Heather Haddad

I was considering deleting my blog because twitter has ruined my attention span and I am now only able to communicate in less than 140 characters. But then I began to look over my old posts, and I realized, I can’t rob the world of my hilarity! Some of my posts were so funny and I enjoyed looking over them so I thought, hey, even if it’s just for my own posterity, I’ll keep this thing around. Maybe my dog will want to read it to remember me when I die.

One thing I was stunned by is how quickly things have changed for us. Some of these posts, just over a year old have really illustrated how far my business, Fumee, has come! I read posts about how I was working a zillion hours a week until 3 in the morning, some times even sleeping at Fumee. I whined about not having any help, no employees, no life, no time to even clean my house. There were lots of posts about how stressed out I was all of the time.

But now fast forward to today… well, I made vegan sloppy joes today. And I cuddled with my dog. I watched the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I did Kenpo X (yes, I’m a month into the P90X work out program!). I did some work, sure, but really, how things have changed!

I turned 28 this year. Anthony and I are celebrating our 3rd anniversary this month. Fumee has now been open a year and a half. We have four, count ‘em, FOUR, employees (ah, it was only a year ago, to the month, that I could only afford one employee for only one day a week!). Ralph has left Fumee on a day to day basis, and I am down to only four days a week there. I’ve also landed some sweet consulting work lately. So things are good, which isn’t to say I don’t still have stressful days or that Fumee is making me so much money I’m swimming naked in it, but there’s PROGRESS. And it’s tangible. I have my life back! And that makes me happy.

I’ve also recently launched my new business, E-Content Creators, and inspired by my new consulting gig, I’ve turned this web site into a static post about my consulting work, which means you now have to click to get to the blog part. Consulting is something I really enjoy doing, and who knows, it may turn into another business for me!

Another thing I noticed while reading my blog was how my New Year’s resolutions are going. I’m happy to say they are going very well. I’ve finally dedicated myself to working out and eating well with P90X and I’m seeing great results. If I’m brave enough I may post my before and after pictures up here (I’m even frowning and looking depressed in the before pictures, just like on the infomercial!)

Well, this is well over 140 characters and I’m starting to see steam coming out of my finger tips as I type. So, I bid you adieu until the next time I randomly decide to post something. If you’re jonesing for some Haddad, you can always read my husband’s blog, he’s much better at updating than I.

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.

I’m back from New Orleans, and I had so much fun! Anthony and I drove there where we met up with my dad to go to the IPCPR cigar trade show. As usual, it was four days of drinking, smoking, eating, staying up late and not sleeping much. Very fun, very tiring. I got a lot of work done, smoked lots of new product, yadda yadda, but the best part was the after hours stuff. For starters, we had a magnificent dinner at Tony Moran’s where the owner created a special dish for me since I’m a veggi, and I had the best caprese salad I’ve ever had. I never knew caprese salad could taste different from one place to the next, but this one had amazing mozzerella cheese on it. I mean, A-MAZE-ING, and this is coming from a woman who has made her own mozzerella cheese from scratch at home.

I also enjoyed many nights at the Don Leoncio Cigar Lounge were I danced meringue with Joey from Padilla, spoke Spanish 101 with Don Pepin Garcia, drank Chimay with the Stogie Review guys, chatted up Carlito Fuente and more. As much fun as our many nights there were, I have to say the highlight was happening upon a Karaoke lounge where Rocky Patel was dancing. I decided to dance with him, however as soon as I walked up to him and started dancing, he turned heel and walked away. I WAS DISSED BY ROCKY PATEL! Priceless. Best part of the trip, hands down!

Anyways, after four days of smoking, I left feeling like I had a cigar lodged in my lung. I took two days off and have commenced my normal smoking schedule since. If fact, I will sign off and go smoke one of the many sample sticks from the show. Salut!

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.

This evening I put up several websites:

austinbusinesswoman.com
drsnus.com
somethingbiggerorbetter.com

and now I am going to bed. Check them out and if you have something you want to trade me for my bongos, let me know. =)

Recently, we had a BBQ at Fumee with hotdogs. I am a vegetarian and one of our employees is vegan, so we came up with an alternative meal: Ketchup, mustard, relish, chips…CHIPS ON A BUN! (crunch, crunch, crunch!) Then we wrote a song about it, and made a music video. Behold: Chips on a Bun (The Video), also available at www.youtube.com/fumeeworld

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wymnsBHBNns&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1]

Many people are asking me for my Chips on a Bun recipe. I have decided to release my great-great-grandmother’s recipe. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

CHIPS ON A BUN

Take a bun. Add some ketchup, mustard, relish. Top with chips. Eat.

I think I’m developing an allergy to smoke. No joke. I’m going to try not smoking any cigars for a day or two and getting the laundry basket out of our bedroom (which contains all of our stinky cigar clothes) and see if it helps. This would be a bad development, if true.

This weekend I went down to Houston for a cigar event. It was Serious Cigars holiday party. It was amazing. Hundreds of people, catered, open bar, great raffle prizes (they gave away a scooter, several Wiis and ipods). I hope one day to have a party that big and well-attended. Baby steps!

Me at the Serious Cigars Party

I love this picture, because you can see how insanely smokey the tent was. Oddly, I didn’t notice it at all while I was there! (pictures from Jon Mackey)

Smokey Tent

One nice thing about the party (besides all of the networking I was able to do), is that I met a guy who runs a cigar shop in town. He’s far enough away to not be my competitor, and I’m hoping he can be someone trustworthy I can bounce ideas off of and go to for advice . I really need that for certain issues that I don’t know how to handle. For example, we’ve been keeping our humidor at 70 % humidity since we opened, with no problem at all. But people were complaining that it wasn’t humid enough, even though that’s the proper humidity for cigars. So my options were to ignore their complaints, or to kick up the humidity to 72% to make them feel better, even though that’s too high. I chose the later, but what if someone says the same thing again? Do I kick it up to 74%, which is ridiculously high? Do I ignore their complaint? At this event, I noticed that their cigars were kept VERY humid, I would bet it was at 74%. Maybe that’s a trade secret I don’t know yet, that retail stores OVER humidify their cigars? This is why I need an experienced retailer to be my mentor and to pose these questions to.

Anyways, I had a really nice time. We got back from Houston 3:30 Am and then I had to work a double the next day. That was not fun! Luckily it went by relatively quickly. So, who is coming with me next year?

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.

It’s that time again. New year, fresh start. Or so we believe for about a week until we realize everything is the same. This year, I have two resolutions, and three HOPES.

I HOPE TO…

1. Grow Fumee into a profitable business this year

2. Finally be able to pay myself this year

3. Finally work on retirement savings

My RESOLUTIONS are:

1. To figure out a good work/life balance so I can enjoy my time off instead of stressing out, and still get everything done that I’d like

2. To go to the gym 3 days a week

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

Me in Smoke Magazine