I loved this email I got (at 4 a.m. this morning!) from one of my favorite customers, J. It’s excerpted below:
I have been following your blog and I have to tell you, I think you are great! You are such a frequent blogger and your topics are interesting and insightful. I respect your humanness and business success… I am curious as a fellow business woman. We are very small and are struggling because we are wearing a million hats and have inadequate space to formulate, not to mention the lack of funds to hire anyone or get a bigger space.
Her frusterations sounds like a typical start-up. Her business sounds a lot like ours and I suspect, like most small businesses. There’s never enough money or space or staff to get everything done – at least not without struggling and flailing. The reality is that life is hugely messy and busy all the time. Everyone’s lives are complex with lots going on. Mine is no exception.
The reality is that we’re all little ducks, paddling like crazy to stay afloat. Up above the water, it looks like we’re calm, placid and have not a care in the world. But underneath the water, we’re paddling away like mad to just stay afloat.
Bramble Berry is just as time-challenged and resource deficient as the next company. When we won Best Small Business of the Year for Whatcom County, I just laughed and laughed because if we’re supposedly the example of what a great company is… well, we certainly don’t feel like we’ve got it together; our company is constantly struggling and striving to do better.
So, J, take heart because even though Bramble Berry/I look good on paper, the reality is messy, chaotic. If you ever visited, you’d just find normal people, working really hard, to do a good job and have a business with integrity … and hopefully some profits left over in the end.
