brown's first real, er, employee

everyone, meet j.r.

he is Director of Awesomeness at brown. j.r. comes to us by way of last year's texas barista jam, whereupon he took it upon himself to come out from behind the counter of his then coffee job at ruta maya san antonio to join our festivities and quickly leave ruta in the dust, figuratively and in actuality (read: he actually got serious about coffee).

and now the news from him that he has recently hired himself as brown's southeastern u.s. rep at the currently going-on southeast regional barista competition.

so he calls me tonight and says, "man, have i been itching to talk to you for a few hours," then proceeds to tell me how he accidentally discovered--by awesomeness or luck, he wouldn't say--that said serbc was going on just a half mile from a little coffee place he had been meaning to visit for a while since moving to florida but was never really "in the neighborhood" (and i thought he was just politely putting me off when i suggested he might find decent espresso there).

anyways, he shows up at the serbc, schmoozes his way around, meeting coffee industry folks, trading stories and gathering information, all under the premise that he is, indeed, in the employ of brown. which is fine. i told him i'd probably have done the same. and it's fun to think he's leveraging brown so hard out there, getting in touch with farmers and other industry types. he represents well. so i promoted him from Awesomeness Intern all the way to head of the department.

oh, yes. he's also a closet republican. (he's ultimately too smart to buy all the current drivel and drone and no-actual-sound-argumentations that pass for liberal positions these days, which only reinforces the old adage that if you're not a liberal by the time you're twenty you have no heart; but if you're not a conservative by the time you're forty, well, you have no brain.)

words of wisdom

sometimes people give you unsolicited advice that is basically worth little more than the hot air it took to expel the advice from the giver's oral cavity. other times the advice is spot on and worthy of all acceptance and you, under whatever circumstances you find yourself in at the time, are unable or unwilling to internalize that advice and profit from it.

and then there are the times when someone drops upon you a little nugget that is both accurate for your condition and timely and it falls on your ears like needed rain on dry land. such were the words i got the other day from a friend.

he said (as i paraphrase him): in the life cycle of every business, there comes a time when one of two things will happen. the first is that your business will exhaust its current client base and you will need an infusion of capital to capture a wider client base. this can seem both daunting and frustrating at once because it often seems like you're spending dollars to try to get more people to do the same thing--buy your product. the second scenario is the opposite. your current client are keeping you so busy that you cannot keep up your current production rate to satisfy their needs without a major infusion of capital to either upgrade your production capacity or hire a larger labor staff. again, a daunting and frustrating experience

i am in the latter space, currently. i'm living in the place where capacity is still not operational and current bankroll does not allow for a sufficient layout for more a needed boost in inventory. because of the addition of several key wholesale accounts i find my inventory depleting itself all too quickly and my little roaster running constantly to keep up. this is a good thing in my estimation, let me assure you. and when the paid invoices really get rolling this plateau i'm currently on will be but a learning experience, a significant turning point in the life of my business. thankfully, both of these issues (needing both larger roaster capacity and a boosted inventory) will seemingly be accounted for within the next 30 days. or so goes the plan.

and so meanwhile it's peck, peck, peck all day long, and pondering the sage advice that called this one loud and clear. now all that's left is the doing of it.