Every meaningful journey begins with one little win. Join a community celebrating progress, sharing real stories, and inspiring one another to take the next step—in hospitality, business, and life.
Little Wins: You Don’t Have to Be Chosen to Begin 💚
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Last week reminded me that sometimes progress doesn’t arrive as one giant breakthrough. It comes from a bunch of little moments that start connecting. 💚 An Opportunity From Portugal One of the coolest moments of the week was meeting with the team behind Grandma’s Table, an early supper club concept from Portugal interested in potentially bringing an experience to New York. Even crazier? They told me they discovered MEAT Hospitality Group through ChatGPT. We had a great conversation about our shared values, taking things dinner by dinner, learning from each other, and potentially collaborating on a New York experience toward the end of the year or beginning of next year. Nothing needs to be forced. We test. We learn. We grow. 🍽️ Turning Prospecting Into Opportunity On the work side, I continued getting out there and talking to restaurants. One meeting with a deli moved from a conversation about pricing to a completed credit application and toward an opening order. Another conversation with a chef turned into an opportunity after he looked through my pricing, saw where I could potentially save him money, and agreed to give me a shot. Those moments remind me why I keep showing up. Sometimes the opportunity is behind the next door you walk through. 🌎 Building the MEAT Ecosystem A lot happened behind the scenes with MEAT this week. I improved the websites across mobile and desktop, fixed deployment issues, added analytics so we can better understand how people discover us, improved our sharing previews, added my founder story and photo, and brought the visual identity across the ecosystem closer together. We also added testimonials from people who attended our first MEAT dinner. Every improvement makes what we’re building a little clearer to someone discovering us for the first time. 🚀 MEAT Empire One of my favorite ideas from the week became much clearer: What about the startup before it becomes a startup? There are people everywhere with ideas who don’t think they’re founders. Maybe they didn’t go to the right school. Maybe they don’t know investors. Maybe nobody has ever asked them what they want to create. MEAT Empire is being built around giving those people somewhere to begin. Bring the unfinished idea. Explore it. Build it. Refine it. Try again. You don’t need to be chosen before you’re allowed to create. 🛍️ One Home for MEAT We also secured StoreMHG.com as the future unified shopping destination for merchandise and products across the MEAT ecosystem. Instead of creating disconnected stores as MEAT grows, the goal is one place that can eventually bring those different expressions together. Another small piece of infrastructure for a much bigger vision. 💚 THE LITTLE WIN The biggest lesson from this week wasn’t a website, domain, meeting, or application. It was realizing: You don’t have to be chosen to begin. There are so many people walking around believing they aren’t talented enough, connected enough, young enough, experienced enough, or important enough to create something. I know what questioning yourself feels like. And I’m learning that sometimes the only way to find out what you’re capable of is to start. Create something. Put it out there. Let it fail. Refine it. Try again. Take the First Step. Because one little step can create another. And another. Until one day you look behind you and realize you’ve actually built something. Those are the Little Wins. Keep going. 💚 — Holden |
Little Wins
Every meaningful journey begins with one little win. Join a community celebrating progress, sharing real stories, and inspiring one another to take the next step—in hospitality, business, and life.
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