Pop the corks, hang the bunting high and hoist the mainsail, it’s my birthday!
Well, not my birthday, dear knows I’ve banged on enough about my recent half century coming of age – at this rate I’ll need to join the ranks of the right royal, and have an official birthday as well as one of your common or garden variety. No, this time the cake and candles are out to celebrate my business baby’s 1st birthday.
Who’d’ve thunk it? A whole year has flown past, and I’m not even on my uppers in enterprise. It’s waaaaaay better than that. I’ve managed to make a few quid, and a lot of new friends. I’ve stayed true to my dream and my principles, landed loads of good work and the future looks bright and beautiful for this wee business burd. It’s good enough to bring a tear to an entrepreneurial glass eye. Tears of joy, and relief.
Making it to the first anniversary of trading is pretty significant for any small business, so too right I am pretty damn smug with myself, but I’m still feeling slightly surprised. It’s simply amazing to have avoided bankruptcy, divorce and nervous breakdown. This small biz shenanigans sure as shit ain’t for the fainthearted. Not when the family’s very financial survival depends on business being in the black, at all times, bar none.
The learning curve still looms large overhead, and the crampons and fingernails are still dug firmly into its sheer slopes. Yup, even after a year, I still feel like a bit of an entrepreneurial Klingon. But I’m definitely moving onwards and upwards with more confidence than I had on the nursery slopes of small business.
The last twelve months have been both exhilarating and enervating. There have been moments when I’ve really thought bugger this for a game of commercial cowboys, but I’ve also whooped and hollered with sheer joie de vivre when minor miracles have come off, and clients have paid on time.
Overall, running my own business is definitely the dog’s. And BTW, the first year hasn’t been nearly as bad as I’d been led to believe. I am living proof to contradict the standard stereotype which says you don’t know what hard work and long hours are really like until you go it alone. Maybe it’s just the nature of live broadcasting, but hand on heart, not one single moment of small biz has been as demanding or soul destroying as my previous incarnation.
Of course, it really helped having a fully formed plan, rock solid determination, self belief in spades, and the means to support my sole trading self for a while after cracking the champagne off the hull of the good ship Word Up and setting sail. I simply had to make this small business work, for myself, and for my family.
So, all things being entrepreneurially equal, it’s full steam ahead for Word Up. It’s certainly not all going to be plain sailing, but I’ll do everything I can to make sure she survives the squalls and stormy seas that will most certainly brew up when we least expect them.
And I’m really, really hoping she doesn’t sink without trace before she reaches her second birthday…
