It all started with a dream about a diner…
I recently lost my Mom on January 18, 2016. Since her passing, I have had a repetitive dream. The dream involved my Mom and I opening a business. In the dream my Mom was convincing me to open a diner, she would say to me, “Chandarose, you could do this”… as we would be looking around the diner and watching the customers eat pies and drink coffee. I would reply, “Mom, I can’t do this, I don’t know how to cook for all of these people”, and again, my Mom would say, “Chandarose, you can do this.” After the third time I dreamed the same dream, I knew my Mom was trying to tell me something, but a diner??????
I pondered frequently the next few months about my dream, not sure what exactly I was even considering by opening a business, and what business for that matter. It was on a long drive home from a fishing trip by my brother that I had an epiphany. I was traveling through Northeast Wisconsin, on Hwy 45. This two lane highway is spotted with small town after small town and long stretches of farmland in between. As I traveled through each small town, they all had a similar appearance. Their Main streets were all small businesses; coffee shops, specialty shops, trinket shops, thrift shops, diners, restaurants, and if there was a chain store it seemed awkwardly out of place. One shop in particular caught my eye, it was a pasty shop. I didn’t feel like it was anything special, nothing fancy, just a little shop off Main Street with a simple sign that read “Pasty Shop”. I really can’t tell you why this triggered my epiphany, but I know a memory I cherish with my Mom is making pasties. About a month before she passed away, we made pasties together. It was a day when we were “Mom and daughter”, and she was doing what she did best, being Mom. As I drove by the little Pasty Shop, my memory of that day came flooding through my thoughts, and that is when I said out loud, “a pottery shop”. A pottery shop it was…. and the next few months I was on the search for a home for my little pottery shop, finding Main St. in Omro, WI as a perfect spot.
Launching a Paint Your Own Pottery Shop definitely has its positives and negatives. I have made new friends, and Omro has welcomed me with open arms. I have blown my start up budget not anticipating all the “extras” upon the already considered “extras” of a start up business. I have realized marketing is an “all the time thing”, and that if I am going to use my cell # for my business, I shouldn’t hang up on people assuming they are telemarketers (btw….very sorry, whoever called me a few weeks back (if you weren’t a telemarketer), I was getting several telemarketers calling me, and I think you may have been a potential customer and hung up on you without realizing as the caller ID said “unknown”). With all the ups and downs, I truly have found people are excited about an art shop in Omro and enjoy art as much as I do.
So, yes, my little paint your own pottery shop did in fact start with a dream about a diner. How bizarre, right? My Mom was trying to tell me something….all I had to do was listen. I find myself talking to my Mom now and again, and can picture her giggling at some quirky mishap, as I laugh at myself, too. I hear her say, “Chandarose, you can do this….”
