Everything goes wrong

Something to remember when starting a business, is Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will.

Example: I printed out forms to fill out to get my state Tax ID. The next day I went to grab them to fill them out, and couldn't find them. The forms were hard to find online, so I kept looking for them at home. Finally, after three days, I gave up and tracked them down again, and printed a second set. I started filling the forms out, was nearly done, and went to bed. While I slept, my cat knocked over a glass of water onto- you guessed it- the forms, which were now trash. So I decided to fill them out online, and did. Three days later I got a call from the state, saying they could not process me without an EIN number; please go to this IRS website and get one. I go to the IRS website, and it has HOURS OF OPERATION- seriously. I just finished this whole mess today, getting the EIN and giving it to the state. But this one "small" duty turned into several hours of work, spread over many days.

Now multiply that by EVERYTHING I am doing.

I have certainly had my moments of crying jags, head in hands, certain this will never get off the ground. But I just keep picking myself back up, and taking one more step forward. It doesn't matter if that step is to go around an obstacle, and I only move forward one inch instead of one foot- if I keep on stepping, I will get there in the end.

The ONLY difference between winners and losers is that losers keep getting back up and pressing on, no matter how hard they are knocked down, or how many times they are knocked down.

Right now, I have all of my raw product ingredients on hand: jars, oils, waxes, herbs, shrink bands, heat gun. I have not made any salve yet, as I cannot GET to anything, because all of the above mentioned items are crowding me out of my office. Enter my wonderful partner, who is working his fingers to the bone helping to reorganize the house and take things to storage (in addition to being my Shipping & Receiving guy), so that I can get things rolling.

Oh, I found a new label printer, at 40% of the cost that a local printer quoted me, so that's good. Pretty much everything is done off of the prior "to do" lists printed here.

Still to do: Redesign labels, and send to printer; redesign website, upload, test; do a test run of shopping cart; make, pour, label, finalize salves; create sales brochures; create press releases.

Whew!

uh oh

Well things are starting to unravel.

The labels I wanted cost over a dollar per label, so not getting those.

There's not enough room in the office for my inventory.

I'm extremely stressed, feel very overworked while simultaneously feeling like I'm not getting anything done.

Daily trips to the gym for three weeks have resulted in a 1.5 lb weight loss, which is making me wonder "why bother?".

I've been too busy to get on the phone, so my daughters and friends are starting to feel alienated.

All this could be yours, just follow the American dream...