(Image from Silicon Valley Tarot)
I officially started my own baby business January of 2021 and though I have been a partner in an existing firm it just isn’t the same as starting something of your own from the ground up. I feel like it’s teaching me a lot about myself in ways that I did not expect having already been a business owner and having worked with business owners for years. The silly thing that is on my mind right now is remembering when I started buying office supplies I made the executive decision to get fun office supplies. My office has a lot of natural wood and the main decorative colors are orange and blue with gold accents. So I have gold pen holders and a gold staplers and a gold tape dispenser and I was silly excited to find gold paperclips. I have pens with flowers on top of them that wiggle when I write. I have only beautiful notepads. I covered my laptop in stickers. I filled my office with plants and made it feel homey and cozy. I wanted work to feel less like work. When we originally set up my office I was still very sick so we wanted a room in the house where I could go hide from everyone so I also have a beautiful daybed covered with throw pillows, lots of different cozy blankets, and a nice TV. At different points both my husband and my stepson said that my office is their favorite room in the house. It is my happy place and my sanctuary. That is what we should all be able to create in our work spaces. We all know the feeling of walking into an office Monday morning and feeling our hearts sink. So I created an office that in inviting that I’m happy to walk into. At the end of the day do cold, uninviting spaces really make us more productive? (I actually don’t know the answer, I’m sure someone has studied this.) And, if it actually does make us more productive, is it worth it? Is productivity actually all that matters?
Related but seemingly unrelated I’ve started having a policy with my clients that we are all human first. The first time I had a client miss a meeting I started to get mad because that’s for some reason what I though I “should” do. But then it was a nice day, mid afternoon, so I took myself out to lunch. I’m able to be flexible right now so why shouldn’t I be? When I let go I felt calmer. I have no illusion, people do not look forward to meeting with their bookkeeping. But I want to do what I can to make it cozy and inviting. Part of that is allowing for life to happen and not to punish my clients for being human. A couple months ago one of my clients who has some health issues messaged me the morning we were supposed to meet telling me she had been up sick all night and had to take some heavy medication so she might be a bit off. I asked her if she would rather just meet a different day. She was surprised and relieved. In the moment it just made sense. She could have met with me but, why? Nothing was urgent, there was no emergency, she hadn’t slept and was woozy from medication. Sounds to me like she needs rest more than a bookkeeper. There may come a day when my schedule is so full that I can’t do this, or if I do we would be rescheduling for a month or more out. But I will cross that bridge when we get there.
As I started running my business and my client relationships putting our shared humanity first it dawned on me that I was just following the golden rule. Sometimes I mess up my schedule and I’m late for something or forget. It’s not intentional or malicious, I’m just only human and can only keep track of so many things. When that happens I don’t want someone to be mad at me or punish me, I want them to be understanding and treat me like it’s no big deal. Once again I’m bumping into the issue of why do we ask our children to follow the golden rule while not following it once we become adults? The even stranger thing is that me being relaxed about my missed appointment policy seems to have improved my client’s communication around rescheduling. Before I came to this conclusion I would have clients cancel minutes before a meeting because they were trying to make it work. Now I very rarely have a day of cancelation because they don’t feel pressured to make something work that they can already see won’t.
All of this for me ties into our culture of productivity and 24 hour access. Yes, it’s very convenient to be able to run into a store if we need something at 4 am but in order for that to be possible someone has to be working at 4 am. How often is something in your life actually that urgent? A lot of restaurants in my area have moved to only being open five days a week due to staffing issues. At first I was slightly miffed because there are some nights of the week where it can be challenging to find someplace we want to eat. When I took a step back and looked at the bigger picture I actually kind of like it. If things are staggered enough with some restaurants open on any given day of the week, who cares? I’m even thinking maybe grocery stores should only be open five days a week. Life has gotten too fast for no reason other than increasing profits for a select few. I want everyone on the planet to be able to slow down. There was a prediction made in the 1960s or 1970s that I read once where the predicted that with the rise in technology and automation the work week would keep getting shorter because it would take less time to do everything they were doing then. Instead the expectation of the work week has gotten longer and more intense. It feels like we are all running on a hamster wheel just to survive. I’m going to dream of a day when everyone can support themselves easily working three to four days a week max. I’m going to dream of a day when everyone feel fulfilled by the work they do. I’m doing to dream of a day when we are all human first.
Screaming in the Dark 