Always Love What You Do
I’m sitting in my sister’s house with a full heart, money in the bank, and a renewed energy and hunger to succeed. Last night was our last night on the east coast and we spent it eating pizza and watching the GOP debate with two of my very favorite people on the planet. It will be bittersweet driving away from Steph and Tim’s generosity and Stafford’s under-bite this morning, but reaching our destination feels more exciting than a trip to Disney World.
Insert shamelessly adorable dog picture here.
While we’ve been away from the blog, we’ve been very busy prioritizing and keeping our heads above unexpectedly high waters. We were flooded out of our New Jersey rental home after a persistent Nor’Easter brought several days of tidal flooding. Nothing was ruined, no one was hurt, just a bump in the long (and probably still bumpy) road to achieving our goals. The inconvenience of being temporarily homeless did remind us of one of the main reasons we’re pursuing our dreams of opening Roots: friends and family.
We received innumerable well wishes and bits of advice from guests over the summer – my favorite, a restaurant owner reminded me to always love what you do – though the kindness of our coworkers was most heartwarming. One of a handful of great friends we met while working in Cape May was generous enough to welcome us into her home for a week when ours became unliveable. After working our last shifts, Steph and Tim opened their door to us for an undetermined amount of time as we had nonrefundable round trip tickets from Philadelphia to San Francisco to celebrate my best friend’s 30th birthday. We had a magical, intimate, smartphone-free weekend with some genuinely amazing people at a wine country lodge that oozed hospitality. More than ever, it’s a fact that we can’t open a business alone, and we are so grateful to have so many wonderful people in our corner. Thank you all.
As we head back to Michigan, our next major step is raising the remaining capital we need to secure our property and cover startup costs. Many of you who are reading this know that we want to involve our friends and family as much as possible, as you’re our motivation and our future customers. We’ve casually reached out to many of you over the past year and will be doing so again to ask you to join our family of investors and help define Roots along the way. If we haven’t yet spoken but you’d like more information and a look over our business plan, please shoot us an email at invest@roots.com. We so look forward to many cups of coffee, brainstorm sessions, and ultimately a celebratory glass of wine at the finish line.
Sending my love to everyone we’ve had to move farther from as we pursue this dream, and I cannot wait to see my mitten family over the next few weeks.
Xxoo
Kim