4 Years of Full Time Entrepreneurship, and how to stay sane along the way.

This Summer will mark 4 years of full time business ownership. We opened our mobile shop in the heart of the pandemic and since then prices have skyrocketed, expensive permits have been enforced, inventory has been greatly limited, but opportunities to serve people haven’t gone anywhere, and that is where Antler comes in.

We wanted to build a business model that let us be creative, dive into our love for specialty goods, and be with people. I do NOT do well if I am at all isolated and so building a hospitality based shop at the beginning of 2020 was an absolute lifesaver for me. Many of you know that we both quit our jobs 3 months before winter to try and make enough money with the mobile shop to make it through and test out if “full time” was possible. It was…..but barely. I think a big misconception within the startup community is that with the freedoms that come with being your own boss, you also take on 100x the amount of responsibility for 0 to little pay if need be.

It can be so scary to embark on a lifestyle change that promises nothing, but getting old and wondering if I could’ve tried terrifies me a lot more. You’ll learn how to budget (if you’re us that looks like a strong $6.25 an hour for 3 1/2 years) you’ll learn that never needing to clock in anywhere also means your work is not compensated or recognized. You have to be okay with behind the scenes effort. You have to be really good at adapting and problem solving, we have no boss that we can pass issues off to or go to for questions. Every day our lively hood is in the hands of someone waking up and thinking “I’d like to go to Antler today”. This is what we signed up for.

That was a scary paragraph, because it can be scary and very stressful. The flip side of all of this, is seeing the tables full with people talking, laughing, and enjoying something that came directly from us. It brings me a joy that the security of normal jobs has never satisfied. When Hunter and I work in the kitchen and can hear our employees and customers greeting each-other, we hear the grinder, the cash box, the music, the bell from the door, all those wonderful quintessential cafe sounds, I pause and enjoy it. I’ve really begun to take intentional notice of the magical moments, making sure to appreciate every person that walks through our doors. If there is one thing that barely scraping by as a business will do, you’ll never take a transaction for granted ever again.

A large lesson I have learned is to lean into the pressure. If you aren’t making enough money, let that pressure drive you to say “okay what can I do, change, or implement”. If we were making insane amounts of money selling decent lattes, I would never feel pushed to find the best cup of coffee that I can and settle for nothing less. Pressure mixed with creativity is where breakthrough happens. Every season we build better drinks, better salads each week, better merchandise, better retail coffee, etc. Life would be pretty boring without struggles and breakthroughs, and that is what entrepreneurship is. It’s taking the temptation to stay in a safe environment without skeptics and “what ifs” and going for it anyways.

My biggest advice to you, put blinders on when you need to. Stay focused but be flexible, know your brand, follow what works and sells without losing your identity. We don’t do a lot of things that other very successful coffee shops do because it simply is not within the Antler brand and we have to be okay with that. I promised I would make this short so I will leave you with this.

I heard a great quote this past weekend. “Write your goals in stone but your plans in pencil”.

Annalisa