Well I never claimed to be the brighest of sparks and to be honest some things take a while to sink in. I am reminded of several occasions in my life when my deeply ingrained synaptic pathways prevented me from seeing what was blindingly obvious to others. My initial fears about setting out on my own were quickly replaced by a fear fueled motivation and drive not to mention the pressure of a bunch of new business from pretty much day one. And yes I know all the adages about working smart not hard; about being productive and not just busy and I have rattled them all off to others with great aplomb in my time. But I was ill prepared for the fact that I would actually be the greatest hinderance to this being successful.
It kinda happened in a flash as a friend (also a start up junkie) was describing an issue with one of his early hires. What became apparent early on was that said 'manager' hadn't a clue what the employee did. Well thats not eaxctly right, he knew what she did but he (the manager) could not have done it himself. Instinctively I was about to go off on one of my preachy, sermonising rants about a good manager knowing every aspect of the business when suddenly something deep in the receesses of my tweeny brain flickered just long enough for me to bite my tongue.
I remebered how I always marvelled at his ability to delegate, his ease with managing other people and suddenly I realised that he didnt know how to do any of their jobs. He barely understood the technical nature of what they did and yet he was able to run a successful startup. Anyone who has played that game Jenga will be familiar with the feeling just before the tower of wooden blocks collapses, they seem to teeter in slow motion for an eternity and then cascade all over the table.
My friend looked at me in dismay as yet another edifice of presumptions collapsed in my head. You see, I knew how to do practically every step of every job in my own startup. Having faithfully documented the process of getting and delivering business, I had identified nine steps and I realised that I could do each of these steps. And as I compared our respective approaches to manageing a business I realised how this apparent benefit had in fact turned out to be the greatest curse.
The fact that I can do all nine steps invovled in my business means that I invariably do. Its easier to just do it myself than to build a process and delegate it to others so I end up doing at least six out of the nine jobs. The problem however is that I'm so busy doing the work, that I haven't time to do the business (if that makes sense). I'm not just filling the gaps, I am permanently involved in every step of the process with every customer and rapidly realising that this cannot work if I'm to grow this business. If my customer numbers doubled tomorrow, I'd be in serious trouble.
Subject: Dear Employee
Get out of your own way. Stop being a control freak. As long as you continue to be centre of the company, it will never grow beyond you. Relinquish control and start to delegate to others.
Bryan also says that science is not about a noble open search for truth, infact its actually a bunch of people looking for proof of what they reckon they already know. The great thing about this is that I dont really know where it will go and to be honest I don't think anyone who starts a business really does, we have an idea and we look for proof that we're already right. I've said this before and I'll say it again, I'm a skeptic about any book or author that tries to account for their success with a recepie. The uncertainty is wonderful, who knows whether these anecdotal evidence and impressions will actually amount to anything, but isnt that the beauty of it, who knows what will happen.
But then I thought, hang on, how many steps am I from the end customer, how far am I from the guy who writes the check. Me to the MD, the MD to his account exec, the account exec to his opposite number in the client company, the client exec to his boss who probably has to clear spend with the client CFO. 
His thrust is that
Just before he left, I said, listen, cost wise we're looking at approximately X. Yes you guessed it. The X I mentioned was paltry and he practically laughed and in that moment I completely devalued all I had said. I remeber my brother telling me once that its not what you can do that matters, its what people think you can do. Following our phone and email conversation, this custmore thought I was big cheese, I talked big cheese, I walked big cheese and then I squeaked like a little mouse. eeeee, eeeee... eeeeeee.... eeeee.......e
More importantly though was the daily ritual of deciphering Mr Moynihans accent. Imagine a man who pronounced the word 'yellow' as 'yullah' and now have him teach you latin. Oh the joy. Had we been beamed back to Rome and said a word in Moynihans accent, we would no doubt have been the first christians in Roman history, thrown to the lions for maligning the language. But, and theres always a but (title of an upcoming post no doubt), 20 years after forgetting most of my latin allow me to dazzle you with a phrase that beautifully sums up my approach to this blog indeed to any other site blog or book that would pretend to offer you some recepie for entrepeneurial success. Wait for it....
Fear, my brother re-assures me is the greatest motivator, its also the one that stops you sleeping, eating, having sex and generally enjoying anything. Isn't there a chineese saying that a man who has a toothache cannot be in love. I sat in a restaurant last night with herself, and tried my damnest to keep focused, to listen to the details of the week but my brain kept drifiting away to how many clients I have, how many more I need, where they’ll come from, when they’ll come and what they’ll look like. A man who wants to start a business cannot be attentive. As if I really needed to be any more self absorbed.
Well there I was, wanting to start the discussion about going solo and I suddenly thought, why could'nt I be the caring sensitive emotionally atuned millenium man and ask herself what it is she needs for me to go solo. I had given much consideration to my own pavolovian, emotional and psychological needs (I had surmised that in order to start a business I needed, a dressing gown, a full fridge, a computer, a TV, oh yeah and a credit card with a paypal account to hide the money from the Tax people.) 
And now in three weeks time, all that will not be provided by someone else, it will have to come from you. Things like meeting the Tax people and get yourself properly set up and registered are not really worrying you, the business development side of things is not really worrying you, in fact the financial side of things is not really worrying you either, as you have a 6 month cushion of savings should the worse happen.