Back at it…

We hosted a private event last week, and this time it was the corporate package, which meant setting up a screen and projector, and placing pens and Nirvana Soul notepads at every seat. This, of course, in addition to unlimited coffee, tea, and water. It’s a great way to get teams together in the beauty of our mezzanine and we’re always happy to welcome them.

We’ve only done two of these corporate events in our shop and each time has been a crazy runaround. The guests are awesome. They show up and do their thing, and hopefully, they don’t notice that we’re sweating like pigs running up and down the stairs to make their event as smooth as it can be. 

This time – and last time, actually – it was the dang HDMI cord that got us. Why do we keep losing this thing?! We set everything up on time and felt great. The group came in, sat down, then looked around and asked: “Do you have an HDMI cord for the projector?”

We didn’t. But I thought we did. So I ran down to the basement, looked through all the cords we have, and nothing. Then I ran back upstairs to check out the event supplies I stored in the mezzanine. Nothing. 

I was certain I had one at home, so I told the group to sit tight and I’d be back asap. 

I jumped in my car and zoomed down San Carlos until I got home. Panicking, I called Dap – because… he’s a security blanket for us all – who was rightfully and blissfully at the Warriors Championship parade. He talked me through where it might be, but again. NOTHING.

So Walgreens it was, and thankfully, they had one. Whew! I got three.

I drove (sped) back to the shop, ran upstairs, placed the HDMI cords next to the projector and we were done! Another corporate event in the books.

Why am I sharing this story? Well, at the end of that event, one of the guests came up to me and said they read our blog posts and love them. They said they feel like they’re in the stories we tell and encouraged me to write more.

Wow. It’s so rare that someone brings up that part of our biz. Rarer now that I don’t write nearly as much as I’d like to these days. It’s one of those important, but not urgent things that’s on my plate, but often (and easily) gets pushed.

If you recall, this business started with a blog post. We were on Medium back then, before we even had a website – and, tbh, way before we even had a business. We loved sharing the good, bad, and ugly. There was just so much of it! And building Nirvana Soul with you that way is still one of our proudest achievements.

Unfortunately, what’s happening now is: Jeronica, Dap, and me – not to mention the leads and managers – are swamped! All of the busyness is keeping us from looking up and out as much as we need to.

We’re small. Growing rapidly, but still small. But we’re so inspired by our mission and vision and customers and community that we want to do it all! We say yes to just about everything, unless it unequivocally conflicts with our values.

But me running around doing a private event on my day off is probably not the most effective way to get things done. Neither is Jeronica covering a full-time role for weeks at a time… Or Dap sporadically checking emails and sending last minute invoices for joe-to-gos between racing back and forth to the roastery.

And now, all we seem to talk about – between running ragged, of course – is how we’re going to get up out this situation. The situation being: pure survival mode, i.e., Quadrant 1. 

Don’t get me wrong, these are great problems to have. We’re blessed, booked, and busy! But, we’ve never run a full-fledged business before and haven’t quite figured out how to balance or delegate well. And sometimes, to be really real with you, we’re afraid of letting each other (and you) down. 

So the pressure is real. Much of it self-inflicted, yes, but still real. Here’s how things escalated to this point over the last few months:

One, right before we opened Cupertino, we lost our project manager – who was doing an amazing job supporting all of our people and things – as we were preparing for their full-time gig with our company. Going down in that role was a HUGE hit. This meant Dap and I had to immediately pick up email, which is the most consuming part of that job and often dictates everything we do for the day, week, or month. It was great to be close to it again, but with full-time jobs of our own, it’s been tough keeping up with.

And two, Covid finally caught up to us. We were very lucky it seems to not have had any cases in the prior almost two years of the pandemic. Then all at once, masks were off and it was on. I’m sure other small businesses can relate, but when one team member goes down, it often affects another two or three, which means coverage becomes a nightmare. There’s nothing you can really do about it; it just is what it is.

So first things first, we had to hire another project manager. The right way this time, with real structure and clarity. And we did that! (You already know and love her: soon-to-be former shift lead Leti starts in a week!)

We also needed to bring back our weekly leadership meetings that went by the wayside as we got busy doing. The agenda is now pre-set to cover all of our functional areas, Leti will be in attendance to hold us accountable with action items and priorities, and it can’t (well, it shouldn’t) get scheduled over. This will allow us to zoom out and see the bigger picture of what we’re trying to accomplish here. We have so many dreams and goals for this business; things that we truly believe will bring so much joy to so many more people. But we can’t get there if we don’t make ourselves look up.

We also need to move way more responsibility to the store managers, shift leads, and baristas, and create better processes and documentation. It should also be waaaay easier to find things in our stockrooms and control inventory, for example. We’re getting there.

But that’s just some of what’s going on. As you see, these are great problems to have. :) For those who haven’t kept up with our blog from the beginning, this is exactly the kind of stuff we LOVE to share. Transparency and vulnerability are our superpowers. And we think they’re probably yours too.

Our hope is that by sharing the ins and outs of our business – no matter how smooth or wild it gets – you’ll be more informed and inspired as you make your own dreams a reality.

I think I’ll keep writing too. Let me know what questions or topics you’d like us to cover and I’ll work it in!

We appreciate you. Thanks for reading.

TTYS, b

BTW. That team from the private event I started this post with? They never used the projector that day. Our bad. 😅