Does anyone remember Simba’s “I want to be a Simba chippie” ad?
This is the one we’re referring to.
We’ll come back to this later.
We are 4 years old this month!
Happy Birthday to us.
We can never figure out a good way to celebrate. Not just doing something for our customers but celebrating between ourselves, as “parents” of a small business (a small, preschool-age business). If you, reader, have any ideas, please comment and share those ideas with us.
Should we even celebrate?
We haven’t reached the goals we had set out to achieve by this stage.
At times, it has felt like we have forgotten the purpose of The H Word – to provide high-quality hair care that is affordable. To provide hair advice in one place so that our customers and audience don’t have to scour the internet like we had to. To build each other up.
By our fourth year, we had hoped to be selling our products regularly enough so that we would not only break even but make a profit as well. We had hoped to expand our offering to include a greater variety of hair and body wear in a wider range of sizes, colours and patterns. We had hoped to scale our business to include more sewers (all of our products are manufactured in South Africa). We had hoped to make the content we produce, such as our blogs, podcast, newsletters and social media videos, much more valuable and informative.
We made so many mistakes too.
We spent capital on the wrong things (we weren’t throwing yacht parties, but we could have spent our Rands with more sense). We made promises and struggled to keep them. We trusted the wrong people. We fumbled around in the dark trying to keep our tiny business-candle alight. We also started The H Word during the pandemic.
It was the support of our family and friends that saw us through that first year.
Hindsight is 20/20 and we definitely learned some simple lessons the hard way.
And there will always be more to learn in the future.
Are the successes we have achieved worthy of a celebration?
Having made it to this point in the lifespan of The H Word is a triumph in itself.
We’re lucky to have customers who are loyal and an audience that critiques our products fairly.
We have had to let go of our biggest seller, our Manketti Range, and that means going back to the drawing board to either take on the creation of a new product or rework an existing product so that it’s more appealing and useful to customers.
Either way, it feels like as long as we have a purpose, we have something to measure our work against and move towards.
What we have learned along the way, is that some purposes are simple, short and hopefully sweet. Just a vehicle to feed the bigger purpose or the purpose that comes thereafter.
Much like the Potatoes who all wanted to be a “Simba chippie” (didn’t think we would get back to this, did you?). The Potatoes had a big purpose – to be “Simba chippies” and within that a smaller purpose that would ultimately help them fulfil their life goals. To be first, “the bestest potato” and next to set the parameter for that purpose to “in all of Simbaland”.
It’s a simple example to be sure, but sometimes it just is that simple.
Perhaps that means we need to define the smaller “purposes” within our bigger purpose to get out of this lethargy.
Guess that means we are having a Birthday celebration this year. We should. It’s only right to revel in our small successes and not ignore it to move onto the next thing that has to be done. Just live in the happiness of the moment.
Please share your celebration suggestions and let us know if you have found a purpose you would like to share.
- The H Word