On this Sunday morning , I sit with the coolness of December on my ears and nose, watching my breath float away as I exhale. The creek's flow echoes off towering , warm sunlit cliffs that hold in the magic of this place. I am on day 2 of the annual Aravaipa Wilderness December fall colors trip that I think about on the hot days of summer as if it will never come. I count the days down already to next year's excursion. The calmness I feel here is where I developed my passion and direction of Arizona Wilderness Brewing Co., and it still lingers in the air. Back home in the basin of the sun, our little company had a trying, somewhat difficult week. Nothing out of the norm, merely the ebbs and flows of business that keeps entrepreneurs up thinking at 3 am. The ebbs seem to be great at times, but we will push through them. The great news is my window cleaning days are officially behind me. The scary news: I have no income! The leap of faith left a company I started 6.5 years ago as a 24 year old knocking on doors and providing a service based on ethics and trust. Wow, I look back with a blissful eye. Moving on from that business isn't the safe route by any means. I am being led by my own dangerous (at times) passion , which seems to dictate my life at all angles. Taming it has been a learning experience, but as I sit here, chilly, full of warm oatmeal, and grinning from ear to ear, I am realizing that in my third month of being 30 I am more tame than ever. I understand how to excite people and light the torch that we all carry. Admittedly, I didn't understand the details of this business as much as I should have. Sure, we planned for a difficult road to opening a brewing company, and did everything we could to get it all right. The truth: We lacked wisdom. Wisdom isn't free and it usually comes from the worst moments, dangerously teetering along the tightrope of bad decisions. Documents sitting in front of us , aren't simply words dancing. They are your business, holding legal authority over anything related to passionate motions that mean well. The details have bogged us down, and we learned some valuable lessons these past few months. Patience, patience, patience, hard freaking work, along with the smartest people I know as our business advisers will get us through this to opening day. I have drug some people through the mud of my dream, and I hope they all know that I will always be indebted to them for believing. Believing when there is no progress for weeks and wondering if money will ever be made...EVER. I don't, and never will, take this lightly, and it has consumed me more than I could have ever predicted.
A quick up date: The city of Gilbert's planning committee is reviewing our project as we speak. This meeting is to approve the construction project of AZWBC, hopefully in December. We have made it so freaking far, and just a few more hurdles to opening our doors.
I'll quit rambling and go wade in the creek again for morning photography session to clear my mind.
Jonathan
