Tuesday, July 28

second guessing

I'm jumping back and forth between a small business decision at the moment. A networking group called BNI (have you heard of it? belong to it?) Anyways only one person from a specific business can belong to a group... ex. 1 realtor, 1 naturopath, 1 photographer, 1 lawyer, 1 accountant... the idea is that these are a dedicated group of "sales people", word of mouth, that you hope will send you referrals and vice versa... The cost is high... with a weekly (must attend or send someone in your place) breakfast (meetings start at 7am) + admin fee + annual membership it's going to run me about $1500. I just can't seem to take that leap... I thought I could but I'm teetering on the what if's now.

...what if I can't bring in enough referrals to others because I only run my biz p/t
...what if the stress of being to work by 8:30am so my boss doesn't find out about my on the side networking efforts washes out my efforts to reduce stress in my life
...what if the stress causes me to have to wait even longer for our BFP
...what if I need this money for IF treatments or cycle monitoring or more ov watch sensors
...what if my husband does get laid off this winter
...what if I don't do this and I'm stuck in this job
...what if I can't get pregnant so long as I'm working for possibly the most stress inducing lady boss ever
...what if I never find my entrepreneur legs again and don't make the leap back into f/t self employment
...what if I get pregnant and then I can't get to these meetings every week at 7am because I'm too tired
...what if I get put on bed rest or something....
...what if
...what if
...what if!!!! I could go on and ON

The plan has always been to get a mat leave out of currently employer and get that 52 weeks at 55% of my current pay since you don't get that when you're self-employed. But I would never have thought that I would be in this job for over 4 years now. That we'd still be in TTC mode for almost 2 years.... (are we just not trying hard enough?)

It's a mixed up feeling/emotion kind of day/week... I'm so frustrated by not knowing exactly which way to turn at this point... so I'll make no decision and wait for some kind of light at the end of the tunnel for now.

When I was running my business f/t before I resisted this BNI group because I couldn't promote all 3 aspects of my small business and at this point right now I only want to promote the photography side as the other clients just seem to trickle in now and then and for now that's enough for me.

*** just got off the phone with a magazine I deal with for my employer *** She's a great lady and we've chatted quite openly about what is going on with her mag and what is going on here too in terms of how the economy is effecting our areas. She's sounding more and more uncertain about her industry and the print/mag industry in general as many advertisers are pulling back on spending and magazines with long histories go from print to digital. ***

I think I need to sit tight on this for now... maybe check the waters in 3 to 6 months. I can still go to meetings as a guest up to two times per chapter so for now I'll just keep on checking them out when I'm feeling the need to network. I need to focus on us and keep us above water and only focusing on being good to ourselves and getting that BFP we want so much. Recession or not no more on hold with the baby making efforts.

but I'm open to suggestions... thoughts?

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