Okay, not even done yet.

SO. Just got an e-mail from the Chamber of Commerce asking for the specs of the building so Young Professionals of Wichita may use it for meetings!!! EEE!!! And got an email from a freelance accountant who we plan to hire.

Oh. My. God. You. Guys.

Art & Entertainment & Decor

So, I was wandering around downtown (I'd realized that I was an hour early to a shoot...a little excessive. :) ) and stumbled upon Old Town Architectural Salvage (http://blogs.kansas.com/haveyouheard/2009/11/02/rine-center-for-performing-arts-is-coming-to-former-immanuel-baptist-church-on-south-hillside/), owned by Grant Rine, Janet's (Caffe Moderne) husband. I was absolutely blown away by the place! I also hope to work with A Legacy, Hewitt's Antiques, and many others around the city.

OH. Just got an e-mail from Mainstreet Collectors .com. They ARE able to make the 10 ft bear cub for the top of the building. Whoops, spilled the beans, don't tell anyone. :) I'm asking them to pose it like the bear is trying to swipe up salmon from the sidewalk. Is that descriptive enough? Haha.

The amazing Heidi Cruz will be painting our Russian Writer Religious Icons; I'm so excited for them! She's a spectacular artist and seems to be excited about the idea. I know (clearly) that we will have one of Nabokov, but I'm not sure who else Pip & Nathan want included. I do also know that prints will be available for sale on postcards, shirts, bags, underpants, cat hats (hats...for...you know, cats), &c.

Let's see, anything else? OH YEAH clearly haven't started on the business plan. I'm doing all the super fun publicity stuff. Social media sites are crack cocaine, I swear.

Love bunches,
Kacy

So Far...

Dear Prospective Entrepreneur,

I don't think I can really count the hours of work, but it's felt like 2 hrs and 10 x 2.6 billion hrs at the same time; and that's just us in our planning pants.

It's 1 AM now. I'll be finalizing the business plan and sending it off to the landlord (who is wonderful!) in its semi-final (because you'll learn that nothing is ever said and done) format. Pippin finished the 3D renderings (again, semi-finished) of the interior of the Cafe & Store. Within 10 minutes of putting our facebook fan page up (and me suggesting it to 650 of my closest friends) we had 15 fans.

Have already done all the licensure research necessary to get started. LLC's are easy to form (I was a law librarian for about a year and have annotated all of the Kansas doctrines on it. Did you know that it costs about $20 to sell cigarettes inside your establishment? Or that a day-by-day liquor license is about that per day? I haven't yet seen a reason to hire a lawyer...but I will be hiring someone to do my taxes. Bullins Tax Service at 13th & Zoo will be doing ours and they charge about $200, which isn't shabby at all. We will also be hiring an accountant because I fucking suck at math.

Sent in a letter to the director of the Chamber of Commerce, hoping she'll see that we need city support as much as the city needs ours, you know? I can't believe that we've already got our appointment with the bank (Intrust) on Tuesday at 9 AM. I also can't believe that I'm really hiring my makeup artist (I'm a fashion photographer in my less-practical life) to do my makeup for the meeting, haha. Nerves, man. Nerves.

After this, I'm going to make the application for employment available on facebook through google docs (I created the fan page about 2 hours ago and I've already been bombarded for requests for employment, hah). And then I REALLY WILL finish the business plan, I promise.

Then, of course, I should clean the litter box (I have 4 cats) and pick all my files up off of the floor and find where that pesky poo-stench is coming from (not the litter box, unfortunately). If I'm lucky, I might get to snuggle Pip for about 15 minutes before he leaves for work. SORROW FILLS THE AIRWAVES.

Anyway, Prospective Entrepreneur, make sure you have balls the size of Jupiter before embarking on your quest. Make sure you know a lot of people, make sure you know how to do a little bit of everything, and above all else, make sure you know you want this. Wait, even more than that, make sure you know what you are not good at and be okay with handling that knowledge. Make sure you know how to say "no" to people, make sure you can juggle six billion things at once and make sure not to start smoking if you don't already because I imagine it would be super easy to do.

Let's talk soon?

Love,
Kacy

PS: Here's the facebook fan page in question: http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/Wichita-KS/Kiev-Co/238048616718?ref=mf

PPS: Here's our online application. It's significantly different from any application I've ever seen, which I like, because our business is significantly different from any business I've ever seen.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATm3Y3JQmROxZDR3NTM5NV8wZHczNmg0ZzI&hl=en