Posted by Raphael on Dec 22, 2009 in My Business Adventures, Personal | 0 comments

Today I find a brief respite in my work. Enough to feel “ok” about just letting things calm down in my mind a bit and just recollect. A friend of mine recently posted “rest and stillness are endangered in our species”.  It definitely gave me food for thought today.

I did reasonably well this month in terms of work accomplished. Just like I said I would I pushed though and got most of my big agenda items done and I’ll hopefully recover from a painfully slow November month. I don’t know why…people just disappeared last month & I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to work either.

My wife has been as reasonably supportive through this, but it’s still emasculating not to have the right amount of cash flow right around the Holiday Season. (I looked up emasculate —  “to remove the testicles of; castrate; geld”). Yeah I’ve felt ball-less both from a business owner perspective and as a breadearner.

Live and learn, I truly believe this is just another part of a business challenge and I’ll get though this hopefully avoiding this kind of situation again next year. Ideally around this time next year I’ll be teaching again so that’s a good safety net.

As a whole 2009 wasn’t too bad. Business certainly wasn’t as healthy as it was in the early 3 years of business, but it was certainly much better than expected. And all of this done in a year where I’ve certainly had a huge life changing experience and now I’ve ended up with a healthy, happy 1 year old boy.

2010? I’m cautiously hopeful. I don’t think I’m in for a huge rebound in our economy anytime soon. At the beginning of 2009 i was hopeful but preparing for the worst”.  Now in 2010, some will say “ok, we’re here at the bottom, how do we build up from here to be better and stronger?”

For my business, I think I have to experiment with other paths. You know what they say, “you can’t do the same thing over and over again and expect different results”. So maybe an expansion into other markets.  Perhaps getting off my arse and actually trying to market some of my photography prints.  Maybe joining other types of networking organizations.

An expansion into another market holds my biggest opportunity. But in this case I have to depend on the help of some family members overseas…which is always wrought with possible complications. However, the opportunities outweigh the challenges assuming it’s viable.

Yup, I’ll grow some bollocks back in 2010 for sure!