I love that Anne creates memos titled “On Anne’s Mind”; I’ve started doing the same with my own to-do lists. As evidenced by the partial snapshot of the Urban Pharm Google Drive (image) there is a lot on our shared minds (as an aside, if anyone has intel on a great digital project management platform, please let us know at hello@urban-pharm.com!). Urban Pharm is no different from any other start-up in how much there is to stay on top of, move forward, create, and grow. We have just started a 12-week food entrepreneur business program, and our fantastic and inspiring cohort members are for sure in the same boat. We pack things in wherever and whenever we can. This picture of Anne and me is a screenshot taken during an Urban Pharm meeting from somewhere in the middle of Long Island Sound (Anne en route to an Urban Pharm event) against a backdrop of barking dogs, car alarms, tear-inducing-hungry teenaged sons, and spotty cell service.
What is also evidenced in this picture is the overarching sense of not taking ourselves too seriously while absolutely taking the business seriously. We make no bones about the fact that we are deeply and chaotically human and that the business is a part of our bigger lives; we have doctor’s appointments and weekly walks with friends and grocery shopping to do. We have unfolded laundry and dogs that need walking and important hours dedicated to reading and drumming and watching tv of varying degrees of quality. Anne starts not only her to-do lists but many of our conversations with some version of “what’s on your mind?” to which I am as likely to reply with an update about where we are in the wholesale licensing process as with something vulnerably personal. And we laugh, a lot. Get us together at a farmer’s market, especially a long one, and at some point the can’t-finish-a-sentence-or-uncross-our-legs-because-we-are-laughing-too hard moment will happen. We are grateful for and intentional about keeping both our partnership and our business real, human, roomy, and heart-full. We hope that comes through to you in some way, and invites the same into your everyday.
❤️ Jill