713MB. The size of my first Zoom meeting recording. It was the one with this Cali Guy Brian.
During our entire talk, I can’t stop tracing back to my early days in this industry, when I forced “Angelo the coffee godfather” / my “George Clooney in Coffee” to tell me everything. He had a mask with Trump’s face on it. He hangs a huge picture of the entire team wearing Chinese army uniforms back in the 50s. He used to run a coffee museum in Zurich. He was the only one who were serving Hawaiian coffee beans in Berlin, as far as I know.
If it happens again, I might be able to distinguish if he is faking his passion in a commercial way, or exhibiting every tiny detail he can, like Brian did today.
As streams merge into rivers, the questions “where we started at the first place? ” popped up multiple times this week. Did we really try to build a money-printing vampire? A monopoly in the new coffee industry? Did I want to become someone to be labelled as “the coffee queen” or “a successful female entreprenuer”?
If that was truly the goal, why did it take us too long?
What did we really want?
There has been many mistakes I’ve made during the 3.5 years of entrepreneurship. At some point, I’ve stopped counting them, or even categorizing them as mistakes. I don’t care if I make mistakes. I only care about how to move forward. I only care about now, what’s the next step?
The first one is believing in an ideal reality that can be 100% actualized by creating and owning something conceived purely from my mind.
The truth is, we make sacrifices on the way, some of which we don’t even noticed. One day, I suddenly realized that I don’t have the craving to write songs anymore. I can’t compose a logical article that’s more than 1500 words with depth. I can’t stand talking to people about a topic that’s fun but irrelevant from whatever I’m doing, especially if I don’t find this person very attractive.
I don’t have the time.
Even if I have, I’d rather spend it with my own thoughts, strategizing, pruning, or getting reading for the next sharp move.
I use to have much more fantasies about the future. Like the fantastic future will land in front of me like a hot balloon. I’ll jump on it. It will take me to the end of the world.
The second one is I’ll never ask for help if I can do something by myself. Now I’m ruled over by the concept of “interdependence”. I learned how to cry for help as well as how to give hints to people whom I’m seeking help from, even when this help is not that urgent sometimes not necessary, and I don’t have to get this from him/her.
If I don’t cry, nobody will know I need it. I have to fall badly, or at least pretending that I’ll fall badly, so that people will offer their helping hand, even if they don’t, they will bear in mind that I’ve tried hard.
Tearing my image of a “well-educated relaxed bobo lady who never worries about life” was one of the biggest movement going on with my innerself. I’m still fighting for it.
All of a sudden, people realized that I’m smart and obsessed with work. They used to think I’m lazy, rich and a beautiful face.
I thought I’d become an actress when I grew up. Now I am. In some secret sense. Although I’m not sure I have a beautiful face anymore.
The third one is I thought I could enjoy extremely inspirational and loving relationship as soon as I’ve accomplished something in my work. Then I fell in love with my work.
I used to love coffee, then coffee people, now I love devising business models in gastronomy. Creating extensions and try to validate them. I’ll soon fall in love with extensions of business models and forget about the kind of relationship I’ve dreamed about in the first place. It was probably an illusion.
I can have a relationship running, as long as it doesn’t interfere my efficiency at work. I can go meet somebody, as long as I can relate our conversations to my work, or my work life balance, one way or another.
I’ve shortlisted the things I would do within my scarce freetime after work: fine dining, high quality drinking, meeting up only valuable friends, social networking, interesting sport sessions, language training, moments with art and nature, moments with myself.
All these lessons that I can’t appreciate are valuable ones that sometimes make me sad.
But stronger.
Sadness is a strength.
maoa 