Tricotomania and more

I realized today that I’ve been feeling a kind of low level anxiety for several weeks now. Physically. I have no real idea what I am anxious about, specifically, but I just kind of feel like I’m having a very very mild panic attack a lot of the time. Not great. But maybe it has something to do with deciding to pay attention to my business for a while. I’m exercising. I’m eating reasonably well (though the candy consumption has gone up from it’s normal “hardly anything” to “some after most meals” due to the post-Halloween stash).

My strategy has been to do little things. Things that in and of themselves are not scary. Or only a little bit scary. Like e-mail one person. Or set up a coffee date with one person. Or hire Andrea to sort me out a business website.  (I did that last little thing a while ago, before they stopped taking new customers for a while.)

Today’s little things included buying a domain name. What a wierd process. The scariest part was that the place Andrea suggested I buy it from has a lot of “and don’t you want some of this?” stuff in their process. At every single step. Even after you have put in your credit card number and confirmed and paid and everything, they are still trying to get you to buy more stuff. I resisted. So now I own a domain (well, 2). There is nothing there yet. You’ll have to wait. Andrea is busy and I’m not in a hurry and even when Andrea does her part, I still have to be ready to launch this thing. I don’t need any more anxiety.

The second little thing I did today was e-mail a satisfied client to ask questions. I’ve been doing this periodically. The first one is scary. But after that it gets easier. And people seem happy to help. I got some feedback immediately and she’s thinking about it more.

I also started answering some of the questions that Sonia put up in her “so-simple-it’s-scary business plan”.  It really is simple. And there are hardly any numbers (and I only did the questions before the numbers today). Those top questions help sort my thoughts out and make me realize what I need to think about from time to time. What I’m doing now is trying to add a new type of customer. So it is helpful to think of my services in terms of how they benefit that customer. I also signed up for her free marketing e-class. It is 10 e-mail messages. I think I can handle that. I’ve received (and read) the first one and it is very sensible.

I’ve also signed up for this course on internet business from Naomi at IttyBiz. Well, I don’t know if it is a course or just a series of posts. And I’m not really running an internet business so much as trying to have an internet presence for my business so people can find me easily (one client came here trying to find me once; luckily she thinks knitting and homeschooling are positive attributes and hired me anyway). I enjoy Naomi’s posts and usually find something useful in them, even if some of it isn’t really me.

All of these little things, and reading Havi’s blog regularly, help with the low-level anxiety. Of course we are also doing things as a family that are not helping, even though they are good things. But I’m not getting into that today.