Two Corinthians Walk Into A Bar
I couldn’t resist. My wife and I have a running joke based on a recent biblical reference flub that came up during the current presidential campaign circus. This past Sunday at church, the second reading was from 1 Corinthians and I looked at my wife and we both kind of snickered a little. Shared moments keep things going I guess.
It’s hard to get back on track when you begin a post tangentially like that. Bear with me. Here goes.
This past Sunday’s reading, from 1 Corinthians 10, ended with the declaration that we are not given more to deal with than we can handle; that the burdens we find ourselves carrying are ones we actually have the strength to bear.
This is most applicable right now. My business is 20 months old this month. Not old by any measure; but still operating. That’s a good thing. I absolutely love what I’m doing. I work with small businesses all the time, both mature small businesses and brand new I-have-an-idea small businesses. They share a number of philosophies, but the one that stands out the most for me is the persistence to move forward, to keep going and make it through whatever challenges they are now facing. They create. They adapt. They believe in themselves.
When I get to work with a small business its typically at a very positive time in their life cycle. For the mature ones, they are at a point where they want to make a change, to try something new, to freshen things up a bit. By ‘things’ I am referring to their website, since that’s what I do.
For the new ones, wow! Talk about positive energy. Ideas, dreams, confusion, fear, excitement, you name it, they are experiencing it. When I work with them, I get to experience this too, to a certain degree. I love funneling a bit of their creativity into their website.
And that’s the point. I get to experience a little of the newness, the excitement, the fear, the dreams, the it’s-time-to-tweak feeling over and over and over again with each new small business client I work with.
I need that. As a small business owner, I go through the ups and downs too. Two months ago I had my best revenue month ever; last month, not even close. Yesterday, one of my small business customers informed me that she had decided to take a break from her business for a while and wouldn’t be needing my services any longer. But you know what? It didn’t feel bad to me.
It’s not like a oh-too-recent time in my life when a corporate ‘leader’ came to me out of the blue and told me that “we’ve decided to go in a different direction and will not be needing your services any longer”.
No, it’s not like that at all. This small business owner was going in a different direction, a direction that was not going to depend on a functioning website, a direction that she needed to take to power through the challenges she was experiencing. I was happy that she was finding her way forward and that I had been a part of her path to this point. She was happy with the work we did together, and I am positive she will be an excellent reference going forward.
Entrepreneurialism, small business ownership, freelancing – whatever it’s called, is all about finding your way through. There are countless books out there on how ‘they’ did it, but it’s how you or I do it that really matters. Find the inner strength. Power ahead.
I firmly believe that I am not given more to handle than I can. I might not know how to handle it at this moment, but my heart tells me that I will learn it, come across it, be shown it, and a direction will be uncovered.
Onward and upward.
Now, where was I? Oh yeah. So two Corinthians walk into a bar, one says . . .
