I’ve been self-employed since 1987 and in “sales” of some sort or other since 1980.
A time-honoured tradition through all those years has been the sleep-interruption – one or two nights before work recommences after the Christmas/New Year break.
For me it was last night.
In bed at a reasonable time after two weeks of R&R.
Wakes at 03:00 in a cold sweat, thinking about the year ahead – the opportunities seem good but (in the dark) the challenges seem bigger than they really are.
Like light refracting through a pond and making a goldfish look like a shark.
The lack of light in the early hours magnifies the roadblocks ahead and I lay there for a couple of hours running a loop in my head of “Oh my God, here we go again, how am I going to pull it off this time?”
Sleep finds me eventually and I wake at 09:30 this morning (the last sleep in) feeling exhausted by the night.
Today is a national holiday and I’ll bet that lots of self-employed business owners will be investing some time in preparation for the year ahead.
The consensus is that we are going to have to work a bit harder for our success in 2011.
Annie reminds me that we had the same conversation a year ago – resulting in my best ever year.
In the same way that a Premier League football team have to “keep winning” – we have to pull all the stops out to stay ahead.
It IS tough at the top – and football teams get to buy new players – you and I have been selected for every game in our league for years now – no footballer could match that!