This isn’t “just” a product photo.

This photo makes me so unbelievably happy for what it represents.

It represents years of dreaming and silently wondering, "What if...?" Years of being ridiculed for following my heart and staying true to myself, my values, and my ethics...no matter what. Struggles and hardships you'd think I was making up if I shared them with you.

It represents countless amounts of experimentation...formulating and reformulating...and then reformulating again because I refuse to serve my friends and family anything I make if I don't fully love it with my whole heart.

It represents thousands of hours of creativity - coming up with names...designing logos and labels and deciding on color schemes, then trashing them all and starting over from scratch...then designing all new ones for the next versions that haven't come out yet...designing the website (which still isn't finished)...writing ridiculous amounts of copy for the website (which still isn't finished, just in case I didn't tell you)...designing merch (which still hasn't been ordered)...trying to juggle three social media accounts (which admittedly, I'm not super awesome at right now)...taking hundreds and hundreds of photos, editing them, then deleting them all and starting over...formulating drink ideas in my head based on taste memories in my brain and then chuckling to myself when a drink actually tastes exactly like my brain's tongue said it would.

It represents hours and hours of researching and interviewing suppliers to find the right ones with values and ethics that match mine while ALSO having the ingredients I need...of paying far more for my ingredients and being willing to take a hit on it on my end because the quality and ethics behind my ingredients are everything to me...of figuring out how to create a thriving online retail business from scratch with zero experience but being okay with it because I did exactly that with two restaurants/coffee bars for twenty years and a functional health practice for ten.

It represents waking up at 6:30 to make breakfast for my boys and taking them to school at 7:30, then coming home to work on the project for a couple of hours...then switching gears to take care of my health coaching clients...then squeezing in every available minute I can find to work on the project in between running another business, picking up the boys from school, coaching three youth soccer teams three times a week, helping with homework, trying to maintain a presence on social media (which I haven't been awesome at, in case I didn't tell you), doing all the laundry, the grocery shopping, cooking dinner, washing dishes, taking care of several hundred plants, a huge garden, ten chickens, three ducks, three cats, and two dogs.

It represents wrestling with my kids every night before bed, reading them stories, and laying in bed with them until they fall asleep - then opening my laptop and working on the project until 3...4...5 a.m. before I finally fall asleep for a hot minute and then wake up at 6:30 to do it all over again.

It represents nearly two years of feeling like I'm letting my boys down by not taking them on vacations because I HAD to get this project up and running, and fighting back tears when they tell me, "It's okay, dad...we believe in you".

It represents investing literally every cent I have into launching this business because Astro Botanico represents lessons I want to instill in my boys about falling down and getting back up...about persistence and believing in yourself when it seems like nobody else does...about creating something big from nothing...about dreaming big...about the myriad of ways I intend to contribute to my community and my fellow man as the business grows.

Most of all, this picture represents hope and the promise of a better tomorrow - regardless of how silly anyone thinks that sounds.

And it makes me so unbelievably happy every time I look at it.