A South Park Look at Our Economy

My favorite show for the last 10 years has been South Park, so it was great to see their newest episode titled “Margaritaville” making light of our recent economic downturn.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/220760

It’s about 25 minutes but a good break from watching our current depressing financial news.

How Important is an Identity?

For me it’s where everything starts.  Without it, it’s hard for me to visualize my business and make purchasing, menu, hiring and construction decisions without it.  So I first decided on my logo and my brand identity.  Check it out and lemme know what you think.

My slogan is: Fru*t3alic*ous… The Art of Mixology.   My goal is to postion myself as a high end bubble tea, frozen drink specialty chain.  Prices are not much different from a standard bubble tea/ smoothie shop but the identity is stronger and the creative drink mixes and the “art of mixology” is what I feel will separate me from my competition.  I’ll be serving a variety of creative drink cocktails such as Icy jazzberry Java or Artic Watermelon blast.  Lots of them are based from cocktails and redone with juices, syrups, frozen yogurt, sodas, ice, and real fruits.  Sort of a treat that you can have anytime at a very reasonable price.  After dinner, before grovery shopping, on a date, before a movie, after shool, etc.

Anyways… after putting a few coming soon posters up, lots of people have asked me if it was a chain.  I think that’s a great thing.  Hopefully a strong brand will set me up for a great future in franchising my system and creating a solid brad loyalty.  lemme know what you think….

Location, Location, Location…. At Least Mine That Is

Here is a picture of the location I picked out to start my first Fru*t3alic*ous cafe. (I’m changing the letters to avoid random googling of my brand to lead to this blog.

After weeks of driving around through the Dallas “metroplex”, I ended up choosing this location over other potential sites. I was attracted to this site due to a few good indicators and circumstances involving the space:

1.) The entrance of my store is within 100 feet of the entrance of the largest Albertson’s (regional supermarket chain) in Dallas. You can’t see it in the picture, but it’s right where the picture cuts off on the left side. There is a ton of foot traffic generated from this store alone since there really is not another grocery store within a 4 mile radius.

2.) There is a McDonald’s located across the street.  Figuring Mcdonalds does their homework when it comes to demographics and potential future growth in property values when selecting locations. Traffic count was approx 100K vehicles/ day. Average household income was approx. $80K… off the top of my head within 5 miles.

3.) Also, on that intersection where my store is at, there is a CVS, Walgreens, Subway, Quiznos, Home Depot and a Blockbuster there.  So there are lots of reasons to drive and park next to my location. These Anchor tenants would really help my business.

4.) The local high school is within half a mile from my store.  Since it is within walking distance, I can make it a local afters chool hang out. Every weekday at approximately 3pm (school gets out at 2:30) all the kids go to Mcdonalds to eat and hang out. I count approx. 50 kids or so everyday when I am there. From what people have told me, they used to come to the coffee shop. Good news for me!

5.) The public library and community senior center is about a block away… lots of great resources for me and my business plus libraries can draw people from farther away.

6.) The police, fire station and city hall is within a 1/4 mile from me. I’m pretty much in the center of town. Carrollton is a suburb of Dallas with a approx. population of about 110,000 people.

7.) I was able to negotiate 4 free months of rent and $7000 in Tenant Improvement. It took a lot of selling on my part due to my lack of experience in running a retail business, low net worth (compared to most business startups) and me being so young. But in the end I had a solid business plan and brand identity the landlord felt that he would take a chance on.

8.) The previous tenant ran a coffee shop that also served smoothies and bubble tea so there is already an existing market for it.  From my conversations with him, he was asked by his father to run their dry cleaning business so he stopped running this store. He must have made a killing since he still paid the rent without fail so the landlord did not advertise the availability until recently due to his lease term ending in 2 months.

9.) Previous tenant sold me all his equipment for $2500!  2 Fridges, expresso machine, ice machine, blenders, furniture, 3 computers, coffee makers, leftover inventory, etc. The cost of the equipment new was approximately $70K!

10.) Since the space was laid out well, it would only need cosmetic renovations which would keep my start up costs extremely low due to the tenant improvement allowance.

Here are some pics of the inside of the place prior to renovation.

In the end I felt I did pretty well to choosing a place that would set me up for success. I think I was just at the right place at the right time. Finding a fully equipped coffee/ smoothie shop that was closed for business due to reasons not stemming from poor business…. getting relatively good terms on renovation reimbursement (tenant improvement) and a good period of time to get this place open (4 free months) really made my first business venture a lot less stressful and increased my chances for success.

The last few weeks I have been in the store to meet with various contractors, insurance guys, service people, etc I always have random people pop their heads in and ask if I was reopening. They all expressed to me they loved the place prior and always asked why it closed down. The great thing is that they all seem to anticipating the opening of my store and will be first in line to try my creative drink creations.

My expected soft opening is Oct 20th and my scheduled grand opening is Halloween weekend. Lots of things to do before then, but it all seems to be coming together ahead of schedule and under budget…. just keep plugging away… there is always some fear in the back of my mind but it seems to be a positive motivating factor for me rather than something that holds me back.  I guess at this point there is not turning back anyways.. haha..

“Love what you do and you will never work a day in your life.” ~Someone who know’s what they are talking about.

Designing My Logo

While I do feel I have somewhat of an artistic eye, I am very certain that I do not have the skill set or ability to create a logo that would capture my idea. That is why designers are designers. The problem is that professional designer can be quite expensive. However, I have found a great site for people who are looking for logo designs that fit their budget.

99Designs.com uses an idea called crowd-sourcing. The idea is that you are outsourcing to a general, undefined group of people. The site allows you to create a contest of your own in which you determine the prize amount for the winner. This allows for people of all budgets to get designers to take a stab at their logo, website design or other design projects.

Check out my contest:

My Logo Design Contest

The key to this site’s success I believe is that you can give feedback to each designer and have them improve upon the design. The more feedback you give them, the better the end result.

I’m only on day 3 or 7 and I have over 50 submissions. The variety of submissions really gives you a lot of ideas on which direction you want to go. Definitely check this site out if you are boot-strapping your business and don’t have a huge budget but still want a nice design. Even if you have a pocket full of start up capitol, it’s still a great place to get a design done.

Teach People How You Want To Be Treated

Have you ever met someone that always gets lied to by their friends or significant others? Did you ever wonder why this person doesn’t seem to get it? He/ she lives in their own bubble and doesn’t see that that much of their perceived disloyalty from others is caused by their own actions.

These people many times are the only people in the room that don’t see that their relationships are based on a superficial web of half-truths and lies. It’s because these people ended up indirectly teaching the people around them how they wanted to be treated. The desire for them to fit in, to be respected or to preserve their fragile ego is the root of the problem. They do not want to hear the truth unless it will be congruent with their image of themselves.

For example, the owner of the company that I work for is an extremely distrustful and manipulative person. I believe much of his distrust stems from many times of being lied to or screwed over. These past experiences have formed his current situation. The relationships he has with his employees are those based on fear and false promises. He is a person who always asks rhetorical questions such as, “Am I not always fair?” or “When have I ever not respected you?” The only answer you can provide him as an employee is a meek “Yes” even though your real answer is “All the time!”. He truly believes that he is honest, fair and respectful of others even though others do not see this. His own self identity is further reinforced by these “forced” answers from people who are not put in a position to tell him the truth for fear of losing their job.

One of our long time employees left the company about a week ago so he could pursue a better opportunity in California. However the owner found out today that this employee had never left New York and was now working for the competitor. When he found out, he said to me, “People will all screw you!” He was so angry that he had been lied to that he was cussing and swear with no restraint for the display of the whole office (this has become a usual occurrence in our office). His feelings of hurt are understandable however this level of unprofessional behavior just added to people’s perception of him in the office as being . As you read on you will realize that he had made his own bed.

I sat there thinking, “Hmmm…. maybe you should have treated your past employees differently, this would not have happened. The reason why this employee had to lie was that because the last 5 employees that worked in his department who left got screwed out of the commissions they had earned while employed with the company. These people, for the most part, had been acceptable employees that never did anything to deserve getting screwed. However, the owner was vengeful angry that these people had left him ad decided that they would have to fight him in court to receive their monies. So why would things be any different with this guy?? That is why he chose not to tell him.

His choice was to either tell the owner that he was leaving to work for another competitor and guarantee that he would lose a few thousand dollars worth of back-pay commissions due to the owner feelng betrayed OR lie to him and tell him a story and have a good chance of getting paid the money he honestly earned?

I don’t condone lying, however, this person never had the opportunity to do the right thing. It is sad that this had to happen this way, but this result was caused by the owners past behavior towards the employee as well as other past employees.

To Illustrate the same principle about teaching others how you want to be treated…Another example is, I have a friend who’s girlfriend is quite insecure. She always has to be by his side all the time. She ends up smothering him and always keeping tabs on him. So on the rare occurrences he is out by himself, she is always checking up on him. He is always forced to lie about what he is doing and where he is at because she does not accept the truth as more important than what she wants to hear. She has taught him that it is okay to lie to her as long as it makes her happy. Their relationship is now built on a foundation of lies instead a foundation of truths.

All these people have provided an instruction manual on how people should treat them.

They create rules such as:

“If you tell me something that I don’t like, I will create pain toward you.”

“If you lie to me and tell me what I want to hear, you will not be yelled at.”

“If you tell me the truth, if it hurts, I will get angry at you.”

“If you trust me enough to think that I will pay you without legal action, you are sadly mistaken.”

“If you tell me I am wrong, you will be in danger of losing your job.”

These people have chosen to surround themselves with people who have been conditioned to tell them what they want to hear. The people that aren’t, they are no longer friends with. By only allowing people to tell them what they want to hear they are really living a life based on a false self image and filtered communication. But in the end will only make them suffer again and again. Sometimes the truth hurts. Living in your self created world of denial will only prolong the inevitable and increase the level of anguish that will surface at a later date.

The lesson to be learned is that it is not always OTHER people who disappoint you, many times it may be YOU that taught them to treat you this way. Stop taking yourself so seriously and start teaching people that you WILL listen to them with an open mind and no consequence. ONLY THEN will you unlock the secret to consistent fulfilling relationships.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy ~Bob Marley

Wouldn’t it be great if you could live stress-free and live a life full of happiness and joy with nothing to weigh you down? It’s not as hard as you may think and you don’t have to smoke pot like Bob Marley. . All you have to do is accept things as they happen.

The choice is yours to decide how much mental energy you will spend on worrying about the situation. It is perfectly human to feel angry, stressed, worried, or upset over a situation. However, if you cant change what has already happened, why expend all your energy worrying about it. Constant worry about your credit, finances, your job situation, girlfriend, or even life goals can take a big toll on your physical, emotional and psychological health. Not only will you hurt yourself, but you will also affect others around you.

Why not consciously decide to stop your cycle of negative thought and move past the worrying. After all, will spending more time worrying change your situation? The answer is no. The sooner your move towards analyzing your worry, finding the cause and formulating a solution for it, the sooner you will be back on the Yellow Brick Road of happiness.

A tell tale sign of whether you are afflicted with the Worry Bug is if you catch yourself saying, “I’ve got a lot on my mind.” or “I feel overloaded.” This may be a sign that you are dwelling on things for too long.

Here are a few key Dale Carnegie principles for dealing with stress that we teach in class.

1.) Ask yourself, “What is the worst that could happen?” Then prepare to accept the worst and try to improve on the worst case scenario

2.) Remind yourself of the price you can pay for worry in terms of your health.

3.) Cooperate with the inevitable. If you can’t change it, why worry about it.

4.) Decide how much anxiety a thing may be worth and refuse to five it more.

5.) Don’t worry about the past. Focus on the present.

(Preventative Principles on How to Feel Happy and Stress-free)

6.) Fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope.

7.) Never try to get even with your enemies! Revenge is not sweet.

8.) Expect ingratitude. Most people will not be as polite, pleasant or caring as you are.

9.) Count your blessings- not your troubles. Celebrate your successes not your failures.

10.) Create Happiness for others. Cultivate your Interdependency.

If you would like to learn more on How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, check out the book by Dale Carnegie. It’s an easy read and may change your daily outlook on life.

Let’s all try and stop worrying about things we can’t change. Let’s start today….

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