Thinking Like Ace

Last night in my hotel room I got caught up watching Ace of Cakes on the Food Network. I don't know if you've ever seen it but it's probably one of my favorite shows and I highly recommend it if you enjoy watching shows about food (trust me - it's not your typical cooking show).

For those who may not have seen the series - it's about a cake shop called Charm City Cakes based in Baltimore MD that specializes in really off the wall celebration/wedding cakes. The type of stuff they make is probably more a feat of engineering as opposed to baking and always ends up looking phenominal. The staff is really a bunch of characters many of whom would probably not do well in any other work setting but thrive in the environment at Charm City Cakes and they're a blast to watch.

So how does this relate to entrepreneurship? Well it got me thinking about how the owner - Duff - always looks like he's having fun. Even when things go wrong - and they sometimes do - he never seems to get completely down about it and rather just approaches it with a "well, let's fix it and move on" mentality and that's what he and the staff does. Now granted, I know they also take a week's worth of footage and melt it down to one 30 minute show so there quite possibly is a lot that I'm missing but the sense is that the owner is having fun and, subsequently, so is the staff.

I think somewhere in the past couple of months I've forgotten the "have fun" aspect of entrepreneurship. Yes, it's very stressful to be working to build the company and knowing that any money you make this year is strictly based on what the company earns (and doesn't get thrown back into the company coffers) - but at the basis I started this company because I truly believed two things 1. there was a market opportunity for this type of product and 2. I thought I could do it better then most and have fun doing it. I still do believe those two things but somehow the "fun" aspect has fallen by the wayside.

So what I need to do over the next few days is reprioritize my short and long term goals and incorporate fun back into the business. Because if I'm not having fun then I may as well go work for someone else and get paid!