Hello and good day!
Remember the old saying about the young man who was talking to God?
He was telling God how he had his life all planned out and he knew exactly how everything would unfold. And when God heard that, God laughed right in the young man's face.
That's how it goes, doesn't it?
The human mind is ingenious at projecting lucid visions of the future. When you're lying in bed at night, thinking about your plans, you can see how it all must play out, can't you? You know just what you need to do and who you need to talk to and exactly how the other person who needs to be involved will react, and you can see the chain of events, one after another, leading to the perfect outcome.
You almost can't sleep because you are so excited.
You jump out of bed in the morning and your heart is pumping and you are ready to get after it, just as you imagined you would. You call the person with whom you must speak, and you are certain they'll share your enthusiasm for the vision, just like in your dream.
But when you call, they don't answer.
You forgot that they're on vacation for two weeks and you can't make a move until they get back. Now, day by day, the vision starts to fade away and your enthusiasm wanes to such a low point, that when you finally do get around to talking to the person, there is barely a flicker of excitement left in you.
When you make your pitch, there is little impact, and the goal fades away.
After being a business owner for more than 15 years, I can't tell you how many times the scenario above has played out in my life. Lots of good ideas shipwreck against the corals of disrupted plans.
I don't know precisely when it happened, but at some point, I came to accept that every plan I ever make will be disrupted.
I know it. I expect it. I'm prepared for it. I can handle it emotionally. I know how to persist in the face of it. And therefore, it doesn't kill my goals.
It used to kill every goal. But now it kills few.
The key, I believe, is to do all that you can on a goal every day, even if it is something small. Just do all you can. If there is only ten minutes of work to do, do ten minutes, and then move onto something else. If there is three hours of work, then you do the three hours. You keep dripping on it and dripping on it until the puddle jumps the banks and flows out into the world.
I'm going heavy on metaphors today.
We had the idea for doing nut butters about three months ago. The impetus for nut butters was our search for something delicious that we can ship in hot weather.
Since then, we've been chipping away at it. 11 days ago, I put our chocolate almond butters online. My hope, and plan, was to put the peanut butters and almond butters online the same day.
Unfortunately, our huge order of jars didn't arrive on time. To do all four products at the same time, two milk chocolate nut butters and two dark chocolate nut butters, we needed to have a lot of jars on hand.
We placed our order well in advance. Every day when we checked the status, it said they were coming tomorrow. Finally, we had to accept that maybe they weren't coming tomorrow and find an alternative supplier who could send jars to us on short notice.
That worked as a short-term solution. Our big order still hasn't showed up.
In the meanwhile, we had started doing soft serve ice cream in our retail stores, and one of the brand-new machines we purchased was making a terrible screeching noise. Customers would be in the shop, trying to enjoy their experience, while an out-of-control soft serve machine was squealing away in the background.
We always have on Salsa music in the shop on a speaker and let me tell you something, Salsa music and wild squealing do not go well together. I was so excited for the soft serve and here the machine was malfunctioning. Just in time, our backup machine showed up, and we replaced the squealer.
We figured out the problem with the original machine and now it is working well. Each of our two shops has a soft serve machine, each serving different flavors. It turned out well in the end.
But the whole thing took our attention off launching the new chocolate peanut butters. Thankfully, each day, we made sure to at least have a brief conversation about the peanut butters, just to keep the ball inching forward.
We figured out the jar issue. We have the production line set up.
And we are good to go.
Between straight almond butter and straight peanut butter, I will take peanut butter every day of the week on flavor and texture.
However, for nut butters with chocolate, our dark chocolate almond butter is my favorite product that we make, except for our 68% dark chocolate. So far, almost everybody I have spoken with about the nut butters prefers the 47% milk chocolate almond butter to the dark chocolate almond butter.
I disagree with that, but to each their own.
For my money though, the 47% milk chocolate peanut butter is an unbelievably delicious product. It's the best peanut butter cup you've ever tasted, in a jar.
You could spread it on toast or pancakes. You could dip fruit in it. You could cook with it. One amazing friend and customer is making her morning mochas with the dark chocolate almond butter.
Personally, I eat these nut butters straight out of the jar with a spoon.
Here is how I would think about which nut butter might be right for you.
Think about nut clusters. Do you like a dark chocolate almond or peanut cluster? Do you like a milk chocolate almond or peanut cluster?
One of the highest rated products on our website right now is our milk chocolate peanut clusters. For folks who love that item and are sad we might not be able to ship it to you during the summer, consider the milk chocolate peanut butter.
It will scratch the itch.
And for folks who like a good dark chocolate peanut cluster, consider the dark chocolate peanut butter. It is very delicious, and you can taste the unique flavor notes of our 68% dark chocolate.
As always, it is a proud day for us when we can put a new product online.
We're one of the only companies in the world that buys cacao wet off of cacao trees, pays more than ten times FairTrade premiums to our cacao farm partners, manages all of the post-harvest fermentation of our cacao, owns cacao through the supply chain, manufactures final products, and who doesn't sell through any distributors or retailers.
Our products can only be purchased directly from us and this allows us to use high quality ingredients, keep our prices reasonable, and pay high premiums to our farm partners.
The trick to all this is cutting out middlemen and insisting on having direct relationships with our customers and farm partners.
If you'd like to try out the new chocolate peanut butters, simply click the link below.
And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your continued support.
I hope that you have a truly blessed day!
