Christo: Hey there folks, welcome back to Basic Bananas TV. I wanted to share a tip with you today about how sometimes the -it just hits the fan a little bit in the business and there’s always going to be those things called ‘growing pains’. I was presenting at Melbourne Fashion Week on Monday and there was a bunch of people asking questions about … Of course you picked me to be one of the presenters at Fashion Week, I’m sure of that. Fashion guru right over here.

Anyway, I’m presenting at the Fashion Week on helping people how to grow their businesses and fashion businesses, of how to grow and get more exposure, and a lot of common questions that came up were around, “Will I need to get a big amount of supplies to launch my brand or launch my next line or get a bigger premises or a bigger factory for their manufacturing?” Some people asking about the start of the business. “I’m scared to take that step and even put it out there.”

I can tell you now, part of the business journey is actually, there’s going to be these growing pains at all different levels. I’m sharing this with you right now from our newest addition to our office because even for us, we’ve grown and grown over the last eight years, but then there’s a new step to take and suddenly we have to find a bigger premises. We’ve had to get the building next door to our current office and we’re suddenly tripling in size. Now that adds a whole lot of overhead, so what I’m sharing here is at all different stages of your business growth, you’re actually going to experience these ‘uh-oh’ moments. These moments where it’s like, “Uh-oh, should I do this, should I not do this?”

Now some of the tips that we shared throughout Fashion Week were things like if you … Ways to get around this and to work through this. If you consider yourself in the future looking back and thinking, “I really should’ve done that.” What would be more painful, the thought of thinking, ‘I really should’ve done that’ or ‘I gave it a crack’. Even if it didn’t really come off as well as you hoped, I think the regret will often times outweigh having not done it in the first place so it’s good to give it a go.

The second thing I like to say is you’re going to experience these at all different stages of growth, so even when you start to grow your business, you need a new team member suddenly, and then you need an extra team member, then you need a bigger space, it keeps happening throughout your whole journey so the question to ask yourself is what’s the worst that could happen if you actually go and do it? If the worst that could happen is that somebody says no to you, like you ask for a sale or you ask for an alliance from an organization, and it’s only going to be someone saying no, or you ask for free exposure in the paper, the newspaper, whatever it is.

If someone’s just going to say no, then go ahead and do it anyway. There’ll be a little voice inside your head that says, “Uh-oh, let’s not do this. This is outside our comfort zone.” All that’s saying is really that you’re growing, you’re experiencing something new because the little [inaudible 00:02:51] scared guy comes up inside your head. If the worst that could happen is someone’s going to say no … If the worst that’s going to happen is you could get physically hurt, like me try to work with any of these tools here, it’s best that I don’t touch them, then you probably don’t want to proceed, but if the worst that could happen is someone’s going to say no, then thank the little voice inside your head for trying to look after you but just let it know you’re going to proceed anyway and move on with it.

I look forward to hearing about your growth and success in the future. Bye for now.