A big new win for my new venture reminds me just how up and down this game really is.
We've had a great week (and not just because of my toddler-like excitement every time I see a snowflake). On Tuesday, a new client just signed off on a big contract with my new venture, kicking off in January. It's our biggest win so far, and it's come in the week before Christmas, just as I was starting to doubt whether the sums were ever going to add up. It's moments like these that make all the hard slog worthwhile - although to be honest, I can't help feeling that it would be nice for life to be a little more boring sometimes...
The timing might sound a bit too good to be true, but I suspect it was more for their benefit than ours. My guess is that they were keen to get it sorted before Christmas so they could spread the cost across two years' worth of budgets (I love December for this - although it feels like there's a lot of dead time, it can be a great opportunity to pick up new business as people try and spend up their budget allocations).
Anyway, what do I care? All of a sudden next year's numbers look a lot better than they did a week ago, and that's about the best Christmas present I could have asked for.
As you can imagine, this was pretty exciting news all round. I was pleased for Ace, who's put in a lot of effort thus far for relatively little reward (although I'm delighted to report, from a childishly competitive point of view, that it was originally my lead). I was pleased for the new business's P&L, because this will keep the bank-managing wolf from the door for a while longer. And I was also pleased because deals like this validate the whole idea, and all the work that's gone into it.
When you're running a very small business (which this new venture effectively is, even if it's technically part of the main company), deals like this make a huge difference - to your profile, to your bottom line and to your general sanity. In the space of a week I've gone from worrying about whether I should pull the plug to thinking it's the best thing since sliced bread, before settling somewhere in between.
And that, for me, is basically what being an entrepreneur is all about. It's a life of extremes; one minute you're up, the next minute you're down - and if you work hard and have a bit of luck, you'll hopefully end up with more of the former than the latter. It can get pretty wearing sometimes. But I wouldn't swap it for the world.
Anyway I get the next couple of weeks off, apparently. So I hope you all have a fantastic Christmas. Here's to 2010 being a hell of a lot better than 2009...
