Control freak.
I think you need to be a little bit of one to successfully build a business.
After all, to make things move forward you have to have things under control.
But there are also limits to that.
Too much and you become the bottleneck.
Equally, there are so many things that are simply not under your control no matter how persistent or organised you are.
Suppliers, landlords, investors. You can stay on top of their mind, you can follow up, you can be prepared, but at the end of the day you cannot decide what they decide.
And that is the tough pill to swallow.
Disclaimer: there is no ending written to this story yet.
So this one is as it currently is, what you might face if you are trying to find a retail space especially in Zürich, and equally how much of this is about the mental side of growing as a person and entrepreneur when you cannot control everything.
Most of the time all you can do is create the best possible conditions for luck and hope for the best.
And if anything, I think that is what building any kind of business really is about.
Eventually who makes it and who does not is just who has enough nerve to stay in the game the longest, even when it is occasionally completely out of your control.
Or what do you think?
Every Sunday I publish an episode of The Build, a series following my journey of building from scratch and more than anything trying and learning. In the previous episodes I shared the story of how I got to entrepreneurship, what the reality of running a side business alongside a full time job actually looks like, how the failures are an inevitable part of the journey, how the first months of building Unelma have been, what the brand strategy behind it looks like, and what it actually takes to manage yourself when no one else is telling you what to do. In this one I dive into the reality of searching for a retail location in Zürich and what the process of not being in control actually does to you.
On Wednesdays, I write about creating your path, style, mindset and career wise. I would love to have you follow along!