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QaR
January 2009 
Small Business is like this...
Posted on Dec 11th, 2007
by 
Meghan
Meghan
It's 3:00 am...and I'm awake. Why? I'm not really sure, but I think my heart has something to say, so it's taking my body out of bed for a bit and I'll simply let it lead me where it will...
The city is quiet now...with only the occasional street noise wafting up through my window. It sounds like it could be raining as the street noise is "slushy" - I'll check later.
So why am I awake? I'm thinking about shingles...and torn tendons and broken legs and...and...and "what ifs"...The "what ifs" that keep a lot of small business folks up at night, I'm sure. I know I'm pretty typical when it comes to starting a business...all the little things that keep us up at night. A couple of conversations I had over the last few days has started this avalanche of "what ifs"...mainly about health care....and lack of it. One of our employees is a single mother of one very bright and talented little 9 year old, who just last week was diagnosed with shingles...I always thought that was "an old persons disease" ---and I guess that it's much more prominent in someone much older, but it seems to be brought on by chicken pox and stress as well...and though rare, can be seen in someone as young as 9. Of course we don't offer health insurance for the company---just can't afford it...hell, I haven't had health insurance since I started OGM 5 years ago. Of course, I consider myself very fortunate to have a kickass immune system and have always been healthy so far...and I'm all about preventative measures rather then reactive consequences...but still, I know that if something were to happen to me...the company wouldn't make it at this fragile stage...and then there's the responsibility of our employees and their families who depend on us to survive. Sometimes, I swear, given the odds against the survival of small businesses, I wonder how any of us get to be the size of IBM, of Dell, of Ford...I mean, taxes are a bitch, our profits are squeezed from all sides, the government gives us little guys NO breaks that I've seen - EVERYTHING I have is in this business...and we survive by shear will and our customers...that is, of those who survive. We've just passed our 5 year anniversary, and even in a very down year for our industry, we still managed to grow a nice healthy percentage and our prospects are brighter than ever before...so why am I up at 3:00 am?
It's probably this picture that keeps coming to mind as I lay awake these last hours...I think it quite adequately represents what it feels like to run a small business in this environment. I actually took this snap a couple of weeks ago, as I was driving from San Diego up to Seattle for a boatshow. I decided to get off the 5 for a bit to see a little more scenery...and it was amazingly wonderful to get off the drudgery of the interstate. The road was winding, hilly, filled with new sights around every turn...*I'm starting to see the similarities of this drive and entrepreneurship here*...So I was careening along on this drive (me, the jeep, my demo boat with our LED lights, and Navees, my navigating fish)...and a map of the US for the macro view of where I'm headed...and my instincts...and some divine energy. There we were, all jeepin through the mountains on 36 from Red Bluffs toward Eureka...enjoying this amazing ride. Then I decided to stop for gas at this tiny little place with one old REALLY OLD gas pump. I could only afford $10 since that's all the cash I had and they didn't take credit cards. It gave me 1/2 tank, and the lady said it's about a 2 hour drive to the coast, so I felt sure I was good to go...off we went. Further and further up into the mountains we jeeped...the road got progressively curvy, steep and picturesque. The old growth trees were majestic along the cliffs and boulders and valleys so green, the earth so rich and dark...the colors so vibrant it took my breath away. Of course, it was also late afternoon and the sunlight was astounding. But then the weather started to change, the fog rolled in, the rains began, the cliffs below seemed to fill in with nothingness, showing only the tips of trees once towering high overhead. The road was still windy, but now the scene had a little more tension attached to it...the stakes were higher, I had more to lose if I didn't choose well, didn't make the right turns, didn't anticipate what lay ahead.
That's when I really noticed the lack of guardrails...NO GUARDRAILS on a mountain top. Yeah, I know...if I'm going over, odds are a little bit of aluminum banding isn't going to stop me from freefalling to form a little red jeep smudge at the bottom, but I think at that point, it was the mental safety net that I needed. As the sun began to set, the weather worsen, the road get progressively more windy and slippery (think PeeWee Herman's Large Marge scene here)...the fear began to creep in with the fog. But ironically, at the very same time as I was gripping the steering wheel hoping I would stay on the road for the next winding turn and not meet another truck head on, I noticed how ABSOLUTELY AMAZING THIS SCENE WAS BEFORE ME!! Here I was in totally uncharted territory (for me), tears of fear streaming down my cheeks, and being in absolute AWE of this place and my time in it. I can't fully describe the full sensation of all the raw emotions at the top of this mountain...but the picture above may give a glimpse of the moment as I found my shear strength of will to keep going...I realized then that there was no turning back...I could only make my way forward to whatever conclusion there was. I had to keep focused, and simply take it slowly, feel the road, and make my way on.
I'll have to finish this later...but yeah, this is what my heart is telling me...showing me the parallels of running a small business to driving through the mountain's passages in a foggy, rainy unpredictable and sometimes hazardous path...and yeah, it is raining outside in this early morning's city nightscape. How appropos.
The city is quiet now...with only the occasional street noise wafting up through my window. It sounds like it could be raining as the street noise is "slushy" - I'll check later.
So why am I awake? I'm thinking about shingles...and torn tendons and broken legs and...and...and "what ifs"...The "what ifs" that keep a lot of small business folks up at night, I'm sure. I know I'm pretty typical when it comes to starting a business...all the little things that keep us up at night. A couple of conversations I had over the last few days has started this avalanche of "what ifs"...mainly about health care....and lack of it. One of our employees is a single mother of one very bright and talented little 9 year old, who just last week was diagnosed with shingles...I always thought that was "an old persons disease" ---and I guess that it's much more prominent in someone much older, but it seems to be brought on by chicken pox and stress as well...and though rare, can be seen in someone as young as 9. Of course we don't offer health insurance for the company---just can't afford it...hell, I haven't had health insurance since I started OGM 5 years ago. Of course, I consider myself very fortunate to have a kickass immune system and have always been healthy so far...and I'm all about preventative measures rather then reactive consequences...but still, I know that if something were to happen to me...the company wouldn't make it at this fragile stage...and then there's the responsibility of our employees and their families who depend on us to survive. Sometimes, I swear, given the odds against the survival of small businesses, I wonder how any of us get to be the size of IBM, of Dell, of Ford...I mean, taxes are a bitch, our profits are squeezed from all sides, the government gives us little guys NO breaks that I've seen - EVERYTHING I have is in this business...and we survive by shear will and our customers...that is, of those who survive. We've just passed our 5 year anniversary, and even in a very down year for our industry, we still managed to grow a nice healthy percentage and our prospects are brighter than ever before...so why am I up at 3:00 am?
It's probably this picture that keeps coming to mind as I lay awake these last hours...I think it quite adequately represents what it feels like to run a small business in this environment. I actually took this snap a couple of weeks ago, as I was driving from San Diego up to Seattle for a boatshow. I decided to get off the 5 for a bit to see a little more scenery...and it was amazingly wonderful to get off the drudgery of the interstate. The road was winding, hilly, filled with new sights around every turn...*I'm starting to see the similarities of this drive and entrepreneurship here*...So I was careening along on this drive (me, the jeep, my demo boat with our LED lights, and Navees, my navigating fish)...and a map of the US for the macro view of where I'm headed...and my instincts...and some divine energy. There we were, all jeepin through the mountains on 36 from Red Bluffs toward Eureka...enjoying this amazing ride. Then I decided to stop for gas at this tiny little place with one old REALLY OLD gas pump. I could only afford $10 since that's all the cash I had and they didn't take credit cards. It gave me 1/2 tank, and the lady said it's about a 2 hour drive to the coast, so I felt sure I was good to go...off we went. Further and further up into the mountains we jeeped...the road got progressively curvy, steep and picturesque. The old growth trees were majestic along the cliffs and boulders and valleys so green, the earth so rich and dark...the colors so vibrant it took my breath away. Of course, it was also late afternoon and the sunlight was astounding. But then the weather started to change, the fog rolled in, the rains began, the cliffs below seemed to fill in with nothingness, showing only the tips of trees once towering high overhead. The road was still windy, but now the scene had a little more tension attached to it...the stakes were higher, I had more to lose if I didn't choose well, didn't make the right turns, didn't anticipate what lay ahead.
That's when I really noticed the lack of guardrails...NO GUARDRAILS on a mountain top. Yeah, I know...if I'm going over, odds are a little bit of aluminum banding isn't going to stop me from freefalling to form a little red jeep smudge at the bottom, but I think at that point, it was the mental safety net that I needed. As the sun began to set, the weather worsen, the road get progressively more windy and slippery (think PeeWee Herman's Large Marge scene here)...the fear began to creep in with the fog. But ironically, at the very same time as I was gripping the steering wheel hoping I would stay on the road for the next winding turn and not meet another truck head on, I noticed how ABSOLUTELY AMAZING THIS SCENE WAS BEFORE ME!! Here I was in totally uncharted territory (for me), tears of fear streaming down my cheeks, and being in absolute AWE of this place and my time in it. I can't fully describe the full sensation of all the raw emotions at the top of this mountain...but the picture above may give a glimpse of the moment as I found my shear strength of will to keep going...I realized then that there was no turning back...I could only make my way forward to whatever conclusion there was. I had to keep focused, and simply take it slowly, feel the road, and make my way on.
I'll have to finish this later...but yeah, this is what my heart is telling me...showing me the parallels of running a small business to driving through the mountain's passages in a foggy, rainy unpredictable and sometimes hazardous path...and yeah, it is raining outside in this early morning's city nightscape. How appropos.
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