i had the wonderful pleasure of being humble this morning. it started with a flat tire the day of “xmas” and i was supoose to be a shoot down in sunnyvale in about an hour. and i called up a friend and he saved my ass by lending me his car. how quickly my karma turn around with that last act. anyway, i arrive at my photo shoot and i am slightly embrassed that i am at a kid’s 3rd birthday. not that it surprised me or anything, but i think it finally dawn on me that i was shooting a birthday party for a spoil kid. as i am running around trying to catch 20 wild kids going bongers in the inflatable playground, i can’t help but laugh at myself. i’ve gone so far in the past 5 years but events like this remind me really, i haven’t go that far. sure it was worth my time and i have anything to really complain about since actually like being around kids for about 5 mins but i just felt like an ass with my ultra expensive cameras trying to photograph kids while every other parent is stepping in front of me with their points and shoot. i leave a couple of hours later damning myself because i sold out such a long time ago that i don’t even feel the embrassment of it all. some would suggest i just look on the bright side and it’s all in the name of the ‘do whatever it takes’ attitude to succeed but today, success smell like a stale relationship where someone forgot to change the diaper.
i was thinking earlier today about why i don’t write much about the business. considering that it consumes most of my daily existence i would have much to reflect and bitch about. but it would seem that maybe my saving grace is on occassions i have other thoughts besides the color of half of my wardrobe. as the year ends, our numbers are coming in and we actually didn’t grow at all this pass year. which is not horrible but considering the huge increase in overhead of the space, we’re about to dive head on into our make it or break it year. i would surmise to speculate that if we make it though 06 with a 20% growth in sales while keeping cost more or less consistent, we should be able to thrive. i definitley think it’s doable so i am not too all worry but at the same time, any major disruption in our business process (ie, another critical employee quits), then we can kiss growth good bye. in some regards, i suspect that our growth was pampered quite a bit by the range of business disruptions this past year. certainly things look a lot more promosing in the next year but we can’t take anything for granted.
the completion of the 1.0 verison of our product was a major milestone this past year, but utilmately, it’s success depends on our ablitity to market the product in the upcoming year. i am confident that our product can be at least the top 5 in the market place but it does require a business skillset that we have not really developed. as much as i enjoyed the development of our brand, the marketing of our brand and our services has probably have been one of our weaker fundamentals. anyway, i am beginning to bored myself with all this business chatter at this hour of the night. there is much to be done and undone.