Lately, I’ve become a big advocate of ebbs and flows. Not just in business but in life. Things will come and go, you will see the good and the bad, the beautiful and ugly and things will be constantly changing. I have always been a resilient person but I believe in the last few years my tolerance to adversity & change has become even stronger. It’s about riding the waves of the good and the bad and just knowing that you will come out the other side (relatively unscathed). When I look back just three years ago, if something went wrong in business it would send me into a painful wreck and my levels of stress would be sky high. I felt like this because I cared so much, and I still do. But what’s changed is my ability to stay level-headed and just implement a solution to fix the problem. There’s no point dwelling on what’s done because that will just stop you moving forward. Sure, learn from it, but don’t get bogged down from your mistakes or worse, things you can’t control.
Naturally, a business will go through many phases. Whether it’s a change of location, new personnel, different products or changing technologies. My company Uncle Jack has been through quite a few. They seem to come in six month blocks before changes happen and we enter a new phase.
Around 18 months ago we were growing rapidly and we had to outsource our warehousing & logistics to a 3rd party company. It was the right decision because we just could not handle the volume of orders internally. Fast forward to now and we have more personnel, a better space, solidified practices, a great customer base and a solid business platform. We are about to enter our next phase.
Over the next 2 weeks we will be transitioning our warehousing & logistics back into our new warehouse which is next door to our office. It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to regain control of our stock and offer even more flexibility for our customers. Our new warehouse setup will give us greater access to our own stock, reduce warehousing costs in the long-term and it’s next door to our office! Personally, I’m looking forward to actually seeing our orders being packaged up and sent out, which we don’t have the pleasure of in our current logistical arrangement.
There may be a time in the future when our circumstances change again and our self-contained warehousing will not be the best way forward. But for now, I’m excited by the change and the challenges we are bound to face in the coming months. I have no doubts there will be unexpected problems which we will need to deal with, but I’m better prepared to deal with the adversity than I’ve ever been.
E B B S & F L O W S
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