Heather Haddad

It’s pissing down rain. We’ve been in a “drought” here in Austin, but despite the plentiful rain the last two weeks, we’re constantly told “don’t let the rain fool you, we’re still in a drought!”. I don’t know about that. Seems to me, if it rains, drought over.

Anyways, I’m sitting at Fumee where it’s dark and rainy and I have no customers. It’s quiet and I’m drinking my coffee in the back. I like mornings like these.

It seems that people think owning a business is all flowers and rainbows. You get to set your own hours! You get to hang out and smoke cigars and drink wine all day! You must make so much money! These things might be true of business owners who have known great success. For me, Fumee is still very much a start up. We are entering in our 7th month of business and it is still a hustle, every day.

I get one day off a week. On that day, I refuse to think of Fumee. On every other day, I work from the moment I wake until at least 11 PM. Occasionally I’ll take an hour or two for myself, but it’s never peaceful because I’m either thinking about the business or I’m getting phone calls regarding the business. A typical day for me will be to wake up at 10 AM, begin answering emails, writing our company newsletter or balancing our financing. Paying bills, making the employee schedule, writing press releases, ordering inventory, cleaning, or doing our taxes (which are paid monthly, quarterly, and annually. I am constantly doing taxes). About 3 times a week I have to run all around town in my car with no A/C buying soda, paper towels, honey, toilet paper, printer ink, whatever we’ve run out of. At 4 PM I go into work and work a shift where I try to strike a balance between providing excellent customer service and actually getting any administrative work done. As my customers are generally a  talkative bunch, it’s proved nearly impossible to get any other work done while I’m “on the floor”. I get off at 11 PM and go home to relax for a few hours and start it all over again. Some days, like tomorrow, are particularly jammed full, as I have a conference call at 9 AM for my new position on the board of the Texas Cigar Merchant Associaton, and at 3 PM I have a wine tasting to finalize our wine list.

I can’t say that I hate owning my own business, but I can’t say I love it right now, either. However I still can’t imagine working for someone else, so it’s certainly better than the alternative. What I am is very attached to this idea and hopeful that this will be very sucessful one day. I mentioned to a customer the other day that I am a dreamer, and he said “well that’s what keeps you coming in on the hard days- your dreams.” And it’s true. I dream of the day we finally get our liquor license (my WORD this has been a LONG process!) with which we will hopefully double our revenues. I dream of the day when I can pay myself for my hard work. I dream of the day when I don’t have a drive a car with no A/C and I can own my own home. I dream of the day when Fumee is profitable and we can live the life we want. Until then, it’s a lot of bills. Bills, bills, bills, constantly. Until I owned my own business I used to think $10,000 was a lot of money. Now I can spend that in a day, and I have. It’s a lot of worry. It’s a lot of sacrifice. But I’m trying to keep my eyes on the prize and concentrate not on our short term gains, but the long term wealth I am building.

I’ve been having a tough week. Fumee has been stressing me out to the point of being nauseated. I’m working non-stop and I have a lot of financial obligations that at times seem overwhelming. For instance, today I work a 15 hour shift by myself, from 11 AM until 2 AM, and in the last seven days I’ve had over $5,000 of bills due. You can see how this sort of thing, day in, day out, can wear one down. I’m working on a plan for next month to make things easier on myself. You know, find some more money so we have a bigger cash reserve, take mandatory “me” time to relax, and to get back into the gym for stress release and health reasons. Some times I wonder why I got myself into this crazy business! I should have been a work-from-home consultant or some crap. Entrepreneurship is no picnic my friends, it is equal parts good and horrible.

Anyways, I came home from work bummed and dreading my shift today, so Anthony took me to our local dive bar for a beer. Only, by the time we got there it was 11:30 and they closed at midnight. We had one beer, and then decided to try and make it to the gas station by midnight (which is the time you can no longer buy beer in Texas). So at 11:50 PM we took off walking towards the gas station (we had walked to the bar with the dog, so we had no car). About half-way there we started wondering if the gas station itself was even open, as it seems to close awfuly early most days. But soon we saw it in the distance, with the lights on, and we decided to run for it. I felt like I was on the Amazing Race, running for the finish line, only I was running for Dos Equis instead. I’m happy to say we made it with seconds to spare. But seriously, why can’t you buy beer after midnight here? That’s just silly, this is A-M-E-R-I-C-A! (Get this, in Texas you can’t buy liquor after 9 PM and not at all on Sundays!)

Anyways, I’ve decided to cut back on the beer in the future anyways. And the pizza. I really do want to do these things, but when you’re stuck at Fumee all alone and you’re hungry, there’s only a few options:

1. Order food (what delivers? Pizza. Pretty much the only choice.)

2. Eat the snacks we have here, which are chips and candy.

3. See if anyone left beer (which happens all of the time) and drink that.

So my diet consists of pizza, chips, candy and beer. Yes, I know that’s disgusting. Wait, it gets worse. On the off chance I make it through a shift without doing 1-3, I’m usually starving by the time I get off. There is exactly one place on my way home that is open late, and that is Taco Bell. So I probably eat Taco Bell 3 times a week now. It’s so gross.

So, my resolve this week is to go grocery shopping this Sunday and make two big meals which I will then portion out into tupperware and freeze so I have a portable, healthy meal to take with me to work. I have been good about going to yoga weekly, but now I would like to add a spinning class weekly, too. So there you have it, my Make My Life Better in March plan. Wish me luck.

Today was a good news/bad news day. Smoke Free Texas was introduced today and contains NO exemptions for cigar lounges. However, I’m not very worried because they will likely make that the first amendment to the bill. I spent the morning sending out press releases and posting signage about the bill in the store. I also emailed Lance Armstrong whose Livestrong foundation is a major force behind the bill, and I informed him that I will be waging war against it until the exemption is in place. I’m sure he’s scared.

On the brighter side, I was on the front page of the Cedar Park Citizen this morning. (Read Part 1, Read Part 2).  It was very good (free) press and the article is pretty funny.

I was also the lucky receipient of free theater tickets from my friend Derek, with whom I was in a play with in Georgetown, Tx. Ralph was kind enough to switch shifts with me so that Anthony and I can go. Free date night, score!

I am really struggling with balancing my life. Yesterday, I saw my husband for 45 minutes. I was at Fumee working from noon until 3 AM and came back the next day at 10 AM. I am overwhelmed with the amount of work I have to do, and am frustrated with not seeing the fruits of this labor. The end of the year is especially tough, because I have MONTHS of accounting to catch up on, which is on top of all the blogging, twittering, processing inventory, processing orders, working in the store, running around doing errands for the store, etc.. etc…

I really want to start going to gym regularly again, but WHEN? I’d like to have a hot dinner on the table for my husband when he comes home from work, but WHEN? I’d really like to clean my house and do laundry, BUT WHEN?!?!

I could use another employee but can’t afford one. This must be the worst time period of having your own business- when the work far outweighs the help and the money.

Finally, here it is. A nice article, he mentions pretty much everything we do in it!

Me in Smoke Magazine

Today I had the night shift at Fumee. Not a soul came in until 9 PM. I was just about to start cleaning things up for closing time when one, two, three, four people walk in. Ten minutes later I had another three people come in. Everyone wants lattes and cigars and suddenly, business is good. It’s weird how things turn around so quickly! Our last table left at 1 AM (even though we close at 10). They were having a good time so I just hung out until they left.

So far, business has been steady. We’re doing well enough to pay the bills, and we’re working hard to grow our clientel so that we have people in all the time. We’re taking it day by day.

Personally, I’m having trouble finding the time to do all of the things I’d like. I keep planning to hit the gym after work, but I’m always too tired to go. I’ve been putting a lot of tasks on Anthony (like walking the dog and making the ice tea after I’ve drunk it all). Even Fumee tasks fall by the wayside as I keep thinking I’ll do them during my shift, but a customer usually winds up chatting me up for hours and I never complete my to do list. You know it’s serious because I didn’t have time to put up a Christmas tree this year and I haven’t bought a single Christmas gift (normally I would be done by now.) I also doubt I’ll be sending out my annual Christmas cards this year. But luckily I’m too busy to feel guilty.

Well the Fumee Cigar Lounge is finally open for business. We began this adventure in March of 2007, opened online in October of 2007, and we opened the lounge in November of 2008. It’s been a long journey, but now we’re here! At this point, if we fail, it’s our fault because we now have all the tools we need to succeed.

We’ve been working 12 hour days all week, but tomorrow I’m super stoked because we begin our split-shifts. I work half the day and Ralph works the other half. That means we’re only going to be working 7 hour days, 7 days a week. Score. It will be a welcome reprieve. I’ll be able to eat meals at home and walk my dog and clean the house again. Can’t wait.

Fumee Cigar Lounge

PS- My cousin, Alexis Roland the amazing 9 year old snowboarder had a four page article in the New York Times written about her! Go Alexis!

I haven’t blogged much in the last two weeks, partly because I don’t have the time with all of the arrangements for the cigar store. I haven’t had time to do dishes, laundry, clean the litter box or generally make my home a nice place. It’s gross right now, but what can I do? Anthony’s often helping me with the store, too, so he’s had as little time as I. The second reason  I haven’t blogged, is because I don’t know what to say without sounding whiney. I’m tired, stressed, grumpy, achey and putting out fires and struggling to keep our open date this Saturday. My life consists of cleaning, going to Home Depot at least once a day, inputting inventory, organizing, making lists and doing handyman stuff.

Today however, I wasn’t at the store until the wee hours of the morning. Today I went to an Inc. Magazine event at the beautiful AT&T business center in Austin and heard Norm Brodsky speak (author of the new book The Knack. He’s a very engaging speaker and I really enjoyed his talk, even if it was partially an infomercial for his book. He’s one of those speakers that keeps you interested with jokes and funny anecdotes, and is actually smooth with them. There was also free food and drinks, so you can’t beat that.

Well, tomorrow is another extremely long and busy day, and then Friday we have our private grand opening party. I will be posting before and after picture of the lounge on Friday since it will be clean and pretty then! Wish me luck. And energy.

Today I set up Fumee for 14 hours… but take a look at the results:

Almost done!

We’re on track to open in 8 days. Scary! I got my hair in a can of stain tonight and didn’t notice until it was dried, so tomorrow I get to go cut off two inches of my hair. No fun.

I’m very tired. Last night, after a 12 hour work day, I slept like a friggen rock. Tonight I expect much of the same. Anthony has been helping me and he and Ralph have been so helpful. I will be posting “before” and “after” pictures as soon as we’re done!