Even more important to your business than the sticky logo on the side of your van, or the super-slick website, or the latest pair of must-have snippy scissors, is the person who makes it all happen. No, that’s not your bank manager, or your mate who pushes the odd beer at you to keep you sane. We are again talking about you, and your journey from a cute, vulnerable little acorn to a gnarled and majestic oak tree.
We are great people, and we have talent and friends and even rakish good looks. On the flipside we also have a few flaws that we know about. We might be a bit vain or a bit shy, or we might be great with numbers, but poor with written work. There is no need to be magnificently talented in all things businessy, because that would be a ridiculous aim and far too high a target for us to reach. Instead it’s fine to be just good enough. That will see us through most things, and if we need particular skills, such as finance, then we can buy them in when required.
One skill to have and to hone is to be aware of the stage that we are currently in on our journey from fed-up wage slave to enthusiastic selfer. People often don’t talk about the pain and fear of being your own boss. They munch their petits fours, boast about their success and never once mention the tough times that they rode through to get to this particular party.
Take Daedalus for example, one of the very first selfers, who set up his own inventing business several thousand years ago in Ancient Greece, when the internet was just a twinkle in the Gods’ eyes and reality television was not even a sketch on Galileo’s laptop. Daedalus was a bright spark, and had he lived today he would have been a computing genius of substantial fortune, complete with thick glasses and an inability to talk to girls.
One of his first projects was to construct a wooden cow for the Queen of Athens, a sparky young woman called Pasiphae. At the meeting to commission the project, Daedalus was careful to understand the nature of the contract he was being offered.
‘So then, ma’am, let me see if I have listened closely enough. You want me to make a life-size wooden cow, so that you can hide in it and get royally pleasured by that enormous steaming bull which Poseidon sent you as a late birthday present?’
‘That’s right, Daedalus.’
‘That enormous white bull, with the enormous ...’
‘Yes, Daedalus. I wish to show my appreciation.’
‘Hmm ... I see, ma’am. Wouldn’t it just be easier to post him a thank-you letter?’
The cow was built, and before Pasiphae could say ‘bovine’ she was pregnant with what would eventually become the Minotaur, the mad half-man half-bull creature who was a bugger to look after when he was in nappies. Daedalus even constructed a labyrinth for him, to keep him out of mischief, after he had butted a succession of well-meaning, but ultimately useless nannies. Then the great Daedalus, inventor and builder of cows, came unstuck when Pasiphae asked him to assist the hero Theseus to escape the labyrinth, after he had bravely slaughtered her dangerous mutant offspring.
Daedalus, who was never one to resist a challenge, thought about it and duly obliged by handing Theseus a long strong thread, which he could use to retrace his steps back to the beginning. The ball-of-string approach worked and Theseus lopped off the Minotaur’s head, before successfully navigating his way back to the entrance and the gift shop.
Unfortunately for Daedalus, Theseus helped himself to the King’s daughter on the way out, instead of a cuddly Minotaur key-ring. On hearing of the drama, Minos, the King, flew into a terrible rage and called for revenge. He was too late to catch Theseus, but seeing the ball of string by the entrance he realized that only one man could have invented such a fiendishly clever machine, and locked Daedalus and his son in the labyrinth. They were left to die, with neither hope nor string.
After this turn of events most people would have realized their inventing business was getting out of hand, but not Daedy. He immediately invented a set of feathery wings and escaped the labyrinth by flying away. The only problem was that his son, Icarus, flew too close to the sun, the wax holding the plumage on his wings melted and he plunged to his death, leaving a distraught Daedalus to complete a bulky health and safety report and to fund a massive jump in his professional indemnity insurance premium.
And the point of this particular Greek tragedy is this: working for yourself is an adventure. Like all adventures it has a start and a middle and at some point an end. Where you are in your adventure is up to you, but all adventures have one thing in common. They come in stages, and each stage has its own distinctive feel.
Transition influences our behaviour and lurks in the background watching over us. We all transition through life, from gurgling baby through to wobbly geriatric, and being in business is no different. When we first venture forth on our own we go back to the beginning and start over from scratch. We have to transit from cosy employment to frosty self-employment, and then we have to transit through the foundation and growth of our business.
You might be a legal eagle with a beaky nose and fancy feathers, or a gardener with the world’s biggest dibber, but when you walk away from the cosy confines of employment and start off as a one-man band, then no matter who you were, you ping straight back to the beginning. You have no idea whether you have the capability or stamina to make a fair fist of it, but you will be brimming with bravado and will relish telling your ex-boss that he can go and shove his appraisal up his backside and park it next to his brain.
All people go through periods of transition in their lives, whether it is from married without kids and a life, to married with kids and no life. Our hair goes from soft and fuzzy, through pubescent spikes and colours, to middleaged greying respectability and finally to soft and fuzzy again. The same is true of people working for themselves, and knowing which period of transition we are in can save us from a fate worse than Daedalus.
It’s also helpful to realize that it’s perfectly normal to have fluctuations in our emotions, and that on some days we will stare out into the grey cold rain and wonder why we are doing this. On other days we will cartwheel up the garden path, shedding our clothes as we go and spend the rest of the day making mad passionate love to our partner. After all, everyone needs a cherry on their cake sometimes.
There are five basic stages of transition which people work through between leaving their old job and becoming happy and secure working for themselves. The fifth stage can be as dangerous as the first three, and the trick is to stay in stage four. For fun we will call our transitional model (see below) The Height Chart, and you can see where you fit in. The age is the age of your business, if you were wondering whether you need a squirt of growth hormone to power you through the stages.
You can be in different stages in different situations. For example, you can be a baby when it comes to finance and at the same time be a teenager when it comes to sales. If you take a knock you may slip back a stage, or if you reflect on your experience you might go forwards, perhaps into middle age. Working through each stage is part of the adventure that we all take when we decide to leave the bastards behind. The following descriptions will help you to decide where you are.
Babies are born full of energy and hope, which can be the way that we all start out. This stage may only last a moment, but that flash of future promise will sow the seed that germinates into a sunflower of an idea, poking out of the top of our heads. Babies don’t tend to experience fear, as their world is full of smiling people, who either play with them or stick a big wet nipple in their mouth. Life doesn’t get any better really.
Clearly being a baby has its fun element. However, staying a baby is not going to help us launch our business, so we need to put the nipples away and get on with making our legs earn their keep. We need to start walking.
In practice this means going out and talking to people, researching the market and assembling our financial information. This is the toddler stage. Many people seem to stay in the toddler stage for several months, until they stumble into success or the money runs out or they bump into a regular job and give it all up. Toddlers tend to get nervous and hold on to the sides of tables and chairs to stop themselves falling over. We can do the same with our business, but at some time we have to let go and get on with the gritty stuff, which for most people is selling.
Once we have learned to walk a bit we find that life isn’t too bad and we start to enjoy it. Business picks up and our forecasts might even be not such bad guesses after all. Flowers bloom and little songbirds cheep happily on the windowsill of our happiness.
Then it all changes, dark clouds blot out the sun and the birds fly away to hide. We have met the teenage stage, when life is suddenly full of pubescent angst and uncertainty.
Nobody understands us and we hang around street corners trying to look moodily cool, dressed in odd clothes with our hair sprayed with sticky sugar-water and back-combed into the shape of a chicken. We demand to paint our office black, to match our mood and we become an overnight expert in that teenage speciality of sulking.
Lots of people get to a point in the start-up period of their business, usually after their first couple of sales knocks, when they wonder what it’s all about. Their confidence takes a tumble and they look gloomily at the flash kit they have purchased and wonder if it will ever be used. Will it end up as an expensive white elephant, they ask themselves?
Some people give up at this point.
It’s OK to experience doubts and to take a two-minute holiday to remind yourself why you started on the journey. The teenage period will pass if you keep going, and although you may enter middle age with chest hair and cellulite, the arrival will be worth the effort.
At the middle-age stage people will have had the rough edges of their skills polished smooth, and will be in that place where enthusiasm and success are balanced with the fear of losing it. Fear is good. It keeps us in check and stops us sliding into complacency, like a wildebeest on a helterskelter run by a group of hungry fairground crocodiles.
Stay balanced and business could be good. A bit of fear will prod us into making sales trips to keep exploring new opportunities. Fear will help us to be cautious about future budgets, and will nudge us into continuously developing our products and services. Middle age is the place to be, and you can stay in the middle-age stage for as long as you like.
However, if you spend more than six months without meeting a potential new customer, or refining your products, or smartening up your skinny minute, or dusting the stock in your shop, then you have moved past middle age and have slipped quietly and uncomplainingly into the old codger stage.
This is the flipside of the teenage stage, where you glide serenely through your day and marvel at how clever you’ve been. You may even tut-tut sympathetically when hearing of the demise of a contemporary, and mutter that if only they’d been as clever as you they might still be in business.
Watch out. If you’re in the land of slippers, cardigans and buttery toffees, then you’re just a slow walk away from a weebag and a winding-up order. Plenty of people have gone phut and faded away during an afternoon tea break, when the world is engrossed in dunking digestive biscuits.
Not all businesses grow every month or every year. Some periods may be slow, and at times you may even wonder whether you are going backwards. However, if you have continued to meet potential customers, there is always hope out there. You can paddle out of the way of the crocodiles and can make it back into the paradoxical safety of the middle-age stage. The paradox is that more fear means more motivation, although too much fear can paralyse you into inaction. Too little can seduce you into cosy afternoon chat shows on the television and the hidden dangers of lacing Battenberg cake with dry sherry.
Think about where you are now on the height chart, and check your guess with the last person you kissed today. Remind yourself what it means to be in this particular stage, and if you disagree with your stage-checker, go with them and ignore your own guess. Then put a note into your diary and recheck where you are in a fortnight.
On the model each stage has a suggested timescale attached to it as a rough guide. Some people may linger in a stage, others may lollop through it. Some selfers can stay middle-aged for many years and continue to grow their business, others may get a blue rinse and a face lift the day after the day after their first sale.
Before turning to your personal planning kit, read the following descriptions and ask yourself whether you have said anything similar. What we say out loud is a good indication of what’s milling around in the dusty depths of our brain, unless you happen to be in marketing, in which case your little brain will be sitting on the next bar stool, in a gold lamé suit, sipping a martini. He’s happy there. Leave him alone with his olive. For the rest of us, read and think.
Baby. I have just been born and everything is full of promise and hope. I am cute and lovable and people will give me a chance to be myself for a change, and will love me for my skills and not for being ‘the manager’. I have some talent that I wish to sell to people, and I need to learn some new skills quick. The world is full of sun. Going to work seems like a treat and not a chore. I say to myself, ‘Why didn’t I do this before?’ and ‘Wow, nice nipples!’
Toddler. I am so clever because I have been in business for a while and have started to make contacts and spend some money. It’s all very exciting and I just love going to ‘work’ each day. I’ve met some interesting people and I’m sure they will all buy from me. I still need a guiding hand and I am grateful for the support. The world is sunny and breezy, and I say to myself: ‘Why did I listen to those who said it would be tough? I found it easy. Maybe they’re just not as good as me.’ Teenager. I’m so fed up. Everyone hates me and I hate them. Especially those people who keep telling me what to do. What do they know about anything? I’m in a mess and I feel like painting my office black and going for a sulk. I have spent more than I budgeted for and nobody seems to understand what I am offering them. I hate them all. Working for yourself seems so thankless and it’s taken over my life. All my forecasts are wrong and I drag myself off to networking meetings, which are getting on my nerves. And I’ve got spots. The world is full of fog and sleet and I wish I’d listened to those people who said, ‘Don’t do it, you’ll soon get a proper job.’
Middle Ager. I am tired and happy. I have good days and I have down days, but on all days I smile and remind myself that I have successfully left the bastards behind. I have continued to slog round my network and it has finally started to pay off. My income is supporting the household budget and my business is sustainable. My forecasts have been revised and I’m now much more cautious when it comes to spending money. The world is full of sun, with a few grey clouds scudding about. If it looks like rain I carry my umbrella. I tell others that ‘You can do it too, if you really want to.’
Old Codger. I am warm and comfortable. My slippers are snug. There is great television on after lunch and then I have a corporate snooze. I have had all my clients for the last five years and stopped learning new things a long time ago. My income has fallen, but I don’t need to do any networking as my reputation alone is enough to bring people to me. The sun is setting gently in the west and I don’t see the hungry wolves approaching from the east. I lecture others and ask, ‘Why do you need to keep investing money in new things?’
The place to be on the Height Chart is middle age, and most people only get there once they have worked through the preceding stages. If you’re tempted to try and skip the baby, toddler and teenager stages, be careful. These stages bring with it the experience that helps to keep you in middle age, and that stops you snoozing your way incautiously into old codgerdom.
Feelings also keep you in middle age. The elation of success tempered by the fear of losing it all if you don’t keep on developing and refining, monitoring and checking. It’s OK to have feelings and it’s OK to get pissed off sometimes.
If you’re a dry old oak tree and immune to feelings, then watch out when the next hurricane hits, because it can push you over in a blink and 200 years of gentle growth can come crashing down in an instant. Majesty becomes matchsticks.
Going through a process of transition is generally tough. It can seem easy to look at the Height Chart and laugh at the moves from baby through toddler and teenager to middle age, but the reality can be harsh. People often don’t know where they are today, they only know where they were yesterday, with the benefit of hindsight, so check in with your supporters club from time to time. Ask them where they think you are, and don’t take offence when they tell you that they are sitting in front of a grumpy teenager, or a wide-eyed baby with more hope than common sense.
When I started out I was definitely a baby, gurgling and cooing at every new twist of setting up my business. Choosing a name, designing business cards and messing with a logo were exciting and refreshing. For once I was sitting in my own chair, doing what I wanted to do, with no real appreciation of the toil that stretched out in front of me.
When you go from a salary to nothing there are still bills to be paid, and there are still people around you who worry on your behalf. In my head I knew I was doing the right thing, but to some of those watching me I was caught in the passion of my project and closed to their worries and their concerns. I had a nipple stuck in my mouth and I didn’t appear to be letting go.
Transition is necessary in order to be successful, and it is inescapable. Knowing where you are on the height chart is a useful litmus test of your current state of mind. We all have a mix of fear and enthusiasm, and making sure they are in tension is a good way to stay safe and sane during the hard slog of self-employment. Too much fear and we do nothing, or make hasty decisions. Too much enthusiasm and we do too much, but still make hasty decisions.
Celebrate being you, and laugh at yourself when you find you are currently sulking like a grumpy teenager, or slumped in your armchair watching Celebrity Orgasm on television, when you should be plodding through your accounts.
I had to take the nipple out of my mouth and get on with it. Now I’m a happy middle ager, although I have slipped and skidded through all the stages on the way to getting there, and have the scars to prove it. Business is an adventure, and it pays to know whether you are a tiny little acorn or a mighty sprawling oak. Staying in middle age is about staying supple, and that requires a mix of emotions. It’s OK to have emotions and it’s OK to acknowledge them. It’s all part of the mix that we encounter when we leave the bastards behind.
Another part of the mix is the cash we have in our business, because that powers our future and keeps us safe in the present. However before we talk about that, we shall pause for a moment to recharge our batteries and have some fun with a spot of playtime.
Yippee, let’s go and splash in puddles, or sneak off behind the bike sheds for a crafty fag!