Ever since we left the Honest2Goodness market in Glasnevin last November, Alan and I have been itching to settle the My Mexican Shop a little. When we started the shop we thought, sure what could be so hard? it's only an online shop!! By God we were so wrong and if we knew then what we know now, we would have certainly thought the whole thing twice! But we're here now, and luckily with very few regrets, which is majorly good! An online shop is just as difficult as a regular shop. Above all when you're running it after your regular full-time job! The pressure is less because you're not fully dependent on the business to give you a salary, but apart from that, you have every bit of pressure added to the fact that you're not doing this full-time, because you've got to go to work too!
So as your business grows, life gets busier and busier, but the amount of time you have for it remains the same. Soon you find your days getting longer and longer, going to bed way past your bed time coz 'you gotta make things work'; you start eating into your weekends (which you were so used to enjoying freely before); quickly after, if all goes well, you find the only free time you have is those few minutes before your head hits the pillow at 2 a.m. every night.
Then you have a whole new set of engagements that are important for the business. Exhausted and drained you start cancelling non-essential social gatherings and soon you acquire a new set of friends coz the old ones, who were used to you having all the time in the world, get pissed off coz you don't see them anymore (there's simply no time and it's hard for them to see that). The new friends tend to be people like you: overworked and overwhealmed with jobs or ventures similar to yours... or a mixture of those and people who are terribly understanding and supportive.
You might think it's all not worth it, but it is. I know it is... and just when you think you have it all figured it out, life throws you a spanner... and then you have to adjust and reprogramme... and then you plateau for a little while, you feel happy.... and then you start thinking what you'll do next... and that, my friends, is exactly what happened to us!
About a month ago we went to see this place. At the beginning it was all wishful thinking... surely to God we couldn't do it by ourselves, clearly it was a lot to take in, obviously it was unaffordable and crazy.... and then we meet the landlord, and we liked him and he was reasonable and he appears to be very kind... and then we had a few sleepless nights and a lot of calculations... and then the rational thinker in the partnership, that is Alan of course, says 'let's do it' and the dreamer in me says, 'hell yea, why not!' and the next thing you know, we have tied ourselves to a lease for an actual physical shop!!!
It's madness, and the cycle starts all over again. So this past Friday evening, we got keys to our little shop in South Richmond Street in Dublin 2. We kept it all underwraps because deep down, we were both frightful it would all fall through, but as it started getting more real, we told the folks in OVO, our digital design agency, so they could help us figure out a few branding issues. We had been working with them already on a facelift for the online shop, so that got parked and work started on the new concept. I can't wait to show you what they have come up with, I'm super pleased!
Then it was the matter of figuring out how we wanted the shop to look like... and I couldn't think of anybody more suitable to help us in that journey than the super generous and talented Alex Carberry, aka Hydrangea Girl, a blogger and interior designer I've had the priviledge of working with before in a voluntary project. I loved what Alex did for Sophia House Teen Room in Localise, I knew her work ethic and her commitment and I adore her laidback attitude and ballsiness. She also understands the pressures of juggling an office job and your passion, so in our eyes, she was the perfect gal for the job! Boy were we right! Keep an eye on her blog to get a peak at what she's been doing for us! She'll be blogging about it soon! So this was my week... how was yours?
