Fail to Plan? Then Plan to Fail!

Most of us have heard those words at some point in our lives “Fail to plan, then plan to fail”, and this is never more true, than when starting your own business.

Starting my own business is a completely new chapter in my life. A time where I have decided to take the plunge and do a complete 180 and change career. I have had a 10 year long career in the legal field, which is strict, regimented and based on fact, so to make the shift into business ownership, much less in the beauty products industry, where creativity is a must is a little bit daunting. I keep saying that I have no experience in this area & that I need to learn from others who have been in the game for years. I shall bow at their temple of knowledge and soak up any tidbits of information. How wrong I have been. I have been running a business of my own for at least the last 9 years, minimum, without even realising it.

See I am a mum to two cheeky boys, and their social calendar is better than mine, so if I don’t plan and manage their schedule properly, alongside my own, then the whole house falls apart.

From the time my eldest was born 9 years ago, what I learnt was that if you don’t pack the baby bag / school bag, or hang out the uniforms, or sort the lunches out of any other necessity the night before, you then spend the next day in a dishevelled panic and mess, not knowing where you are supposed to be and when. If you don’t plan the day out like a drill sergeant, then its easy to miss a payment or permission slip for a trip or photo, or miss an assembly, or heaven forbid send your child into school in uniform on non-uniform day. So for me, I make lists, sometimes I even put times by my mum tasks.

I am a stickler for organisation and planning, and this is key when starting your own business. If the planning has not been meticulous, and all the right ground work undertaken, whether that be regulations, insurance, qualifications, staffing, etc then what else can your business do but drive you crazy & feel like a burden & most likely fail?

If you do not take the time in the beginning to research what your business needs & lay out all the correct groundwork, then you will end up launching your business & instead of just concentrating on trying to run a successful business, you will get caught up also trying to complete forms, and lots of other "boring" but neccessary things that should have been done at the start, pre-launch.

So, whenever I feel like putting off the all important task of researching the legal requirements of labelling and cosmetic testing, I shall remind myself its better to do it now pre-launch, rather than post-launch & then I can enjoy just running my business.