A Cheeky Update: The Psychology Around Persevering Towards Long Term Goals

I want to talk about progress and the psychology around persevering towards very long term goals.

I posted a Scott Belsky video a few months ago where he spoke about the concept he calls "The Messy Middle”... basically everything that happens between the "more notable" beginning and endings of journeys. He talked about how we find it easier to speak about launches and exits and bankruptcies, because they’re more pithy and digestible and seemingly newsworthy, but the slog and the day to day events are often overlooked.

He noted that entrepreneurs (or anyone working on bringing a dream to life) have to find way to short-circuit the reward system; to feel accomplished when there are no rewards to be had.

I’ve thought about this a lot, and was reflecting on Cheeky Cocktails ’ journey just this morning. I’m admittedly one of the worst culprits when it comes to (not) patting myself on the back for what we’ve accomplished- I want to be ten times farther ten times faster, and am always amazed that it has taken so long to get where we currently are. That said, looking at photos of our “messy middle” feels very rewarding to me, so here are a few notable images of our journey on the manufacturing side, since the beginning almost 7 years ago.

If you’re an entrepreneur needing a self-administered pat on the back, I HIGHLY recommend going back through your photos and doing something similar to what I’ve done here… it really puts things into perspective!

The above images are out of order, so I’ve numbered them for context;)

• PHOTOS 1 & 2- The label maker I made in 2016 when we first started hand-labeling Swig + Swallow bottles. It’s made of scrap wood, part of a tape dispenser, and a cambro lid on the bottom so we could attach it to a cambro set in front of a chair. It worked swimmingly!
• PHOTO 3- First major packaging haul for version 2.0 of Swig + Swallow, in the living room of my Bushwick apartment
• PHOTO 4- First pallet of bottles I ordered and received during lockdown in March of 2020. I worked alone for the first 4+ months of COVID to ensure staff would be safe working at the facility
• PHOTO 5- Shortly after we got our steam kettle up and running (we graduated from 4 gallon pots)
• PHOTO 6- My first (soon to be) electrical wiring job, when I realized our shrink tunnel was shipped to us without a plug
• PHOTO 7- First sample batch of Cheeky mixers, deployed to a bartender's birthday party in Somerville, MA
• PHOTO 8- Random hand-filled Cheeky bottles
• PHOTO 9- Back to 2016 again, when Gates and I completed our juice HACCP training at Cornell
• PHOTO 10- When we first out grew our storage by 7-10 pallets
• PHOTO 11- Back to 2016 again, when we first bought our Zumex that we named “the Overlord,” (the small masticating juicer for ginger was called “Minion”)
• PHOTO 12- Some recent photos of Cheeky pallets in transit
• PHOTOS 13 &14- Our first run on a fully-automated filling line back in spring of 2021?