Just Pinch Myself

Sometimes I pinch myself wondering where has all of the time gone?  When I started Flavorman back in 1992 I didn’t really know how the company would grow or how we would reach success. For sure, I didn’t have any concept of what I thought success would look like when it was achieved.  Truthfully, I am not sure I know the answer of that even now.  Entrepreneurs always strive for success and realizing it is sometimes harder than the achievement itself.  What I do know is that I keep working like we service only one customer at a time when in reality we have hundreds.  Through this way of doing business we will certainly see success, won’t we?

I started the company with one employee working out of a condo in the Louisville suburbs.  I still remember sitting at a desk in a lawn chair thinking I was at the top of my game with a new company and a new job AND I was the boss.  The square footage of our “corporate headquarters” was less than 900 square feet and it seemed cavernous.  Our first customer made juice drinks on a national basis with an international presence for its products.  Now we create beverages for EVERY beverage category in a truly world class building in downtown Louisville and we are packing it to the roof.  How did we get here?  For certain, we created drinks that made other companies successful – is our success tied to that of our clients?  I think so.

Starting a  company is not easy and sometimes it is maddening.  I have once or twice thought about the day when I could work for someone else with less stress, more structure and about the same level of daily work.  I wouldn’t do it but I think about it because just the thought makes me work harder at what I do, that is, make other companies successful by developing superior new beverages.  In roughly the last twenty years I learned many things, some useful and some not so much.  What I know for sure is creating and developing new beverages is what I was born to do – success at doing so is just a benefit.  Then I pinch myself.