My first audio diary! (Link below to listen)

I recorded my first ever "voice memo style" audio diary today! 

Anyone who knows me knows I love audio. I am a HUGE podcast fan and host/(used to host?) a podcast called Movers and Shakers on people and ideas changing the beverage landscape. HOWEVER, Movers and Shakers has always been pretty formal and somewhat distanced from my personal life and whole self. 

I LOVE podcasts like Serial and This American Life, with lots of raw/unedited field audio, intimate storylines, and narrators who feel like friends. But frankly, I've always been a little scared/intimidated to tell my own story and share that much of myself. 

Caution be damned. 

Honestly, I've been giving fewer and fewer fucks recently about hiding behind a veil of perfection and professionalism.  People love to preach that the world "rewards" authenticity, but then they return and live their conformist lives, trying as best as they can to "just fit in" and not raise any eyebrows. I've always known I don't quite "fit the formula," but it's easier to live quietly than to live out loud. I'm as guilty of this as anyone else, but for some reason, I'm getting tired of it.

In the past couple of weeks, my brain has been clicking and whirring, seeking the next exciting creative thing. 

This little audio memo felt most natural, and I recorded it while driving earlier today, mostly for my own benefit. 

I would love it if others enjoyed it and wanted more, but it really is a timestamp for me on my entrepreneurial journey. At some point, I won't remember what these times were like. What it was like growing an early-stage startup from a seed to a hulking oak tree... what it felt like first to start feeling momentum...and how it felt to go from the exhilaration of launching hundreds of new stores to the emptiness afterward and back. I want to remember all of this, and it's for this reason I'm leaving breadcrumbs along the way.

If you listen, I'd love to know if you enjoyed it? Want to hear more, or not so into it? I love feedback and dialogue of all kinds, so if you have something to say, don't hesitate to say hello:)

It's 9:33pm, on a Friday.

 It's 9:33 p.m. on a Friday in April 2024, and I'm at home drinking wine, feeling grey and bloated.

Spring is finally turning a corner and showing its face. It's been a mild winter in New York City, but the lack of sun is debilitating. The sun really started to shine two weeks ago, and I started seeing flowering trees earlier this week! First, one tree, then another, and then, as usual, an infrequent sighting turned into an embarrassment of riches. I feel the joy swelling up inside of me, ready for spring.

The joy is swelling, but not yet here. It's been forever since I've written uncensored in a "public forum." I post to LinkedIn often and test the waters with slightly personal content, but it's a business platform, and I keep it professional.

I also journal often at home, mainly to allow thoughts out of my head, which in and of itself is soothing, but no other eyeballs see that writing. I've read about respected thinkers from decades past (a la Charles Darwin) who kept journals for their children to read when they were dead and gone. I'd either be mortified or consumed with hilarity if my progeny read my journal entries (I have none I know of so far;), but I could still have children!) My genetics make me prone to empathy and moderate rumination, so most of my journal entries are about feelings and relationships rather than abstract theories on science and nature and the like. God help them. If my future children opened my journals, I'm sure they'd think less of me;)

In any case, I know I will run out of energy if I keep writing at this pace, so I'll get on with the update- there's a lot to share as I'm "launching this blog anew."

I should mention that I have no idea what the purpose of this blog will be, aside from a place where I can catalog my real feelings and experiences in this sometimes exhilarating, sometimes terrifying entrepreneurial journey. I don't expect anyone to read this (frankly, if I wanted to be public or searchable, I would have hosted it on a more current platform, combined it with my personal website, and enabled Google to crawl it, but at this point, I only want people to read this if they're idly curious, deviously smart, or happen upon it completely randomly.) 

That said, the situation is as such. I've been in food and beverage for most of my life (blah blah blah), and now I own and run a high-end cocktail mixer company called Cheeky Cocktails. If you're interested in the rest of the story, there's a lot of info on the interwebs, but there's no need to repeat it here.

There is SOME expectation of truth-telling in the business/startup community, but frankly, almost everyone is bullshitting, and I understand why. Entrepreneurship can be exciting, life-giving, and thoroughly validating, and it can also be terrifying, depressing, and a terrible life to live. There are so many "stakeholders" - customers, vendors, investors, employees, and so on, who expect you to look and sound a certain way, and you're always on stage, always being judged.

I don't know what was alluring about this type of work. Maybe it's because entrepreneurship is the ultimate test of merit, of resilience, and of adaptation- maybe that's what drew me. I've always wanted the opportunity to be tested, to improve, and to pit my wits and tenacity against the world- not against any specific competitor, but against the odds of failure. Indeed, I've gotten my wish, and I have no regrets.

As of today, April 5th, 2024, I'm at an okay spot. I'm seven years into this entrepreneurial journey, and Cheeky has evolved into a new business, which has brought with it a different mental state for me several times over the past year alone. 

About 18 months ago, I was drinking heavily every day and crying myself to sleep every single night, thinking about my parents. I've always wanted to make sure I could take care of them as they grew older, and I realized they were aging faster than I was making progress with the business. Nothing is quite so dark as desperately wanting to help people you care about and knowing that you're mentally and physically incapable of doing more than you're already doing.

I posted a single, honest post to my Instagram stories one day about the darkness I was facing, and another entrepreneur friend swooped in with her own story and recommendations on just considering if medication could help me. Her comment, "It doesn't have to be this way," is one of the most powerful sentences I've heard. I went to the doctor and started taking a low dose of Lexapro (an anti-anxiety/anti-depressant) just a week or two later, and it may have saved my life.

I don't mean literally (I don't think I'm a person who would get to suicidal before folding my cards), but I do mean that it changed my reality completely. I am mostly in good spirits, feeling positive about the day and our prospects daily. I do feel somewhat grey much of the time these days, as I mentioned above, but my baseline is higher than it was, and my lows are significantly less low. I honestly can't imagine how I would deal with the challenges I face every week if I didn't have my invisible medical "armor." This journey is not for the faint of heart, and I think one of the best things anyone can do is understand when they need help and figure out how to get it. There "ain't no shame in my game"; this support only makes me more powerful.

All of that said, I've been burnt out for six months or more. This is one of the hardest aspects of being a solo founder at our stage- there's no extra money and almost no way you can take a break and have the business still function in your absence. I've been burnt out, it's been grey as fuck in NY, and we've been in a dead sprint to launch an additional 700 stores in the next couple of weeks, so it's been a lot. We currently manufacture AND fulfill all of the orders from our facility, so it's as involved of a process as it could be. (I have a lot of opinions on the pros and cons of manufacturing, but that's for another blog. My current position is that bringing manufacturing back in-house is why we've survived as long as we have, and it has built extreme resiliency and resourcefulness into our DNA.)

Anyway, I've done a little research on burnout, and the general consensus is that you need actual time to decompress and recuperate. Since I mostly don't have time to check out of my life completely, I'm testing another approach- reinforcing clear boundaries on my in and out times with the business, beefing up my social calendar, etc. Sometimes, I feel like this is tomfoolery, and I wonder, "What kind of a founder am I to have an actual social life given where we are with the business?" At other times, I realize this is the smartest move I can make for the brand's longevity (and my mental health), and I give myself my full blessing to do whatever I need to to feel like a human. I'll keep you posted on how it turns out;)

For my closing thoughts, Boisson filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today. They have been such a pioneer in our space and truly set the standard for what non-alc could and should be. It's shocking and horrifying that a business with such great traction and such a great product could go from industry darling to failure in basically 2.2 seconds, especially after raising almost 20 million dollars and growing a national brand. Also, it validated something I've been thinking (and reserving my opinions on in general) for several years. We know that VCs and founders have misaligned incentives, but I really think VC money is bad juju if you care at all about building something meaningful. The misalignment is very obvious on paper, but it's confusing when you actually speak to them. Almost every VC I've talked with is intelligent, friendly, polite, smiley, and supportive, but the wares they're peddling are tainted. 

Since I've never run a tech business, I'm not sure if the "growth at all costs" model is a bit less damaging sans a physical product. Still, the longer I run a CPG brand, the more obvious it is that there are real, significant benefits from growing your business slowly and step by step, learning along the way. Sometimes I lament the fact that Cheeky is still "so small" (in my eyes)- I look at the amount of time, money, and effort invested and then look at the output and am like, "How is it fucking possible that we're still this small?!" (😆) BUT, I recognize that our pace of growth has forced me (and every person on my team) to learn resourcefulness and resilience, like I mentioned above. 

At this point, my entire staff understands the impact of their actions. If they make a mistake that forces us to waste product or waste time (down to minutiae like re-coding expiration dates because they're illegible), they understand there is no one to pick up the slack except for themselves. 

In my case, the most helpful skill I've developed is cash flow management. This is actually three skills in one: a technical skill (what to order/produce when to optimize operations and revenue), a strategic skill (which vendors to use + what to pay for when), and an emotional people skill (how to communicate in general + how to maintain confidence with all stakeholders if you need more time to pay an invoice, etc.) 

I think this may have been my weakest ability even a year ago, but I've developed a genuine skill here. I also think this was the lesson I most-needed to learn, and it's one of the most critical elements to building solid organizational DNA. It forces you to be sensitive and responsive to your customers and the market and make responsible decisions around money. I really do not think it's possible to build these essential behaviors and this organizational awareness when you are swimming in cash + incentivized (or forced) to spend it quickly.

This Might Get Personal

I've been thinking about starting a blog recently, as many of my LinkedIn posts are borderline "professional," and my most recent articles on raising money for my business, Cheeky are venturing into more personal territory than I had originally planned. It didn't feel urgent, but I wanted an outlet for unstructured personal content as well as business content, so I've been patiently waiting for the time it felt right to make it happen.

I've never considered myself "a writer," but the more time passes, the more I need writing to commemorate, process, and understand the events of my life and to communicate with others. I journal almost daily, sometimes twice a day, but finally I'm at the point where I want to share it and give something of myself. Writing can be intensely personal, and in an era where our intimate lives are on display (and seemingly impossible to erase from the internet), one questions the wisdom of sharing the depth of our true selves at any point.

Caution be damned. If there's anything I know to be true, it's that "I got this," and I've never felt so comfortable living in my power as I do now. I've always understood the phrase "nothing is more dangerous than a woman who knows her worth," but only I've only started living in it in these past couple of years. This shit is also non-linear, so some days I wake up feeling anxious and disempowered, and others I feel like I could single-handedly run the free world 😁👍.  I'm speaking in abstractions, but after decades of work to bring my personal and professional worlds into alignment I'm ready to show up, to participate, and to be seen as a whole person.

So back to the blog. 

I sat down earlier today to write blog entry number one, and figured I'd decide where to host it later. I was in a reflective state of mind, and referenced a wheelchair design project I did in South Africa years ago, when I realized I should still have photos from the project, and "wouldn't it be cool to embed it in the blog?" I went through many dozens of files laying "dusty" in my Google Drive, and then a teeny tiny bell went off in the corner of my brain.... "Didn't I blog about my SA trip when I was there? Whatever happened to that?"

One thing led to another, and imagine my surprise when I discovered that I had already written not one, but TWO blogs already! And not just a post or two- I committed some real energy and time to it. As you might have guessed, this- aprilwachtel.blogspot.com- is blog #1 (the last post I wrote prior to this one was almost a decade ago), and here's a link to blog #2: one I started to document my journey to design "The Learning Desk," an adaptable desk/backpack for wheelchairs in South Africa.

My final prototype of the Learning Desk

It is WILD to me that I had a) completely forgotten that I had blogged before, and b) remembered many of the details I wrote about in the blogs as clear as day. I even remember physically writing the words to some of the posts, the weather the day of some of the blogs in question, and viscerally remembered the emotions I felt some of those days. 

There was also a lot of information I read as a stranger would, when finding a blog or memoir for the first time. Given how ungrounded and uncertain I felt about my life direction over all of those years, I am astounded at how interesting and rich it was in retrospect. It makes me think of the reoccurring joke in Calvin and Hobbes where something miserable happens and Calvin's father says "it builds character." I can say with surety that every blog entry I wrote prior to this one was written by a person who felt afloat, filled with uncertainty, like I couldn't see three months ahead in life, without any clear direction (or idea of how I would find direction.) Knowing what I know now, these experiences made me into the person I am, and I wouldn't give them up for anything, despite how painful things felt at the time.

So that brings me here.

I decided I wanted to host my current day blog here as a continuation of my old one, because it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside creating a linkage between who I was and who I am.  It's not about what I've "accomplished" since then, rather it feels like another way to bring my whole self to the table for this next chapter in my life. I wrote about this (very cryptically) in one of my recent Linkedin articles, but Brené Brown says "in order for connection to happen we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen." I have been OBSESSED trying to understand the full depths of this, and I don't think I've ever heard anything truer. 

Entrepreneurship is really just normal life on drugs (like a LOT of drugs that amplify ecstasy and elation and anxiety and fear), and every entrepreneur I know feels the extreme ups and downs, but publicly hides behind a veil of positivity and bravado. I interviewed my friend John deBary on my podcast recently, and he observed "as a founder you almost have a fiscal responsibility to say everything's going great".... and therein lies the rub.

I know there's not an obvious answer to systemically support entrepreneurs as business people AND as humans with real emotions, but what I do know is I'm ready to have my lives convene. 

Thanks for reading, y'all, and talk again soon:)

Just so easy

In a bit of a funk today after an awesome week. Really wondering why when one little thing goes wrong, it's just so easy to get all morbid and think everything is rotten. Why can't it be the other way around, that when everything is total shit and one little good thing happens you feel wonderful about the world?

Meh. Maybe it's perfectionism, but I rather think it's human nature. Maybe it's merely privilege? The expectation that we deserve the best, and that we must always perform at the highest of levels. If your expectation is low, that you don't deserve anything, and that you yourself will not deliver anything particularly wonderful, perhaps it makes adversity and depressing events all the easier to deal with?

Really curious how people living in poverty and war and strife deal emotionally without going berserk. If your life is generally fraught with danger and despair, how can you be grateful for what you have? I have heard many (and observed some) stories of positivity in the face of horrendous events....wondering how you develop and adopt this attitude... or if it's just natural.

Also wondering how high performers maintain a positive attitude. The higher standards I hold myself to, the less forgiving I am of other people who under perform. How do you rationalize excellence AND empathy?

Life recap, parte uno (Sri Lanka->BOS)

It's been on the order of years since I've posted, but not, in fact so long since I've written. Different mediums seem more appropriate at different times in life, and blogging and traveling were such a natural match, that when I stopped traveling, and settled a bit more, I also stopped blogging.

To bring you up to speed on my life in the past few years, when I left Sri Lanka I moved back to Boston where I tried a new angle on an old(er) relationship, started graduate school, and tried to figure out a direction for my life. A year later I decided that my direction included neither the relationship (it ended within months of my return) or graduate school and I took a fortuitous and unsolicited job offer to design and manage a beverage program for a restaurant opening in Boston's South End. Life was wonderful for a while there, and I spent just over a year developing systems, learning about managing up and down, and getting a closeup look at my personal strengths and weaknesses.
 
  Highlights from my time there were: getting to work under a strong female boss, understanding the magic of humor in hospitality, being featured as a bartending Iconoclast on the Sundance Channel, and having the opportunity to test out some ideas bubbling up in my brain, probably my favorite of which was the friends and family album (a big blank book I bought for the restaurant along with crayons and a modern day polaroid..... we'd approach regulars and new friends at the bar, take a picture of them if they wanted, and ask them to draw in or sign the book and paste in their photo. People were thrilled by it, and I always loved seeing the richness of their personalities that was so often otherwise hidden.) I still am so proud of the idea and am really curious if they're still using it.

Another major highlight from that time was founding and co-chairing the Boston Bartenders Collaborative. In retrospect, it seems like such a natural progression, but at the time I was very much unproven in the cocktail scene there. The politics of motivating and recruiting a range of talent (some definitely beyond my own knowledge base) made it logistically a challenging organization to manage. Also, interestingly, being that we were all very much 'in' the situation (perspective is always harder to see from the inside) I think it was really hard for everyone (myself included) to separate my abilities as a bartender and bar manager from my ability to design and or lead the organization. Thrown on top of that, it was and still is, a volunteer organization with no sponsors, and no ulterior motives beyond self-improvement and relationship-building. There really was never any explicit 'conflict' as it were, but you can only imagine trying to run a flat organization composed entirely of volunteers. In any case, I'm absolutely thrilled that we made it happen and that people were and still are interested. I'm also incredibly appreciative for the opportunities I was afforded in particular, in that year. We are all the product of opportunities given and taken, and a lot of people took a chance on me in that time.

I am running out of writing time right now, so I'll have to continue the life update at a later um... date. Next update includes 'April gets sad/restless/bored with Boston, moves to New York, and does cool shit.' :)
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I did want to observe (for my own benefit) before signing off that after so many years of non-blogging, I had an experience last night that I think was the catalyst for writing this little retrospective. Long story short, I'm in a new relationship of sorts, and last night I became aware of a situation that pushed me out of my comfort zone... a seemingly minor transgression on his part that had a resounding ripple effect that traveled literally through the time and space of my life. That probably doesn't make sense at first glance, but I think we all have experiences that REALLY resonate with all the 'yous' that you used to be as well as the one you are now...sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad. It's as if someone rifled through the book of your life and underlined every passage about that part of your personality, and shoved it in your face. It's like in yoga, when you push your breath into every nook and cranny of your body, and there's no space untouched by air. In this case, my emotional reaction permeated literally every sense and every corner of my awareness.

Bluntly, it dredged up some serious shit that I haven't felt or even imagined I needed to address for years.

Ultimately, it's good, it's really good, because to even get to that place after probably 15 years of repression means growth and possibility.  But, for many hours last night I really felt like I had no tools to deal with it. There is no quick way to filter through every trust broken over the course of your life, decide how you should deal with this one, and get over it. Writing really has always been the best way for me to gain perspective and make sense of the world, so while I'm not physically traveling, this is most certainly new territory, and I need to see where I've been to understand where I am and where I should go.

steady going

There's a chill in the air. I'm battling a cold. Must be Thanksgiving!

Things have been busy these last couple weeks, but in a weird way. I have very little to report on the work side of things... we're settling into our skin more and more each day.

I've been climbing a lot recently- my greatest triumph is that I learned to dyno the other day, with some great tips from a climbing friend. There's a V5 in the cave- it starts with a massive dyno, then continues upside down on the ceiling til the finish. I'm 3/4 through the problem, and so satisfied that I'm making progress. I've said it before, and I'll say it again- rock climbing (bouldering specifically) is the single most rewarding sport, and perhaps the single most rewarding activity I've ever participated in. There's measurable, tangible progress... one day you'll see a problem that looks impossible, and the next day you'll send it. You'll try a technique over and over- and you know the second you do it correctly, because you don't fall. Almost every other sport I've done has more nuances.... with climbing, anything that works is correct.

Monday musings

Sub par Sunday was followed by an excellent Monday. Slept in today, and hit up a local coffee shop with Lino and Keith for the usual mocha. Spent quite a bit of the day biking around- suppose the summer was issuing a last hurrah before winter sets in. Spent 3 hours at the rock gym climbing and socializing. It's awesome to be back after my minor injury.... I'm making measurable progress again, and it's so nice to connect with people who have such different lives than my own.

I've been thinking about connection again- as I seem to do often (or in fact, all the time.) It's so funny, I finally "get" twitter. I started using it last year due to my involvement in social media for my internship, but never fully understood its power. I picked it up again a week ago, and just all of the sudden understood it. It's truly a customizable news feed... the end objective/result being human connection. Not only can you customize information that enters your world, but you create an identity for yourself as well. In a sense it's a great "leveler," because it allows connections to be made that otherwise would be unlikely/impossible due to differences in location, social circles, status, etc. For someone like myself, with a gazillion interests, and a moderate case of ADD, this is a small slice of heaven, as I can track interesting information until exhaustion ensues. :)

Revelations aside, I'm having a chill, chill evening. I'm between courses- boston lettuce and fall apples dressed simply in lime, olive oil, salt and pepper, and emmenthaler melted over whole grain sunflower bread. Next up is delicata squash roasted and stuffed with black beans, apple and onion, and sprinkled with nutmeg.

Happy Monday!