Pushing through
Well, as you may know, after signing the lease on the storefront last week I suffered an acute case of the nerves and was feeling very anxious and inert about it all. I had been scribbling ideas and to-do lists on scraps of paper for days and was too anxious to even gather them up and compile them. On Sunday I realized that -- despite JED's enthusiastic support -- I had to ignore him a bit because I was interpreting that support as pressure. He wants me to have it all done yesterday. And I realized the only way this was going to work for me was to allow myself to take baby steps. Giving myself that permission lifted some of the anxiety I was feeling and helped me get in action yesterday. So far I have accomplished
So, at the moment I am feeling fairly energized and optimistic. I fully expect to be riding an emotional roller coaster however. This project is both so exciting and so scary that all it takes is someone sharing a strong opinion about it one way or another to send me careening up or down. I think the only thing that will help me stabilize emotionally is giving myself permission to fail. It has to be okay for me to make abysmal mistakes. And I am so not skilled at allowing myself room to fail, fall, breathe...
Now I'm off to design an interim home-made biz card to hand out tonight and find a new lj icon for posts about the store ...
- designed a web-based marketing survey to both help get the word out and collect feedback from the community [I actually designed this last week but did the final proof read and tweaking yesterday.]
- distributed that survey via e-mail to about 30 local folks I know personally and 2 small local list serves. [Since sending it yesterday afternoon 42 people have already taken the survey!!] And I received half a dozen or so e-mail messages of encouragement -- many from people I've never met. Also some great ideas for products and marketing. Of course it's the one snarky comment I received on a survey [the surveys are anonymous] that keeps echoing in my head ... JED gave me good advice though. He said that some folks are going to love what I am doing, some are going to be on the fence and some are going to dismiss it with no interest. He said that I need to ignore the last category of folks and that my job is to reach out to the middle category. I think that is a great way to look at it.
- sent a few inquiries to companies about carrying their wares
- filled out the necessary state paperwork
- applied for a town business license
- applied to join my town's Business Association. Their monthly meeting is tonight and I will go to network and announce the store. I am excited and nervous. More excited than nervous though.
So, at the moment I am feeling fairly energized and optimistic. I fully expect to be riding an emotional roller coaster however. This project is both so exciting and so scary that all it takes is someone sharing a strong opinion about it one way or another to send me careening up or down. I think the only thing that will help me stabilize emotionally is giving myself permission to fail. It has to be okay for me to make abysmal mistakes. And I am so not skilled at allowing myself room to fail, fall, breathe...
Now I'm off to design an interim home-made biz card to hand out tonight and find a new lj icon for posts about the store ...