Business Changes in Days of My Destiny

Life is falling into place quite nicely here now. I think a new routine of some sort is almost established by now.

I have officially joined my husband in the business now, as administration officer. My job is to check for job leads online everyday and make initial contact with the ones that would be good for L to do. By now I have a fair idea of which jobs he’d be willing to travel further for - if I’m unsure I just ask. I also check our emails, send invoices (along with surveys for now to chart our progress) and perform bank reconciliations daily. Each week I check our inventory (such as business cards, magnets, paper and envelope supplies etc) and post one or two things on our facebook page. I am enjoying this role. Usually it only takes about an hour and a half of my time. Yesterday was a particularly busy day and I ended up sitting at the computer for 4 and a half hours!!! We’d received a statement from one of our suppliers so I had to go through that and check that we had all the invoices, which we didn’t, so then I followed up and made sure I had them. I also had to call the Head Office of one of our customers because we’ve been told two different payment terms by the same guy at two different points in time!!!!! So I rang HO and got that clarified. Turns out HO had none of our invoices!!! So they asked me to send them all through, along with statements so they can get organized on their end. The payment terms slightly worse than we’d been originally told, which L is unhappy about, but I’m just happy that we know the go now. L was so mad, he was wanting to increase his hourly rate by heaps. I told him we have to be careful because on the one hand, yes, it’s only reasonably to increase the rate if we have to wait even longer to get paid than we’d originally been told, but on the other hand, if you increase it too much then we could lose the customer and that’s not what we want either because so far they’ve been pretty good to us in terms of supplying work! He’d also wanted to speak with the guy he’d been dealing with regarding the actual payment terms, and the way he was talking, it sounded like he wanted to rev him or something! I said, “You can’t go in with this sort of attitude, babe, you need to keep your professional standing and integrity. If you start with this attitude now, then in ten years’ time you’re just going to be another Simon.” (That’s his boss from his old job before we moved interstate. He was an angry prick lol.) He said, “Yeah..... you’re right.... you’re right....”

He is SOOOOO happy and relieved that I’ve decided to officially come on board. So happy in fact that last Friday night he went downstairs to “lock up” and when he came back upstairs, he was holding a bottle of my favourite wine in his hand!!! And he said, “This is for you. To say thank you for coming on board. It means so much to me.” Awwwwwww!!!! It melted my heart!!!!! I was so happy that my decision has meant so much to him. I cheekily told him he’s the best boss ever (because of the wine lol) and told him he can acknowledge my efforts EVERY Friday night, hahahaha.

I think that last week he was impressed with my knowledge and ability to really do this. He’s been a bit lost with all of it and he took a lot longer to work some things out on our system, for example. Whereas I’m a pretty quick learner when it comes to this stuff so I got it straight away and it really impressed him. This week he pretty well left me to it and I can see he has this new confidence about him, knowing that he has someone on board that knows what they’re doing. Of course it’s even better that that person is also his wife! :) He also listens to my ideas, knowing he can trust my decisions. I really really like seeing this!!!! It has spilled to other areas of our life, too, which is a relief. For example this morning I told him that I really don’t actually want to finish this course I’d started earlier this year. I told him that I naiively went into it, assuming it was all about A when really it’s all about B. When I mentioned this a few months ago (before freezing my studies for the big move), he kept telling me that it was up to me, but that he thought that I might as well finish seeing as the course has already been paid for. (It cost $1500 and if I quit then I don’t get a full refund, I’d get $1000 back). But this morning he was just listening and UNDERSTANDING!!!!! Oh my goodness!! What a difference it makes to be able to tell him my thoughts without him wearing his judgment glasses!!!!!!!!! I told him my life is a lot busier here, a lot busier, and I just don’t have the time to do it and my heart’s just not in it anyway. We are thinking of putting Little L into kindy for a third day. If this happens, I’m not interested in spending that day studying this course.
I just loved seeing him completely accept my thoughts AT FACE VALUE.

I think what’s happened is that for a few years now, he has been the sole income earner and ALSO the one overseeing our finances. So of course he’s got that upper hand by default because of the level of responsibility he’s had to look after us all. And I think that somewhere along the line, he must’ve forgotten that I am well and truly capable to still make decent decisions. And it wasn’t until the other week that I told him, “I am level-headed and capable and smart and I make sound decisions!” that he realised he’d lost that knowledge about me in some way over the recent years. (I had to remind him that I paid my first car off in 2 years instead of the proposed 8 years! I gave him some other examples just to state my case..... I felt that it was something I really needed to do.)

Yesterday when I was on the phone to our customer HO, she asked me if we send statements. I stammered a bit then because in my head I was quickly trying to figure out what they were lol, and then as soon as I remembered I was like, “Uhhhh… yes. Yes we can do that. We DO do that…” and then I sort of laughed and said, “Sorry, you’ll have to bear with me here, we’ve only been open for business for two months so we’re still finding our feet with it all.” She was understanding lol. At least now I know - YES, of course we send statements and YES, I know how to do that off our system!!!!! Yay!!! It was a little bit complicated at first because they have two branches we’ve done work for and so I was tying to figure out what was the best way to send the invoices and statements and so on.

On Monday we will send out letters to the customers that have been somewhat regular already, just to let them know that I am officially on board now. We will let them know that we are excited about this and that while L will still be their main point of contact, they may hear from me regarding the things I’m in charge of now. I’ve also thanked them in the letter for their support in the early days of the business and let them know that it hasn’t gone unnoticed. It’s very exciting :) We’ve only been open for two months (tomorrow) and it feels like it’s been six months!! Which is a REALLY good thing because it shows how busy we’ve been and how far we’ve come already!!!