Good Advice for Sober Babies

Running your own business is a lot like having a baby. Everybody has all this advice for you and all of it is well-intended and much of it is "good advice," but there are so many things that are so personal and so personalized that you have to weed through what seems like a common, universal experience (and other people want to tell you their experience will be your experience) and find what applies to you, what works for you, and what doesn't. Meanwhile, you have to be careful not to be an ostrich with its head in the sand for things that truly are universal and not write things and people off as "oh, that just doesn't apply to me" when they actually do. And all this information and research still can't keep you from walking into tons of problems that you have to learn the hard way for yourself, and other things you'll just never learn. On the plus side, when you screw up your business you're mostly just hurting yourself, whereas if you feed your baby vodka and ping-pong balls, you may also harm the baby.

Now if I can only reach that beautiful internal point where I can say, "This is what I'm hearing from other people, this is what I've learned, this is what I'm doing. That's that, and I'm ok with that."

Maybe that'll be my new attempted mantra: "That's that and I'm ok with that." You should try. it. It'll be good for business.

*Alice in Wonderland "Very Good Advice" record available from ricracandbuttons's Etsy shop