week twelve: to contract or not to contract

i've just had three meetings and marched around edinburgh (to blister point) through the snow and tram works selling myself. it is a lot better for the soul than sitting on my bum emailing unconvinced chamber members that they really want to pay for my services, when what they actually want to do is meet Q1 budgets and not be accused of frippery with regard to ad hoc consultant spend. however there may be some joy on the contracting front: more later. what has intrigued me for the last 5 minutes (and i stress it was only 5 mninutes so that no one thinks i'm wasting precious expensive child-free time on pointless web based shenaniguns....) is the chinese comment posted last week. i know it is chinese because i downloaded a translator, he's sitting on my sofa and is very nice. no, i downloaded a translator gadget and it came up with some translations and they are intriguing. it would seem that "smart people like to guess heart, though every time my guess was right, but lost his heart, silly people who like to mind, although each have been laughed, but got someone else's heart". hmmmm. there are 15,000 different translations of the comment but all follow roughly the same story. so does this mean smart people can lose heart even though their guesses are right? which, i would think, means something nice for me. or does it mean silly people mind about these things and we laugh at them? less nice. if anyone has a chinese colleague please do run it past them...

SOOO thank you for all the other comments and posts; especially for the reassuring ones regarding slow januarys etc. my focus this week has been on bravely undertaking a finance review and subsequently deciding it is time to bring in the agents thus avoiding bringing in the bailiffs. interestingly this week has also been challenging because daughter #1 (age 4) has gone through quite an interesting developmental stage and taken to shouting random things at me. for example: "grandpa ron? isn't he dead yet?" and to chris evans: "hey, you, it's monday on OUR planet too you know". also her addiction to my i-phone means that she now beats me at "toobz" and throws a total wobbly when not allowed to play on it. her favourite position is on the loo playing for hours. she get's this from her father, clearly. i thought this phase came at about 13. daughter #2 helped by saying very clearly last night "what's all this poo on my bed?". rather defensively i said that there wasn't any poo on her bed, then noticed rather a large clump of something brown on one of the rails. weetabix, surely. rather apologetically i wiped it off. who's the mummy please?

so i've been buoyed up by two good agency interviews (they always say nice things don't they? i think they're quite therapeutic! just when you need a boost you should go along and they ooh and ahh. you may not hear anything for a few months but it's always a nice way to spend a morning). however one of them does have a three day a week job; i tick some but not all of the boxes, and there is a possibility that i could do it under my company banner and thus have my first true client. so i'll find out more about that one tomorrow. i can't say too much about it as i think i may have to stretch the truth on my recent audit experience but surely that's the name of the game (i was an impossible case, no one ever could reach me. we're still listening to a LOT of ABBA in the car at the moment. however they do like some of the tracks on the recent live lounge CD and sing-a-long to "all the single ladies" before breaking into some warbling version of sleeping beauty's "i know you" song.)

also i think financial panic has set in because we are now very uncertain as to whether daughter #1 will get her state school place due to unprecented levels of application this year. joy. we're not keen on the next state school option hence enter the private school quandry: another variable to add to the melting pot of financial needs..

that being said, i do have a possible lead from one of my networks which i'll find out more about later today. also i met with a chartered accountant who runs her own business, specialising in value-add services today. she was fantastic to talk to, about 10 years ahead of me but the same qualification and similar commercial and strategic background in industry. she now offers formal accounting services as well as the value-add bits and admitted to having to wing-it on the technical front quite often, looking into the detail afterwards. so perhaps i need to change my business direction and rather than looking just for the cream, accept that i need to do a bit of the udder work too. so i think i may need to tweak the website and that may be my afternoon's undertaking.

so does anyone know anyone that works in the publishing business?! i need a lead into that so that i can suggest a diary style book based on the blog and make my fortune that way! answers on a postcard please...

week eleven: no more the fool?

was I fool? i had a part-time senior finance position in a well established company. as i sit wondering quite when i'll derive some cash from my venture i can't stop that 1980s song from snivelling around in my head "no more the sound as my dreams fall and hit the ground, as i wait around, no more the foohooohoool"......

the problem is that there are lots of very positive very excited gate-keepers to possible clients, but the clients, well they ain't showing themselves and i'm losing confidence in what i'm actually saying that i can offer. i have just gone through the financial review that adam did of 2009 and it seems that last year i did spend quite a lot at M&S and John Lewis, not sure what on, and also things that fell into the "presents" category and the "baby" category and the "entertainment" category... life without an income is becoming rather gray and i just ate homemade sweet potato soup for lunch and haven't bought an americano today.

apparently the economy grew by 0.1% yesterday; that's not really very much. that's easily "swingable" by simply making a few casting or transposition errors as us in the trade like to term them. if i told adam that our personal economy had grown by 0.1% last month it would mean that i'd maybe had 4 less coffees, bought two extra i-phone apps (although the deal do-er in me favours the free ones: lineup; toobz, APOD (astrology picture of the day...)), off-set that by using my hazard lights rather than paying for parking when doing a nursery pick-up and made the children eat less squeezy-fruit-smoothies (instant delivery of one of the five fruit portions: guilt free treat). anything more significant such as clinique make-up remover, new tummy reducing tights, jo jingles astronomical term fees, would not be up for consideration in the 0.1% reduction as i'd deem them exceptional items and as such below the line of publication. and i think that is the broad-brush approach that the national statistics team have taken. "oh we've forgotten the self-employed finance sector, oh bugger, nigel did you get those figures? they weren't great were they? but it's january, i think that they were a bit slow on the getgo. it doesn't really count. let's just leave them out. now RETAIL; i definitely have those to hand because december was just so jolly for those folks"...etc etc.

so this week i've met with the two small companies that i will be a volunteer business mentor for in 2010. don't snigger. this was organised through the university spin-out group. both are very different and hugely interesting; the meetings did two things for me. made me realise that i do have good commercial and strategic instincts and things i think are intuitive aren't, they weren't for me 15 years ago either, but you forget what you've learnt and what experience does for you. they also asked some questions about tax and arghghghhh my "at my fingertips" tax knowledge is abysmal! so that was good to know.

i have also taken the plunge and contacted three agencies about contract work; i'll try to get interviews and then enter the "part-time" discussion after those. hmmm.

however on a more positive life note we did have a dinner party on saturday which was the first i've done in a long time and i discovered a wealth of fabby morrocan recipes; i do like to cook on a theme. gordon ramsay's world food book was amazing; i did the falafel and tahini, and also the spinach and feta filo rolls. and adam did the yoghurt cake which was delicious! unlike jamie oliver, who will always hold my cooking heart, gordon's recipes are probably slightly less forgiving however i followed them really carefully and it all worked as described. so i highly recommend a go! i did bill granger's lemon and sweet potato lamb tagine for the main course: easy and yummy and hot hot hot.

but enough; i divulge into my secure haven of cooking to move me away from focusing on getting a client. in fact even writing this is a naughty guilty pleasure as i should be drafting a letter to all the local venture capitalists and accountants in my next round of marketing push.

so enough wondering whether i should have stayed where i was; nothing comes from nothing etc etc and hopefully by this time next week i will have a teeny tiny glimmer of cash-based hope...