Life is a roller coaster baby….

There have been a few songs that have picked up on life being like a ‘roller coaster’ and as I get older it just seems a very apt way of describing what life throws at you.

One minute you’re flying high …the next you’re in a deep rut…

In your personal life it can happen over a period of months, years even, but when running a business it can happen in minutes.

You start the day getting a phone call confirming you’ve won an order and everybody is whooping with joy ….then the phone rings again and it’s somebody telling you that your team just hit a service cable and half of Manchester is without power.

Then you get told that power has been restored …whoops of joy again / then they tell you that it’s cost £8000.00 and your insurance doesn’t cover it…down in the dumps.

Then you’re insurer tells you that you are covered ….up again/but your excess is £4000 ….down again.

You get your month-end figures and you’ve smashed your monthly turnover record. You’ve turned-over more in a month than you used to turn over in a year …wow!  Amazing….yes …you’ve turned over huge sums of money but, you’ve actually made £2.58 profit.

These are the joys of business ownership. Unless you have your own company, you will never quite ‘get’ what the experience does to you.

To be quite honest it’s addictive. I think I thrive on the adrenaline that being my own boss provides. I’ve never been good with authority and have often skirted on getting myself in trouble because I could never quite cow-tow to the right people.

I clearly remember being stopped for speeding by a young traffic cop and being told – “you can either apologise  …or you can go in front of the judge…which would you prefer” …I told him to go fuck himself …which in hindsight was maybe not the best move I could have made.

As I’ve got older though I am realising that certain questions require a bit of thought before answering….and maybe I should try not saying the first thing that comes into my head.

Questions to be careful with –

• Does my bum look big in this?
• You fancy her, don’t you?
• You like my sister, don’t you?
• Should I put my face on?
• What were you just thinking about?
• What were you doing on your computer when I walked in?
• You’d prefer to have a holiday without me, wouldn’t you?
• What speed did you think you were doing sir?

Answer any of these questions without first thinking …and the roller coaster could take a sudden plunge ….

Mike C