The Test - and a leap of faith.

[zoborg]

Since I joined forces with my wife's "hobbie" business selling vintage and retro homeware a year back to scale it to give us the platform to decide how we wanted to work - we have learnt a hell of a lot, had to face hurdle after hurdle all of the time trying to balance growing the business, keeping our relationship and being a good parent to 2 kids under 5.

Our turnover (and in most cases profit) has grown almost month on month, however often as not we have re-invested the majority of profit back into the business to grow some more. Its been pretty damn scary, trying to find enough cash to pay the bills each month but thus far we have managed.

Recently we hit even more hurdles, hitting the UK tax VAT limit (and because of how we trade it is in effect a tax on our turnover not our profit) - we have always worked from home but that has become almost unworkable (cannot concentrate when kids come home, no divide between work/home so we end up not being great as parents or in a business).

So recently we took a leap of faith and rented a premises, its more than we really can afford and to add to it we also have taken on another member of staff (as we have reached our own limit)... It's scary, real scary and we had to make these decisions based on more than what we could afford (and have a leap in faith)....

And of course as we have taken on these extra costs, we have are having a really *bad* month of sales, 30% down so far on last month (we blame it on the great weather in the UK)....

But it all feels like a test - with the space to really think (the new premises) we are giving ourselves the best opportunity to push to the next level and this is consolidated by finding a really capable pair of hands (we were not looking for someone to join us but someone brilliant ended up being available and we made a role for them).

We are no committed and can only push ahead - to do or die but now it feels scarier, more real than anytime before... its a educated gamble on us to push ahead but this month's bad sales just has knocked my confidence...

I'm not even totally sure why I am writing this - perhaps to just get the fear written down and perhaps hear others who have gone through it...

 

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[Steele Concept]

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