How to Adapt to a Stressful Situation

More About Small Business

Everyone is scared of something, right? Well, let me share with you one of the scariest things I ever did. I had this fantastic idea of opening a portable mocktail bar for events here in Utah. I thought this was a great idea since there were already so many soda bars, and it fit the primary group of people in Utah.

I wanted to be unique in some way, besides the fact that there are only two other portable mocktail bars in Utah (that I know of). This meant I had to come up with a niche. I thought how cool it would be if my business made custom drinks for each event.

This would make me stand out so much and was, in my opinion, a great idea! There was one problem, however. I knew nothing about mocktails, let alone how to make up new ones. This put me in a pickle, and I had to think of a solution. One day the answer was right in front of my eyes. My best friend is a genius when it comes to mocktails and especially creating new ones.

This was PERFECT! I proposed the idea to her at the age of 21 we became business owners. It was so scary to take the first step, but we did it!

The First Event...

We were so excited when our first event got booked, but we were also so FREAKING scared! It was merely an idea until someone liked our idea and wanted to hire us. What made it even scarier was the person who booked with us was an influencer and a family friend. This brought so much stress and made me feel like I would do good enough.

To prepare and lessen my stress me and my business partner worked for weeks perfecting our drinks and making her a fantastic signature mocktail. When the day of the event came, we shopped all day, gathering all the supplies we needed to make the drinks. Everything was going great, and we were so prepared!

Of Course, This Had to Happen!

When we arrived at the event, we set all our supplies up and got ready to make the first drink of the evening. When we went to make the drink, we realized we had forgotten the essential ingredient! The sprite... How could we have overlooked the spirit?!?

We had to act cool and say we needed a few more minutes to get ready. One of us ran to the store to buy a few sprites until someone could bring us the ones we had already bought. This was a significant mistake, and of course, it happened at our first event!

A Lesson to Learn

Forgetting the sprite was not the highlight of our evening! However, we were able to learn a great lesson from it. This experience has taught us always to double-check and, if not, triple-check that we grab everything we need.

To enforce this into our business, we have started making spreadsheets and lists of everything we will need. Splitting up the responsibility between us has also made it much easier to ensure nothing is left behind.

Starting up a business is hard and takes lots of learning curves. I shouldn't have expected everything to go smoothly in the first place. You should always plan for something to go wrong and always know what you will do if it does. It is wise to have a plan b, c, d, e, etc. This is because no matter how hard we try, we can't control everything, so it is essential to know what you will do if a situation appears.