Monday 8 October 2012

Week Two

The first week was pretty successful, in my mind at least.  I had fairly decent orders and was pleased with my activity, but there were some things I could have done better, which I didn't really notice until this past week.

(again, I will assume you know what I'm talking about)

Stragglers.  The poison that slowly eats away at your mental faculties.  The evil that picks at your sanity.  The best antidote, weapon and shield against these b*****ds is persistence.  You've gotta get them.  I didn't.  Well, that's not true, because I did.  But I wasn't persistent.  I went back two to three times to get them, but I didn't always knock.  And that was the key.  It didn't even cross my mind that knocking on the doors and physically asking for your catalogues would really make that much of a difference.  I still had over 300 catalogues back, that's enough surely?  300 isn't bad, but when you did have 450+, that's quite a blow to your stock.  Fortunately, I quickly learnt from this obvious miscalculation and got back a boat load of cats (as well as some tasty orders) by knocking on the doors and being persistent and committed to getting those back.  It killed me months ago when I first started, and I won't let that happen again.

Otherwise, I was pleased with my activity.  Wednesday was very much like last week.  I started 2 hours after I intended like last week, but I didn't oversleep this time.  We had a visit from the health visitor, as well as my cat needing to go to the vets.  That being said, I freakin' killed it (the day, not the cat).  I was surprised at just how quickly I was putting my cats out and picking them up.  Despite having started 2 hours late, I finished an hour and a half earlier than I anticipated.  So I spent the rest of the time making sure I had the cats turned, and making sure I was absolutely prepared for Thursday, which is typically my busiest day.

Thursday was even better than Wednesday in terms of how quickly I was doing everything.  I had to go to a completely new area, which of course meant writing the street/house names/numbers down, but again that didn't seem to slow me down.  Maybe my standards when I wrote my initial plan were low?  Probably were.  I guess I can use whatever time I have left to organise, read and learn about what I plan to do next year (more on that in a later post).

Friday was the best day for me.  I felt bloody brilliant.  I started the day by going for those stragglers around my village, then I helped a friend out by taking her to the surgery to see her mid-wife (due in 6 weeks).  Next, I hit 3 more villages by picking up stragglers, and I had a crap load of cats at my disposal.  Much more than I did last week, which means my stragglers this week are less than last week, compared to mistakes of the past, where it would be reversed.  I actually stayed up 'til 2am Friday night, without realising I had done, working the business, making sure everything was planned out for this week.  As a result of that, I can comfortably focus on my daughter today and tomorrow (other than a few pre-arranged deliveries to do) and not have any (or at least minimal) anxiety about this coming Wednesday.

Saturday morning, I made sure that all my slips informing my customers when I'd be delivering where out, as well as go to the bank.  Not particularly exciting, I know, but it was there that I realised that I was about to be very pissed off.  I don't know who or what I was pissed off with, probably fate:

(taken from Wikipedia)


"Allan Pease, riginally a musician, he became a life insurance salesman, and then started a career as a speaker and trainer in sales, and subsequently in body language and communication skills.
He first became known for his best-selling book Body Language in 1981, and has also written a number of books on communication and sex differences in human behavior. many jointly written with his wife, Barbara Pease"

That was who I was supposed to see yesterday.  As you can probably guess, I didn't.  Unfortunately Lillie had physio, as well as my wife and I seeing a geneticist (exciting stuff).  The most annoying thing about these two appointments was that I didn't feel I needed to be there.  We are not going to be shown anything until this coming Thursday as it relates to Lillie's exercises/physio and the geneticist just wanted to "have a chat".  Bugger all was done!  Suffice to say, I was annoyed, but I will just have to do more research myself, which is fine. 

Anyway!  This week wasn't as dramatic as last week (probably a good thing), but I feel I am starting to ride the waves of my own momentum.  Hopefully I can keep this up going forward and looking at bigger and better things next year.  I'll leave you with this quote by the legendary Jim Rohn.  I instantly thought of my mistakes in the past with stragglers when he said this:

"Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day."

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!

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