Thursday, January 29, 2009

Failed Dreams-Just Another Stepping Stone?

My whole life I have felt as though I was failing at something. Then last year, I decided to snap out of that mindset and make a conscious decision to chase my dreams and stop worrying about failure. Although 2008 was filled with complete insanity, I was able to gain valuable experience as a baker and feel a sense of true accomplishment. Oh how quickly we can be knocked off our cloud!

Yesterday I was unfortunately slapped in the face with a serious dose of reality (for me anyway). Since early November two colleagues and I have been pursuing a dream of opening our own wholesale bakery which was to use natural and local products. Everything seemed to be going great, we had prospective clients (some really big awesome ones), we catered a gig or two, we had our name out there, a website ready to go, business cards printed, etc. However, I was struggling with some of the financial aspects of the business plan so I sought outside expertise and attended a meeting with said professional yesterday.

Now I know everyone has made some mistakes in their life, especially in their 20's. However, I made mistakes so often it was almost my form of art! I filed bankruptcy at the tender age of 24 and since moving back to Denver, I have attended two schools and switched jobs almost every six months. I think its safe to say here that I do not look so fantastic on paper and sadly, this is America where we are viewed as a number.

That being said, my informational meeting centered around the financial aspects of opening a business. I wanted the cold, hard truth and I got it. My counselor was a super sweet older and very wise man, who actually had a ton of faith in us and our concept. When I left the meeting I was flooded with an immediate sense of failure. It became apparent that if my name were to be on any of our documents, finding funding now or in the future would be next to impossible. Now to add to my financial misery, Miguel has been working two jobs for sometime now and has been supporting me as I chased my dreams. The poor man is exhausted and its my fault.

I called the Fiancee and we discussed the situation and the truth of the situation is, I am in NO position financially to start a business. I owe $50,000 in student loans and I am currently working under 20 hours a week for $9.50/hour. Not exactly paying any bills with that. So we came to the decision that I need to work full-time and hopefully I can save up some money and try this whole bakery idea again when I get my shit together.

The worst part of all of this was calling my partners and crushing their dream along with mine. I felt/feel like a total asshole and couldn't apologize enough. But, what is done is done and now I have to hit the pavement and find a job (along with the 40,000 other people in CO). Ugh!!!!!

To those of you who had your heart set on Butter Baking Collective, I will still be doing the small gigs on the side as I have been doing for the last 3 years. But, unless some super charitable millionaire out there wants to throw some cash my way, now isn't the time. BOO!!!!

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