“You weren’t kidding,” I said.
“Nope,” she said, blushing.
“All right, well let’s get started. What’s your first question?”
We spent the next two hours talking over the questions that she had written down. I could see that some of her questions came simply from feeling overwhelmed, but a lot of them were very insightful, and showed that she had put a lot of thought into what she wanted to do with this business. I could see how passionate she was about making it work, and I respected her even more for that.
“Wow, thank you so much,” she said after we had finished the last question.
“It’s absolutely my pleasure,” I said. “So this was helpful for you?”
“Oh my goodness, yes,” she said. “So helpful. I feel so much better than I did.”
“Good,” I said. “You have some good ideas there, and you have some very natural instincts about this, so I know you’re going to do just fine.”
“Thank you,” she said, her face lighting up. “That means a lot to me coming from you, because you obviously know what you’re doing. You’re really good at this!”
I laughed. “Well, thank you,” I said. “I should be good at it since it’s what I’ve been doing for over a decade.”
“How did you get into this line of work? Or is this something you always wanted to do?”
“Actually, I feel like I just got so lucky,” I said. “I went to school to study business. That was all that I knew I wanted to do, and then once I graduated from Santa Barbara I went to USC to get my MBA. I didn’t want to live in LA full-time, because I really don’t care for the city that much. I’m pretty spoiled by our little town. So I arranged my classes where I only had to be on campus two days a week, and I was able to live here with my parents.”
“It’s great that it could work out like that,” she said.
“I know. I was really thankful. Well, while I was at USC I got an internship with a development firm that was mostly interested in developing the area all the way from Santa Barbara up the coast to Monterey.
Living here was great for them because I had my own house and I knew the area. After the internship was over, they offered me a full-time job, and I’ve been with them ever since.”
“And now you run a development firm, that’s pretty impressive. I love your story. It's great that it worked out so well for you.” Brenna said.
I could see that she was genuinely happy for me.
“Every once in a while I think about how it all unfolded and I am just so thankful,” I said.
“You should probably give yourself some credit,” she said. “It’s not like they would’ve handled it over to you if you weren’t good at what you do.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
Brenna laughed, and I looked down at the pages of notes that she had been making.
“So, now that you have everything written out there, what is the first thing that you are going to take action on?” I asked.
“I feel like the first thing I need to do is decide exactly what theme I’m going for. Because every other decision I make is going to come from that, right?”
I nodded.
“Yep. Because once that’s done, then you know what you need to do to get there. The great news is that you aren’t starting from scratch. This place was operating just until about six months ago, and so it’s not going to take much to get it going again.
In fact, if you didn’t want to change any of the decor, you would just need to do a good cleaning, get the permits, hire the staff, and you could open in a couple of weeks. But since you’re going to make it your own, and then have a grand re-opening, it’s going to take a bit more time. But once you have the theme you’ll be amazed at how quickly it all comes together.”
“Should I just start looking online? Or are there specific places I should look to decide what I’m going for? What do you suggest?”
I glanced at my watch and realized that I had time to take her to the perfect place to help her get some inspiration.
“I have an idea,” I said. “How do you feel about taking a little field trip?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
