My dad has always been my best inspiration and a strong guiding force in my life, even if he didn’t know it. I think what makes him stand out from the crowd is that he has always been very good at understanding how a business works or more importantly understanding people’s attitudes and motives in business. When he told me that above all else being a Sole Trader takes a lot of self-control, this confused me for a long time, that is until now, when I had my light bulb moment.
I made the decision to start working for myself and set out as a Sole Trader with everyone’s advice of having drive, determination, focus (and all those other motivational words) ringing in my ears. The first year I spent vast amounts of time and a considerable amount of money looking at how I could get my business out there and sell my services, and I was pleasantly surprised that after a short time I had a full diary and the jobs.
I took on were everything I wanted to do. Admittedly I had made some blunders along the way, but at the time it felt right and being on the roller-coaster ride at the high point I couldn’t help myself and couldn’t say no.
With the first year under my belt and going into the second, I chose to adopt broadly the same business plan as I had when I started out, a drastic error on my part and this is where the wheels started to fall off. I had managed to get my business name out into the big wide world where I could be found by every marketing and advertising company going.
Checkatrader, Trustatrader, MyBuilder, Bark, Rated People, Yell and so many more all suddenly wanted me … YES ME …. to advertise with them and what’s more, as if by magic sales leads would start to flood in. I received call after call offering advertising deals at rock bottom prices, all the same amazingly reduced price my business would appear in magazines, catalogues and ebooks. The sale person massaged my ego so much that before I knew what I was doing I had signed up to deal after deal.
I had made it !!! My business was a success !!!. Well that’s what I thought…. I hoped …. I silently prayed, but what really happened was my tiny little advert on page 27 was dwarfed by the full colour adverts on pages 1 through to 10 and I received little to no return for my money.
And then my dad’s voice rang that very loud bell in my head, and I felt the fatherly kick up the arse I needed ……SELF CONTROL nipper, self control
…….. ahhhh so that’s what he meant.
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