B.U.S.E (pronounced busy!)

B.uckling U.nder the S.train of E.nterprise

I say this in my most not complainingest voice but man I am busy!! So busy!!! Four exclamation marks busy!!!! A flury of orders has come in a week before I go on holiday and I'm frantically working away trying to get them all made up and ready to be sent out before I go.

I haven't had a big order in a little while so it stands to reason that one would come in as soon as you get the suitcase down from the loft.

Still I am emphatically not moaning or whinging or any of those negatives that we business types must expunge from our vocabularies, because orders are great and I wouldn't be able to do what I do without them. Well I would but it would be very sad and people would pity me in the street.

So this week in between writing up invoices and printing off labels and cursing whatever packaging god decreed that only things smaller than a box of a certain size will fit into that box of a certain size (which is not the right size!) I drifted off into the realms of fantasy and wondered to myself...

...what would I do if millions of orders came in while I was away. Now I know that this probably isn't an actual liklihood but still, in planning for every eventuality this scenario must be considered. As any small business owner out there will be all too painfully aware, when you're not working on your business, your business won't make money.

No holiday pay for you Mr/s Entrepreneur, just two weeks of guilt that you're going away and leaving your business baby to fend for itself whilst you selfishy flounce of to some foreign hot spot.

Even if you have employees there is still, I would imagine, the nagging feeling that only you make the business do the most it can. No-one's going to put as much time and effort into loving your baby as you will. (It's back to that baby analogy I'm afraid!)

So, what to do, what to do...

Well, as JK 'richer than the Queen' Rowling is thoroughly aware, a good way to make a profitable business is to create something that will sell while you sleep. When I attended a business start-up event in Birmingham a couple of years ago one of the speakers talked at length on this idea, and it's an appealing one. Produce a thing that you can market and sell, and put it in places that will continue to sell without you needing to be there and you're onto a winner.

I'll think on it while I'm on the sun lounger.

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