This weekend sees the second anniversary of Make Me A Plan’s first trade.

The anniversary traditionally represented by cotton, even my fondness for dubious puns and tangential discourse couldn’t legitimately stretch to a blog themed around cotton (maybe third time lucky next year).

Instead, I’ve compiled some mantras for making the most of whatever mission you may be contemplating.

Happy Planning

Dream big & live medium

When I began to think about creating a new business, I knew I had a finite amount of time to get going with a minimum viable product (I was still working full-time and commuting a long way each day at this point). I also knew I had a finite amount of money (my salary was above average for Cornwall but the savings I had squirrelled away to use as start-up capital wouldn’t last forever).

Things you know and things you dream are quite different though (imagine if they were identical, you’d never want to go to bed again).

So, the business vision that I created was based around how I wanted to treat people, what I liked doing, the kind of brand and legacy I wanted to create and how I wanted my life to be. Then I set about finding a way to fund it.

Living medium, by the way, means watching your pennies pretty much constantly as you reinvest all proceeds and some back into the business in the first couple of years. In the spirit of staying acquainted with your original life goals for being your own boss, it also means taking the self-care view that using some time and money to do things like experience holidays isn’t something that can always come subsidiary to funding business endeavours.

Pace yourself, don’t race yourself

On the subject of not forgetting the reason why you said cheerio to the same amount of money ending up in your bank account every month…when you’re an owner-entrepreneur, it’s incredibly easy to feel like you ought to work that extra hour, day, weekend to develop business ventures. (PS Never actually refer to yourself as an owner-entrepreneur, unless your tongue is firmly in your cheek).

It will abjectly and painfully feel like doing a few more hours might creep you over the line to fame and fortune. It won’t. It will make you tired, weepy, crabby, unproductive and angry at yourself, and you are the most crucial component to business success.

Have mettle

As you’re probably gathering by now, I have a pretty fervent belief in speculating to accumulate, taking on challenges and overcoming barriers.

I’ve invested most of the money I do have, and then some money I didn’t have, in the business infrastructure, brand capital and resourcing.

This is absolutely not shared to seek your virtual high fives for what a heroine I am, but I cannot underline in a chubbier marker pen or a larger font how much mettle you will need if you go down the business strategy route of investing upfront to expand and develop the brand early on (rather than staying small and slowly saving up cash).

Many of the tips I’ve shared on these pages, with clients and on Make Me A Plan’s social media are techniques you can learn. Mettle is something you already have, but will need to rely on and keep in your firm grasp in your first couple of years of trading.

Sphere not

Having a sphere of reference outside whatever your business’s current greatest challenge is at the moment really helps during those times you are keen to prevent your noggin from becoming particularly pickled.

For example, if I’m feeling disgruntled or cheesed off at what I perceive to be slow progress (ie it’s not done now), I’ll cast my mind back to a situation where it took a similar amount of hours, days, weeks, months to achieve what I wanted to achieve.

Take Only Positives

I’ve always wanted to be genuine and credible in what I do with the business. So in this blog, I’ve talked about some of the things that are hard rather more than the benefits of working for yourself. This is to share what I believe to be the scaffolding for the soul a fledgling businessperson needs, not to depress you or put you off.

Amongst the mistakes, errors of judgement, failures, financial fears, and cringeworthy moments, the feeling of adventure, courage, achievement, progress and having that dream of yours validated in small doses or bigger chunks prevails with a smile and a clear mind over any temporary fug of fear.

Thank you to Holly, Aria, Mike, Tamsin and Danielle, clients to date and clients to come for being part of the ride so far and here’s to a tremendous third year.

Our core theme blogs and daily social media updates will be focusing on socially distant teamwork and self-care during curious times – and keep your eyes peeled for some more very special invitational guest bloggers gracing these pages very soon.

Next fortnight, I’ll be musing On Stoicism. Please get in touch with any particular aspects of this topic you’d like me to write about.

In the meantime,

Happy Planning