Today went off track mainly because of my sleep. I have Restless Leg , and I have had it for last 15 years – not a big deal – just means that when I’m falling asleep my legs will ‘jerk’ on their own and try to keep me up. This hasn’t been an issue for a long time but over last 2 years – its been causing me more grief – since sometimes it keeps me up late at night – and I end up with 3 or 4 hours sleep – and become non-functional.
So, this today was one of those days, where I only managed to get 4 hours sleep – and was basically zombied out. So, I had a very nice day layout out, all scheduled, but instead I ended up having to move everything around so I could get a bit more sleep in the morning so that I could better function during the day.
So, just a challenge to work around – but unfortunately what it does is not give me the 100% predictability of my schedule (as much as I try). Doesn’t happen often, but sometimes.
So, today, I had to move my staff reviews to Friday and didn’t really ‘get working’ till lunch time.
But, I managed to catch up on sleep, so was functioning at 100%. It was payroll review day and banking day – so spend a good part of the afternoon moving funds around, approving payments and updating cash flows.
Overall, things look good – but I”m still operating on a fairly tight cash flow – so it would be nice to expand the window – so that that cash flow could be managed on a monthly basis instead of bi-weekly.
I did look at the forecasts, and they look good – although of course the ‘profits’ of the business will not be there until Nov and December. Such is the nature of this business. So, one of the ‘mini-dilemmas’ I”m facing is this. I would like to onboard a couple more people to drive the business – but it will force the cash flow into a tighter situation – I can finance it – no issues. But the question becomes that of risk. If I where to play it safe – I would wait till December, then onboard new people. Much less risk. But then I would be giving up growth. Growth burns cash. But, given my risk preference and given where we are right now (sitting on so many opportunities) I feel that the time is right NOT to play it safe but rather take on a bit of risk (by on boarding a couple of people) – and empower RedStores for faster growth. Theory should hold that whomever I onboard should pay for themselves – and I do believe that – the question is – how fast is the payback. In this case, with the person that I”m thinking of, I think the payback would be very quick – so I have decided if I can make it fit – I will go ahead and move along and take on this little risk – to afford us faster growth.
I’m moving now also on changing ownership of the existing Chinese Entity to being held by RedStores HK (instead of personally) – that is to make this investor friendly – and am moving to get a Chinese WOFE import/export company formed. The whole corporate restructuring is coming along nicely – and its all going to give us an incredible foundation that should take us into the $125MM zone. Lot of work on this though – and lots of opportunity cost. For example, I figure that by focusing my energy and effort on corp. restructuring, I gave up at least 500K to $1MM or more in sales because I did not focus on PearlsOnly – but – long term trade off for short term gains. One of the common dilemmas in business – the now or the future. Balancing that is interesting – and a lot of things need to come to bare – risk preference, opportunity, belief in ability to deliver on the foundation, etc. So, as you can see, given that I am future-investing my time – I have 100% belief that future is going to be bright. Very bright. I need to wear my shades! 🙂
The afternoon – I spent a couple hours in the gym – which was great – and then in the evening I continued to work through my inbox and created todos and follow ups. The workout I had was with weights – and by 8:30PM I couldn’t keep my eyes open – so enter the dream world.