Two New Pairs of Keys

 It's Saturday night! these posts are getting later and later. I'm listening to the sort of country jam album "an old smile" by Macabre Plaza. On my second(?) coffee of the day. For me like 6oz of drip coffee in the morning is normally enough, it's been a long day haha. It's been a week of getting up early and staying up late.

On Tuesday I met with our sign maker

I went out and met the owner of Shark Signs downtown, he was a super nice guy and we talked about Zaba's!!! a little coffee shop on the beach in St. Augustine. I used to live down the road and knew the owner so we connected over it. I haven't gotten up early and had a friendly professional conversation like that in so long, it's what I love most about doing small business and it filled my soul. The sign is a little ways away, we should have a temp "coming soon" pylon highway sign soon.

On Wednesday it was my birthday, I got keys to the building. and found a house. 

I took the day off and met with the property manager early, the place is a mess and they couldn't even sweep the bugs up before handing it over.  but it felt really nice to be in there at last. I've been working on paper since February so to actually be in the space was refreshing. especially after weeks of saying "next week" or "sometime soon" 

Later on that day I toured a house with my partner and it was perfect. we're going to move in next month. For the last 6 years I've moved at least once a year, via apartments or friends kindness, for one reason or another. So this is also a surreal resting place. the lease is 2 years. the cycle is over.

We got breakfast at Brew Coffee in downtown jax, and i went to go have more coffee with my mom later that day then visit friends. it was a long and excellent birthday.

Today I went in and put down some tape.

I paid JEA and got the lights on, then went out this morning to sweep the shop for the first of many times. it was pretty rough, the worst part was thinking I could pick up some fake wood boards laying on the ground, only to find out they were covered in undried wood glue. after cleaning my hands I tossed them in the trash bag, which they immediately stuck to and ripped apart -_-'''

once the floor was clean I taped out where things would go based on my 3d model. It definitely looks a little different in person, thankfully we're going to have more space for seating because I made the bar too long haha. I want to do one accent seating piece, so I'm thinking of building a bench area and then having some tables and chairs too. 

Here's the print I was using today to space everything out.

The space is about 600 sq/ft

i'm going to shorten the bar vertically a bit, and have that bench on the bottom right wrap around almost like a mirror image, two L shaped tetris pieces. I'd like a mural on the right hand wall, and some more seating on the left hand side. 

Unfortunately I have double doors (thankfully they open out) meaning my seating has to be creatively compressed towards the walls.  

Designing in 3d has been a lot more work than I anticipated, but not at all impossible for a beginner. For anyone interested I did this in google SketchUp. I promise that if you're looking into beginner 3d like this it works great, just be mindful of importing too many big models as it runs off cloud. 

I'll be happy to share some more images once I'm more confident in the space, right now it looks nothing like this and has a bunch of partition walls, it used to be a dog grooming spot haha.

 Now that I have the space and an idea of the layout, next is trying to pin down an architect to advise me legally. I'm excited for what's to come, this next month is going to be super busy! thanks for reading!

- Elias

The Sign Above the Building Reads "COFFEE"

Happy Saturday y'all, after a few hours of driving around to banks and UPS stores I'm at a cafe, listening to the 2020 Yves Tumor album and drinking an iced vanilla oat milk latte. In a much better mood, should never have slept on Yves. Plus this shop Brass Tacks is playing skate videos on a flat screen again which always make me happy. they haven't had these in months!

So this week I got insurance on lock, i got a line of business credit on lock, i've got some sign proposals lined up for above the building and out on the highway. Progress.

still can't actually enter the building because they're working on some HVAC fixes, which I super appreciate but it's another week I'm at a standstill. thankfully the property manager was cool with me reaching out to sign contractors. I was fortunate to find the exact guy who did the last tenants sign here and he waived inspection fees. he's also been great to work with generally.

The sign above the building is just going to say "COFFEE"

The first time I saw this and it looked good was on the side of the building "High Five Coffee" in North Carolina. This spot rules. They do new Barista-designed specials all the time with crazy ingredients, even bringing in collabs on stuff they wouldn't normally carry to make it happen. they have a transparent training program and a farmland aesthetic. makes my heart sing. anyways check out this building graphic. I love it. and it just says "coffee". I was like "woah you can do that???"

It got me thinking, It doesn't matter if you have dope aesthetics if you can't find your audience. My mom was the first to say "how are people going to know tetherball is a coffee shop." referring to the name. So I've made it no small mission to make that happen. I want people driving by to know it's coffee, and from there let the place speak for itself.

And we're not the only industry doing this, a lot of shops that exist to fill a roll will use this idea to get a foot in the door. A tattoo shop sign may just say "tattoo" and get a ton of walk ins. but for most repeat customers, the people working there are incredibly important once they check it out.

To a lesser extent, plenty of Chinese food or pizza places have the same name and will get me in the door once that way, because I'm nearby and can quickly recognize that's what's up. i'm grabbing food. the same goes for coffee.

Here are a few of the designs we tried out

So we're part of a shopping center, meaning we have a rectangular spot on the highway sign, originally we were thinking of going with a white background, but that posed two problems. First it blended in with many of the other signs. Especially those that had clearly withered away as the weather got to them. Second the pink all looked like white, so with such a thin outline you could barely read it from a distance. The strong blue is truer to our aesthetics and looks great.

To maintain our appearance as it aged, and be spotted from farther away we settled on the dark blue with pink lettering for the highway.

For above the building we stuck with the original design, I like this one for a few reasons. Mainly it matches it's neighbors, I didn't want to go boxy in this location and stand out in a negative way. I'm sure the 3d lettering will help the blue outline pop.

Plus our logo really stands out in this one, more so once it's backlit. The ball on a string or pole here is also a really cool way to allude to our name. we'll likely have a vinyl "tetherball" on the windows in front.

All this said, we're still pending approval from the land manager! so who knows, but this is the plan.

Once these go up i'll be transparent about exactly where we are, right now I'm playing coy. I don't want to make anyone feel like this is happening sooner than it is haha, I still don't have the keys! But it's coming along, thanks for reading and have a great weekend everyone ✌

- Elias

Another Week of paperwork

It’s noon and I’m eating cake

at @brewfivepoints coffee in Jacksonville, it’s their 7th year anniversary. I’m listening to what sounds like their party mix over the speakers, and there are balloons on the floor. I’m Out here to tour houses nearby, and pick up their collab coffee with @theflamingojax for the event. I’ll post a tiktok pour sometime soon. It’s got a really interesting taste and a cool bag by @deedoersch 

Didn’t expect to be house hunting while building out the shop this year, availability is scarce and I’ve already got a lot on my plate; But much like moving during the height of the pandemic last year, we’re rolling with the punches. 

Last blog I mentioned that we should be in a building by this weekend. But I ended up being the middle man for a week of back and forth insurance related phone calls and emails. No dice. Funnily enough my insurance agent and property manager have the same name. 

So I still don’t have keys to the building

Which has given me some more time to move money around and learn things like quickbooks and square. I even made a Pinterest account to start collecting reference material, But I’m still at a standstill on everything else.

I’m going to work on a 3d concept in google sketch up this week and I might share that here if it turns out legible. But I’m hesitant to decide on too much, because a lot of how I feel about what should go where will be affected by me standing in the space.

Thanks for reading everyone, have a great Fourth of July weekend 🎉

- Elias 

Branding! We're Insured! We're almost standing in a space!

 It's Saturday and I've got almost a full free day to work on the business. listening to the new Tyler the Creator album, the one that looks like that ODB 'return to the 36 chambers' album cover. I think my favorite song right now is WILSHIRE, this is a post IGOR album cycle but that uncomfortable relationship stuff is still fun to listen to and i'm glad a little bit made it's way over. 

this last week the business got insured! I got quickbooks!  we've got a brand guide in stone to start planting seeds on the look of the business. we're putting some money down and getting into things.

Just to touch on the Branding quick!

This has been a month or two of going back and forth with Mike Csorba our designer. I gave him pages of honest comments and he responded with pages or redesigns, alt colors, and a brand bible. Even going above and beyond to flesh out themes and concepts. Can't wait to put these to use!! with anything creative it's fantastic to have two or more people to discuss with. Also Google cloud FINALLY has a drag and drop folder system, so that's been hella helpful. anyways, 

Hopefully we are physically standing in a building by next week

meaning I can get some contractors in the place to get started on a sign out front, I can get permission to destroy the weird half partition walls that made the building whatever it was before. put some flooring down, paint the walls, replace the moldy drop ceiling. all that good stuff.

We went with a pretty beat up space so we could get some decent rent, the area we're looking at is a little expensive, but the neighborhood is cozy and I wouldn't have it any other way. we're gonna clean this place up and make this work. 

Next we're diving in to the expensive stuff

I want to do as much as I can by myself. I want to build the bar, put the floors down, and paint the walls. But the reality is, going through a stiff leasing company means I need to use an architect, specific contractors, and take careful documentation of everything. which is going to cost a nebulas amount of money even for my tiny space, and take some things out of my hands.

I've done my best to use some home building sites to get rough quotes on everything, and spoken to some other business owners online. but ya never know what it'll cost until you're paying for it! I spoke with Lobos coffee roasters in Orlando and the owner told me he got hit with a grease trap installation at half my business cost because he had a dish washer. I don't have a dishwasher (sorry future employees). But I do probably need a grease trap.

And I'm afraid of the unexpected costs, but I'd rather be psyched out now than on opening day.

Just gotta remember that two months from now i'll have a better idea of the costs, they're not gonna kill me, I'll have homies behind me, and 3 months ahead of me to open doors before I need to pay rent. 

Once we're there it's going to feel great, can't wait, peace

 - Elias

Signed the lease, baby steps

     It's Sunday morning, I'm drinking some Colombian La Chiquita Coffee from Brandywine out of Delaware, this coffee tastes a lot like orange juice! they have a barrel aged natural on their site that is probably even more intense.

I'm listening to the newish album "Devotion (Deluxe)" by Planet 1999. Kind of Reminds me of  "vegyn" or some other bubbly escape room / IDM. I'm going to start linking these here. Check it out!

So we signed the lease on a building last Wednesday!

my next task is to get insured and get the plans reviewed by the state, permit holding peeps, and the property manager. well actually, I have a whole bunch to do.

After signing, I have a no rent period of about 5 months, so I thought i'd have more time, but...

I have 30 days to get all the things listed above done, to show that i'm working on this actively. A lot of it was listed in a long dense lease, so it wasn't super easy to parse what was mandatory and what was filler or didn't apply to me specifically. Thankfully our property manager has been super nice about answering questions and pointing me in the right direction. Professionals are just people, but that's a topic for another day.

Here is how I manage myself when I have a lot to do. 

Break everything down into broad bullet points. Then as you work on these things, add notes below each bullet point. In this case, the property manager helped me define what needs to be done, so it was time to take those things and separate them. Time to eat the elephant one bite at a time. It may end up looking something like this:

1. Sign the lease

6/1/21

- talked to the leasing agent, i need x, x, and x,

6/8/21

- now that I have x,x,x, I met with the agent and signed the lease

2. Get insured

6/13/21

- I am meeting with an insurance agent tomorrow.

3. Now you can physically enter the space, go inside and write out exactly what you want to do.

4. Draw the bones of these plans in google sketchup, and talk to an architect. (construction, water, electric)

5. once they've given you a floor plan + life safety plan, submit them to the city for a certificate of use.

You get the idea, anything can be simple once it's broken down into smaller parts. 

if you're not sure how to get started, talk to someone else or look up the specific questions bit by bit until you've formed a bigger picture. That's what i'm getting started with now. 

wherever you are in you plans, good luck! I believe in you! if today's not your day off, enjoy the next one you get! 

- Elias

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