New Year, New Directions
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It’s my b-day today! To celebrate, I thought I’d share my most recent news and thoughts around it (all pretty celebratory thoughts, I think).
So as I’ve been letting those who read my blog know, I’ve been just LOVING working and dreaming about the Green Crush Smoothie Bar. It’s been so life and energy-giving; a true blessing. I was sleeping only a few hours each night at one point last month; going to sleep with a huge smile on my face! About 1 ½ weeks ago, things started to feel a little different. All of the sudden it didn’t feel like much fun. It was energy depleting instead of energy giving. I was having some major challenges making my menu items and pro form financial forms show substantial profits–at least enough to break even. Yeesh. I didn’t think it would be that hard but a 100% organic business does present somewhat of a challenge–especially if you’re in Chicago AND you’ve got the winter to deal with. I was doing major market research last week and decided to start calling up organic juice and smoothie bars as well as raw food cafes and restaurants around the country. The feedback I basically got was going something like this: “yeah, it’s pretty tough,” “yeah, there’s not a lot of money to be made here,” “get ready to have no social life for a LONG time,” and “it’s been four years and we’re still no where close to breaking even.” Yikes! I decided to invest some more money into this and hire a professional smoothie bar consultant. We were talking a few times a week and he let me in on the tricks of the trade regarding how to make smoothies. I was absolutely disgusted and really just disenchanted with the whole business/industry: 1 ½ cups of shaved ice, 2 cups juices, 2 tablespoons flavors syrups, THREE blueberries, 1 INCH of banana, then.blend??? No wonder some are making money in this business. There was no way I wanted to compromise on my smoothies or ingredients in anyway. I am somewhat of a purist when it comes to food and if I wouldn’t drink it, there’s just no way I could sell it to a customer! Also, my equipment needs, hence start-up costs, kept going up. And commercial equipment is about 3 times as much as the home equipment. So it didn’t feel right, fun, or energy giving anymore to do this. SOOOO….I’m taking a step back and rethinking the entire thing 
I feel this is a good thing. I LOVE change. Here were some of my “car thoughts” on the way to work yesterday morning:
- The Green Crush has been so much fun to think about and work on. Thrilling really. I could work on the plan until 2am. Some nights I could hardly sleep I was so excited!
- I loved daydreaming about it and talking about it with others.
- I know all of the work I did on the smoothie bar is far from null and void–everything I’ve done will play in perfectly in what’s to come next.
- I’m so excited for my next business venture.
- Life is so much fun with all its twists and turns.
- I’m so happy and grateful for where I am.
- Sure I’ve invested time but it was all mostly time feeling great (causing other things that make me feel great to flow my way-Law of Attraction, baby!).
- Sure I’ve invested money but it was really just a drop in the bucket compared to what I was about to invest (probably around $250,000!)
- Experimenting with smoothie recipes has really improved my diet. I LOVE my new 1 green-smoothie-1 superfood smoothie-1 salad diet right now.
- My smoothie repertoire has expanded 20-fold. I’ve become much more courageous in experimenting with different combinations.
- I’ll really get to focus on my organic garden this spring. I was afraid I wasn’t going to have much time to devote to it in trying to get T.G.C. up and running in October.
- I’ll also get to take a few trips I thought I was going to have to skip out on, like San Francisco in November and Thailand and January. Woohoo!!
- I get to keep my social life! More yippees and yahoos here for sure. My social life and work/rest/social life/me time balance is HUGE for me.
- I’ve learned SO much about business plan writing, financial spreadsheets and the abundance of business resources in Chicago, like the kind and very helpful SCORE counselors downtown.
- I have a huge new-found abundance for organic raw juice bars, cafes, and restaurants. Those people are true ANGELS. I don’t think I’ll ever complain about prices at these places again (especially at Karyn’s!)
- Something awesome is coming my way….Everything always works out for me and I know something great awaits me.
- Of course, I could still use The Green Crush name and http://www.thegreencrush.com/ for my next business endeavor.
- I get to keep my focus on my blog, posting some youtube videos, organizing meetup events, and running in races (just ran the 8k Shamrock Shuffle last Sunday downtown)
- I now know how much I desire to have my own business and work for myself.
- I know how committed I can be to a goal and I definitely have what it takes to plan and visualize everything out. I am very detail oriented.
- I am proud of myself for allowing me to step back and say that moving forward with the Green Crush doesn’t feel right anymore. I am allowing myself this space.
- I am proud of myself for really going downstream with this whole thing and reaching for better feeling thoughts instead of beating myself up for changing directions.
- The Green Crush Smoothie Bar is still a definite possibility in the future.
- There are so many things that I could do with my knowledge, passion, and talents. I just need to stay in alignment and the inspiration will come in no time.
- I get to practice my law of attraction exercises: “I am so happy and grateful now that I have the job of my dreams!”
- I will be setting forth the intention every morning to know what is it I want to do and to get more clarity and focus around it
- I will be getting more and ideas at the All Things Organic Expo coming up in Chicago as well as the Green Fest and the Raw Spirit Fest.
- I’ve made so many contacts and friends in calling up suppliers and national organic juice bars/cafes/restaurants for advice. Networking is awesome
- The ideas are already coming to me. I can feel it. On the brink of manifestation…
Please let me know what you think! I’d love to hear your comments. Love you guys! Have a great day and sorry to all those looking forward to The Green Crush opening this year. But I did just hear through the grapevine two weeks ago that a raw food restaurant is opening up downtown this summer! We are so lucky. That would be the seventh place in Chicagoland offering raw food
~L
No related posts.
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:43 am
Hi Lenette,
First let me say that I am loving your blog. It’s great. I live in Chicago and your posts have been such a great resource for me as someone who is living and eating healthier in the city. Thanks for representing the Chi! :o) I think it’s wonderful that you’ve gotten so far in your planning for the Green Crush to see where it can take you and where you can take it. It takes courage to not compromise your standards and to take a different direction. We applaud you. Again, thanks so much for your blog. I hope to join you at a meetup very soon.
Muneerah
April 9th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I am SO proud of you Lenette. I am glad that you didnt lock yourself into anything. Everything you have done has been so positive for your growth. I think you know that already of course…but all of your reasons are so positive. I think this really worked out the way it was supposed to. It would have totally consumed your life, thats for sure. Well…all is well with the Universe. Cant wait to see you in Chicago this July!
Love the chia pudding pic!!! FIERCE!!!
-Anthony
April 10th, 2008 at 8:15 am
I love you Lenette and we all support you in the direction you go! I am so happy for you, life is beautiful! Rawk on girl
May 21st, 2008 at 7:25 am
Hey there….I just discovered your site. This is great - so much information and fun stuff! I have a couple of suggestions re: you biz. You may have already thought of these things?? You just seemed so exited about the venture that I thought I’d try to give a few more ideas.
1. You could build your business slowly by doing it out of your home with a delivery service. You could even incorporate some juices to support the ever growing population of juice feasters. If you market to local juice feasters, I’m sure you could find some solid business. Katrina and David Rainoshek I’m sure would be willing to put you on their site.
2. You could add coffee/espresso or some other sort of high profit margin item to your menu to help offset the cost.
3. You could also buy a cheap bus turn it to biodiesel and fix it up so it looks very cool and use that as your site. You could drive around campus or other areas and sell your smoothies.
Anyhow…just some ideas. This gives me so much more respect for all of the people putting themselves out there to provide us with high quality smoothies and raw restaurants.
I too left a good paying job to start my own business. I started and organic makeup/beauty product website located at www.poshorganix.com. It takes a lot of thinking outside the box to make things work, but when you are doing something that you are ethically and morally aligned with…it is so worth it!
Best of luck,
Sarah