I ended my working week this week picking things up off one desk and putting them down on another desk, muttering, ‘I really need to put you away’.
Ha! They’re still there.
If you’re like many business folk I’ve spoken to in the past few weeks, then your first month and a half have gone off like a frog in a sock. Brutal Pixie is no different; as of 15 Feb we’d almost hit our stretch sales target for the month. And it’s why I’ve reverted to the traditional picture of a business owner: Doing the work during the day, and everything else (like finances and project admin) at night or on weekends.
But that’s no reason to slow anything down. It’s one of the key challenges I’d faced in previous years, and in previous businesses. That is, a tendency to slow down on the sales when the work is going gangbusters.
This, my friend, is the precise reason for quiet months. There’s never an excuse to slow down on your sales activity. If you can’t do the work right now, book it forwards or bring in people to help.
I attribute a lot of the success of this year to the fact that I decided to let go of the idea of scale. Turnaround times have dropped, quality has improved, and my own sense of fear has gone away.
Don’t get me wrong; working with amazing content creators is always fantastic. But there is always a fear that someone is going to drop the ball. Or that one of their other projects will get in the way; that they’ll forget; that they’ll get sick; that they’ll go on leave and forget to say anything.
When you outsource anything, you can’t control the work. If you do control the work, then you have employees. And if they’re employees, then boy-howdy do you have some backpay to sort out with them, and some explaining to do at the ATO.
And so it is, that I’m working inside a bit of a flurry until I book myself out to an appointment to sort my shit out - which is really the only way it’s going to happen.
Oh, and in the meantime? The ghost of a joint venture has risen above the horizon. It’ll be interesting to see where that wave takes things!
Now, before I let you go, I have two more things to say to you:
Can you believe it’s already 20 weeks since I started this ‘next five years’ experiment? Almost half a year through our sixth year. Wow.
I’ve been having a stupid amount of fun with my Daily Email List, writing educational stories for people while drawing on such inspiration as my sister’s new Mustang. Seriously, it’s great fun; join in by adding yourself at https://send.zingry.com/h/i/F4FBAB60E003B318
Oh, by the way. If you’re in Adelaide, and you’re heading out to Fringe Festival shows, drop me a note to let me know where best to go spend all my hard-earned over the next week! Pixies work hard, but they play hard, too. ;)
Until next week, may all your days be filled with magic.
cheers,
Leticia
Queen Pixie at Brutal Pixie