A comment I made in a recent post deserves a little more room to breath.
"We have entrepeneurs in Ireland too, only we call them chancers"
Will be revisitied in later post about Irish attitiudes to "sole traders" as the tax man calls us.
Fate! my arse!
Normally I would slap somone who would try to use language in an attempt to ascribe all sorts of idiocies to even more ludicrous entities. I shall however indulge my looney bone for a moment (My therapist says I should branch out). There is a book called, "First you have to row a little boat" and if you can get past the schmaltz (token american sounding slangy word for our readers across the pond) it's a good read about life being like sailing. I know , I know, but you'll just have to trust me on this one cause the Author's got some gems.
His thrust is that all the real fights we have are with ourselves. He says that all of lifes major battles are the internal ones. I'm not afraid of the market place, the product not selling, the competition, the banks, (ok I am afraid of herself but thats for another post) what I am afraid of is me. Me not being disciplined enough, and no this isnt a trip, I'm a genuinely lazy bastard.
My brother (remember him from such info-mercials as Fear, Mr President, Fear... and Caring, sensitive, emotionally atuned millenium man ) well he reckons its because I never got a handle on delayed gratification, never knew how to finish something and reward myself later. I was always cute and political enough to get the goodies upfront (Ask herself :-) and maybe he has a point.
And heres the bite, same day I was watching TV, (see I told you I was lazy) and some programme had another latin phrase, this one went.."Vincit Qui Vincit"... and means
"He conquers all, who conquers himself"
They'd cut you to the bone those feckin Romans.
Size matters, oh yes it does.
I used to think it was Fear but the closer I get to E-Day (Entrepeneur Day) I find that my most hated emotion is FRUSTRATION. Let me just put down this bottle of Tequila and I'll explain.
I have courted a guy who has a seriously kicking brand, he's on the up, lots of TV and press and I made some seriously clever moves to get a meeting with him. Nothing under hand or salesy, just straight talk. And I got the meeting.
I spent an hour with him and got him all fired up (look just ignore the sexual language and overtones ok, but he did smell good!) and at the end, he agreed to the first of a series of pieces of business and amazingly he never mentioned cost. Tom Peters would love me, I got him so enthused and on side about what we could do, he didnt care about cost and just appreciated that he had to have this service.
But I couldnt leave it alone. AGGHGGGAHGHAGHG!
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
Fear, Mr President, Fear...
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.
Admittedly the whole week wasn’t like this, there was that 45 minute period last Monday. I got some business and the buzz lasted oh all of 45 minutes, during which I sat back watched an episode of West Wing had a bite to eat, and generally congratulated myself for being such a great- what is it the Americans say? -"Entrepeneur". That’s me I thought, I'm an entrepeneur, this must be what Wired and Fast Company talk about all the time. The buzz and thrill of the win.
Lo and behold 45 minutes later, once the episode was over, there was the fear again.
Shit, I thought, now I actually have to deliver the work I've won, and according to the business books I need to be turning them into customers for life, I need to be upselling, I need to be maximising value. I turned the TV back on and cued up the next episode of West Wing, hmmm, I thought, now lets see what President Bartlett has to say on the issue of stakeholder value.
