Find & Read a lot of books, hope they point me in the right direction

Pros: In almost every case these cover the general business owner stuff you should be told. Mainly how to be a good leader, how to define then sell a product that will make you money, and how not to let your emotions get the best of you. Stuff I probably needed to read at least once.

Cons: I wasted a lot of time reading irrelevant and identical information. These books are mostly the same broad basic concepts, and when specialized cover mostly topics that will be specific to their scenarios or regions. 

• But hey that’s okay. No books are a magic bullet that will tell you exactly what to do. Drilling some of these common ideas into your head will put you in a good mindset, and help the really special stuff stand out.

Flat out the most helpful was "What I know about running coffee shops" by the owner of the Dublin Cafe 3FE. A couple of important pieces of info I took away were "make the worst cup better, go big or go small, and milk is slowing you down". that said, still a lot of excess. 

• Unfortunately the legal stuff was Ireland specific, and I do not live in Ireland. So when I started tossing terminology around I sounded like an idiot haha. Thankfully I did figure out where those lessons applied pretty quickly.

2. Write a business plan / cost excel / cost companion guide etc.

Pros: these docs will come up again and again, these are your id badge that say "i've thought a lot about this idea." Both you and the people around you will want to see these constantly. So yes! they are crucial.

Cons: these will not be something you write once and reference forever. You don't know what you're doing right away and these are going to feel like guess work the first few times, but don't worry. These are a combination of all your other documents and hard work.  These will always be evolving and they will come together in the end.

• Ultimately these will be more useful to you when you have a location picked out, so don’t sweat them too much in the beginning. Just remember they will be useful and keep using them. 

• Keep a dated notebook so you can keep track of everything and brain dump once in awhile, you’ll feel better if you do.

3. Get a lawyer and make sure I was legal

Pros: This will guarantee that your butt is covered, and get you in touch with people you might need help from later. You will be able to ask them questions and they will either know the answers, or know someone else that does. They will be sympathetic to your plight and be honest about their thoughts. 

Cons: They cost a decent amount of money to do things you could ultimately do yourself, and they will take more time to do so. I've lost at least a month of time waiting on parts of the process. They also add another barrier between yourself and gears in the machine, which may cause unnecessary stress in my experience. 

Ultimately it’s nice to know these people, but if you really don’t want to spend the money, I honestly don’t know that they would have been necessary to my work so far.

Basically all these things worked out for me, BUT

I wouldn't say they were all totally necessary. It's hard to know the right questions to ask in the beginning, and through doing these things I was able to find those questions. My advice would to be stick to what you know you NEED. If you need a space, go talk to a leasing agent. If he tells you to get a business plan and an EIN, go write that and talk to the IRS. Eventually you'll find your way through. Anything is possible! You got this! Forever!

Thank you for reading and have a great weekend

- Elias

Welcome to Tetherball, and Why "Tetherball"?

Welcome to our website, and sincerely thank you for being here.

This post is going up on the first day our name and social media is public. We're official with Florida as of yesterday after months of work, and hopefully with the IRS too by early next week. So it feels like a good time.

I'm at Brass Tacks Coffee, where a large amount of the work so far has been done via my 5yr old Chromebook and the google cloud. I'm drinking an espresso on ice, and listening to Equip's Cursebreaker album. I come here every Saturday morning with my boyfriend Dakota, and we work on personal projects. Dakota is actually doing his first public art event at the Vagabond Coffee Flea this Sunday, please come and buy us out or at least say Hi.

the point of this blog is to chronicle the journey. To show what it takes to open a coffee shop or your own small business, and my thoughts along the way.

Since I just announced the name let's start there. Why "Tetherball?"

It started with the mission. Two things I wish I would have done before starting any of this, that are super central to everything:

1. decide on the mission

This is your why. It's not because you want to make money or because you want to make coffee every day, as cool as those things are. Your friends, family, and followers don't care about you making money or having coffee. they could go to McDonalds for that.

They want to stand with you because you're doing things that are great, and changing the world. you're making great coffee and being great company. you're being their rock or being their rocket fuel.

in our case the mission is just that. we want to give people the energy to keep hitting that ball, both literally and emotionally. The tools they need might be coffee, a good conversation, or this blog to tell them what the difference between and LLC and an S corp is; so they don't give up when they hit a specific wall.

2. decide on a name and theme that go along with that mission

So what makes sense for our mission? Well I want to be relentlessly positive, fun, colorful, energetic and a little punchy. I don't want to be too serious but I want to keep it simple and effective.

I spoke with family, friends, and eventually a friend who happened to be a designer to outline a brand (Shout out to Mike Csorba)

Eventually I was split between "love yr" and "tetherball", but there were a few reasons why "love yr" couldn't work out. It was actually the favorite of just about everyone I told, I think having "love" in the title really helped haha. but it was difficult to google (thanks auto correct), it was too mellow, and I didn't love the color or branding prospects of red, hearts, etc. Too bad, I liked the idea of having branding slogans like "love yr friends" / "love yr coffee" / "yr gonna do great things".

So I stuck with my gut, to me the yellow tetherball is smiley face, it's getting knocked in the head, it's jumping up and hitting back, it's jumping over and over again to keep hitting back until you win the game, even if you're Napoleon Dynamite'ing it alone. It's stupid fun in the best way, it's energetic, sporty, authentic, and you can always walk away if you get tired.

It's not easy to get these things down

What I did originally was layout the spaces and aesthetics that inspired me in a long list, and then wrote out why I liked every space, and then narrowed it down to a top 10. (We are currently following all these Inspirational shops on Instagram if you're interested) Once I had the look I liked, I worked backwards towards a mission. This was really hard, it was like trying to pluck a balloon out of thin air. What I'd recommend you do instead is start with a couple of ideas that are important to you as the owner, and try to turn them into a goal that you can work towards. a mission!

this mission can be super short, one of my favorites is Cat and Cloud Coffee's old mission of essentially "leave people happier than we found them" (I think they've updated this)

this should not come before the ideas that make it up in my opinion, but everyone has their own process. TLDR Your mission and your name are hella important to the rest of the process, more posts to come.

thank you for reading, have a great weekend. Peace

- Elias

You Are Who You Want To Be

Good morning! i'm drinking the rest of some counter culture (los charapanos, Zumba Ecuador) I picked up at Varietal Coffee in Sarasota FL. They recently closed their location as part of the Overton, but it looks like they're gonna keep going, they rule so please go follow and support them forever. they were the only place I could find in Florida to try Kuura tea. a brand i've been buying as a gift and for myself, that sources some of the best Chinese tea period.

Anyways..

It's Thursday, this coffee is way dark but I made some chocolate chip muffins so it's pairing well. I hope you're also having a good day. I'm feeling pumped up. I'm going to write the first post here as an introduction to the mission and the attitude.
You know what's more important than remembering "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take?" Deciding that you're the type of person who takes those shots all the time. and not worrying about it if you forget to shoot.
If you say to others and to yourself, that you're a healthy person who loves vegetables and doesn't really drink soda; you're going to feel that pressure socially and when you're alone, to make those good decisions when it comes time. Even if you're actually eating poorly like 4 days a week, if you're making an effort to see yourself as someone who can do better, you will! you will! you already are.
You're making an effort to see yourself not as an unhealthy person who never works out anymore, but as someone who works out, and has been missing more days at the gym lately. Or can only go once or twice a week. Don't let go of the parts of yourself that are important to you, or think they've gone away because you can't make progress every day.
If you're doing something for yourself, you don't need to prove it to anyone. you're kicking butt at your level. and if you're not physically on it, you're mentally owning it.
- Elias