Thank God then (and my sister who bought it for me) for #Girlboss by NastyGal founder Sophia Amoruso (http://www.nastygal.com/) which is kicking my ass through the first few weeks of being the boss of me. I won't spoil her story too much with details but from one girl going out on an Ebay wing and a prayer, to another, she is inspiring me at every page turn.
I'm a single parent, which is a confusing curse and blessing. If I don't make any money I can't rely on another income to pay the bills, which in turn gets me out of bed at 4am to get stuff done and fuels my determination to make my business succeed. One of the many reasons I want to be own #girlboss is so that I can work flexibly to be there for my kids.Another is to stand by the life lessons I am trying to teach them,that you can do anything you want, if you work hard at it.
Three weeks into selling and I've had one good sales week and two of the 'Beans for tea' kind but thanks to Sophia I refuse to be phased. I knew from the start that this was going to be the steepest learning curve since realising babies don't come with a guidebook...and I need to heed her sage wisdom that, " When your goal is to gain experience,perspective and knowledge, failure is no longer a possibility."
She advises that when an item doesn't sell, it's not because of the item ( My mantra is if you don't love it, don't sell it in the first place) but how you've gone about marketing it and I know that that's the hat I'm least comfortable in (though clearly the admin hat needs a jauntier angle too.)
Sewing machine wins over self promotion every time but I 'm going to have to put my fabric away and get busy with my sales pitch. Suggestions welcome.
There are moments of doubt,I'm only human and a stupidly sensitive one at that but I'm learning to tell those niggles to shut the hell up. I've never done most of those jobs before,it would be arrogant to assume I can nail all of them from the off.
I took a rare day off this week to have a huge sort out (before I lost one the children in the piles of stock) & to actually get out the house. Something about driving always lends my brain to serious thought,the kids joke about the conversations we end up having, I find it's a perfect time to enlighten them, as they can't walk away from me...
So I'm musing on how to move forward with the business and trying to silence those asforementioned doubts when I had a problem with my truck and I pulled into Kwikfit in Heanor and the mechanic was a girl. I've been driving 20 years and trust me, I've frequented a lot of garages, but I have never met a female mechanic before, I'm sure she's not the only one but it didn't stop me gushing over her like she was the second coming. Afterwards I wondered if it was conversely sexist to comment on the fact, after all why shouldn't a woman be a mechanic? but whatever the politically correct reaction would have been, I knew she was a sign to ignore the odds and as Sophia puts it ,"Difficult doesn't mean impossible and out of the bajillion things in this universe that you can't control,what you can is how hard you try."
I best crack on then...
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