The Reality of a Startup

So we have passed our 1 year sales anniversary, grown to over 400 stores and are talking to major retail chains in the hopes to expand from Erie to Syracuse/Watertown by March of 2011. I am amazed at what we have accomplished, but even more shocked by what we still have to do in the coming year(s).

Since the last post we have been pulling a lot of stunts around college campuses and the city of Rochester and Buffalo. In case you missed it, we have been building snowmen as a way to get people talking about Vital Energy. What does that have to do with Vital? Absolutely nothing and that is the whole point. I wanted something that would get people talking to their co-workers and friends while taking the initiative to come approach us.
Without fail we always got the same questions:
-Where did you get the snow?
-Is it real?
-What is Vital Energy?
-Why a snowman?
-Can I touch it?

In the business districts people would see the snowman on their way to work and come down asking all these questions or mention seeing him outside of their office window. It was a really good feeling having all these people be so curious and to take the time to come down and check it all out. We even had local news and radio stations talk about it and ask us what was going on.

The best part of it all was after we left for the day. The snowman was still there chilling out and doing his job... getting people to talk.

In order to set everything up meant getting up at 2am or earlier.
This was hard manual labor.
We had to borrow a pickup truck, shovel thousands of pounds of snow into it, drive to the location with the back end sitting low, empty it out, fill and empty it 4,5,6 more times, return the truck, setup banners, and of course build the snowman by 8am for the morning rush.

The hardest part of the past month has been the fact that my body never knows if it should be awake or asleep on a given day. We have given up trying to hold a normal sleep schedule in order to take advantage of the last few 70 degree days. During the whole process it really got me thinking about what we have invested into this company.

The reality of the whole startup is that I am constantly surprised by how much work and sacrifice it takes and even more than that is the fact that it never stops, even for personal problems. Mike's computer was recently destroyed (run over) but replaced (yay warranties!). My wallet was stolen along with my ID resulting in a shopping spree of $2200 at a sneaker store and Walmart. We have been sick and injured along the way at various times. After a year we are still all living with our parents and eating all of their food and taking no salary.

This isn't meant to be negative in the least, but just a realization of how much there is to this thing. It is a borderline obsession and I know that we are all loving it. Seeing the progress that we have made is extremely satisfying. Running into people who have seen our efforts, heard about it from a friend, tried it out for the first time on a whim, seen the videos is always a great feeling. Even looking back on our failures is often hilarious when we compare the idea to the result. It usually makes sense why it 'could' have worked and why it did not in reality.

No matter how this turns out, I think it will be hard to work at a desk after I spent hours before dawn trying to sculpt a melting pile of snow into a snowman in front of city hall.

-Jake