June 5th. in June Writing Challenge

ah! hi! so it's official, i didn't get the stupid loan because stupid underwriters and stupid rules and so now i'm going to have to dig out of my stupid hole the old-fashioned way. wait, did i just say i'm going to have to dig out of my stupid hole?

so you know. i'm just going to have WORK harder and make MORE money and just stop whining about it.

so that actually brings me to a topic i 'teased'a few days ago. it's called *'lighting a big fat match under my goddamn ass to dig out of my my big stupid hole.' * now that my friends, is frame-worthy.

ever since liana and i started this business situation three years ago (april 14, 2011, to be exact) work has just COME to us. people called or emailed, asked for proposals, we wrote them, we won some, we lost some and we worked on the ones we won. end of story. but there were always ebbs and flows and rather than getting proactive during the ebbs (slow times) we always just kind of worry-warted around waiting for the next thing to COME to us. which worked ok, and we made our goal salaries and continued to run a business and all was pretty good. but then we brought in another partner to run the other half of our business, and she is a whip-smart firecracker that originates from England and has a very credible (real) British accent and loves to fill the pipeline with new business so that she is NEVER not busy and her big goal in life is to MAKE LOTS OF MONIES. and because she is always so busy, she hired an employee about 7 months ago, and then liana and i decided that we, too, wanted an employee, so we hired one about 2 months ago. so now we have real live employees that need monthly salaries. so we can't really EBB anymore. we must always FLOW.

MUCH PIPELINE. SO BUSY. WOW. PLZ. SO CONCERN.

at the beginning of may, partner 3 (jenny) challenged liana and i to reach out to AT LEAST two contacts per week to drum up new leads. old ones, new ones, ones we haven't talked to in a bit. ones that may or may not have any direct relations to what we do but might know someone who does. ones we may not even know (cold call!) but seem like they might be a good fit etc. and so on.

UGH. i'm not good at this "new business procurement" thing. i liked it better when the work just showed up. but that was before worker's comp and payroll and health insurance and so on. also, isn't it time we all got out of the weeds and did more 'high level' thinking ? i mean, isn't it? mo' money, mo' problems, yes, but mo' employees, less 'shit work - amirite?

anyway, ever since jenny threw out the challenge i've basically BUSTED through my comfort wall and have started conversations all over the place with a wide variety of old and new contacts and even created some real leads that have led to proposals. no solid sell-throughs as of yet, but i'm now starting to feel comfortable with the idea of selling ourselves, and it's awesome flexing a new muscle, even if it's not super comfortable for me. yet.

(PS - I'm actually winning the 'challenge' so there's that. but has it translated to $$ yet, no……)

so it's a new chapter in our company's development, and hopefully all of this skirt-chasing will result in lots of money for our company which will ultimately trickle down (up?) to liana and i so we can get back to our comfortable salary range while STILL supporting to full-time employees. also maybe someday we will figure out a mutually beneficial way to combine the two sides of our company (jenny basically runs one side and profits from that, and we run the other side and profit from that. her side is much more profitable, so we're playing catch-up). then i can just roll around in the money that we collectively make. but we're not there yet.

and, really, at the end of the day, i'm still nervous about bills, and giant mortgages and making ends meet and being able to afford a nice daycare and pre-school situation for joaquin, which means i either have to "give up" on this dream and look into going back to some of the soul-suckers i used to work for in big Corporate America (which is totally fine, don't get me wrong, but it's not 'the dream'), OR I can power through the challenges and struggles i am having so that one day, i can tell joaquin that the gigantic business his mama owns and operates, the one that maybe he can take over when/ if he wants to someday --- *almost *WASN'T… BUT! his mama never gave up. AND SO HE SHOULD NEVER GIVE UP ON HIS DREAMZ EITHER.

but, of course, if i don't make enough money to pay the billz and we lose the house and he has to go to daycare on skid row, this might all be a different 'life lesson' i'll be teaching him.

so, now i'll be off to find some more victims to contact/harass/strongarm into buying our services. SELL!!! SELL! SELL!!!