Business Is A Tough Gig
Our Fear Of Making Mistakes
I was reading a newsletter, The Story Of Telling, from one of my favourite business women, Bernadette Jiwa. And I was captivated by a comment in her current post. “How often do we make excuses instead of making our mark?”
The avalanche of information that now lands in the Inbox of everyone in business, whether employee, employer, or solepreneur, is overwhelming.
And much of it is contradictory.
We started this business, The Fitz Like A Glove™ Ironing Board Cover And Other Goodies, in 1994. When my partner, Victor Pleshev, and I were completely broke. Losing everything. Our home. Business. Cars. Personal possessions. In Paul Keating’s 1992 ‘recession we had to have’.
Read Our Story. How We Built A Worldwide Business From Broke.
We escaped the city life for the rural life. Because the bush was the only place we could afford to live.
And started a new business in total isolation. From the remote rural property we rented from a farmer in the Central Tablelands of NSW. Australia. Without the internet. Without email. Even without call waiting. How barbaric!
To move forward, we listened to our instincts. And were prepared to make mistakes. As well as learn from them. And we grew in spite of them.
Because we had no option. We had to take action. Regardless of how imperfect.
Or stay broke.
The internet changed all that. Today everyone who has an opinion, now has a platform to espouse that opinion.
And much of that opinion discourages people from simply ‘having a go’.
‘Having a go’. That wonderful Australian vernacular!
People live in fear of making mistakes. And the consequences those mistakes may have on them if they work in an organisation.
Or the consequences they may have if they work for themselves.
What if I send those emails? And no one responds?
So they don’t charge ahead to make their mark.
We forget we didn’t just stand up and start running one day. We had to learn to stand up. Fall down. Start walking. Trip over. Fall down. Get up. Start again. Try to run. Fall on our face. Get up. Start again. Until we perfected standing up. Walking. Running.
And never once did we tell our baby brains that this isn’t working out. I’m going to stop trying to stand up. Walk. And run.
It’s time to stop fretting. And start doing. And learn - to learn again.
I’ve grown my business by 38% in the last 6 months, by not being an expert in promotions, publicity, social media, cold emailing. Or that horror of all horrors. Cold calling.
By all accounts, I am a hack. I’ll never win awards for what I do to move my business forward. But I so believe that if I wait until everything is perfect, I’ll wind up being broke again.
And I’ve been rewarded by people responding to my cold emails. Cold calls. To my newsletters. To my blog posts.
Fear is the universal condition. Most people live with it every day. Get used to it. And when you feel the fear. Confront it. It will take you out of your comfort zone. And take you to places you never thought possible.
I started with no customers. And today. I have 400,000 customers. In 30 countries. With no retail distribution. For the Fitz Like A Glove™ Ironing Board Cover. This is a low tech. Humble ironing board cover. In a non-sexy target market. For a chore that most people hate doing.
I am also known as the ‘Queen Of Hard Yakka’. Because that’s what it takes to get me to where I am today.
What can you do, right this minute, to confront your fear of making mistakes, that will move you one step forward?
~Carol Jones, Ironing Diva❤
Life Behind The Scenes With The Ironing Diva are my stories about how my partner, Victor Pleshev, and I created a new life out of the ashes of Australia’s ‘recession we had to have’. How did we design 8 products? And get them to market? How did we build a worldwide business from broke? How did we carve out a rural lifestyle that is the envy of our friends? And our customers? How did we create a beautiful hectare of garden out of a barren paddock sitting atop an infertile rock shelf? It wasn’t easy. But this is the business and the lifestyle that we built from scratch. The Fitz Like A Glove™ Ironing Board Cover And Other Goodies.
