Bi-Weekly update 8

Digital Escape

I am finally able to shed some light on the project I’m working on. It is called ‘Digital escape’ and it is a recreation of a real-life escape room in Escaperoom071 in Leiden.

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Most of the work currently is going into creating the right ‘feel’ of the scene. This turned out to be significantly harder than anticipated. But we are here for the ride en we enjoy creating and learning as we make progress.

And a thing about spotting business opportunities and making the most of the situation at hand:
We needed to launch during the lockdown because then the experience had a uniqueness to it that would mitigate the quality issues that come from a short development cycle.

So we are still planning on launching on the end of Juli, but now our focus is more on a quality experience than a quick delivery. We are giving it our best.

Learning to trust

I’m steadily learning more about how to run a business. A big part of the learning I’m currently experiencing is to get the magic out of ‘trust’ and start trusting people, starting with myself.

I made quite a few plans on what to do next, what should be my long-term goal, how to build a company, how to get a sustainable income, how to do work that I enjoy, and so on.
All these long-term plans I developed didn’t work out. But on the contrary, every time I trusted myself or joined up with a person, I made the next step running my business. Plans didn’t work, but personal stuff works?!

A bit of warning: The following is my own learning, and probably has something to do with my personality / family trait.

For me ‘trust’ was to let someone else do something you would prefer to do yourself, but you are just not in the position to do so. And then wait for them to do what I would have done.

As I write these words I see them sounds stupid, and they are. But think about it this way. What have the following in common: working for a boss, being in a relationship, living in the Netherlands, having a good pair of brains.

The common denominator here is that these all are reliably fall-backs. There is no merit in relying / trusting when having circumstances like these. These circumstances make that I can just take my ‘trust’ back and do it myself, and probably get something oke-ish result out of it too.

I just never really had to trust myself or someone else.
I now see that I just have to trust and letting go of control. Every time I did trust myself or someone, I really enjoy it. It gives so much more freedom and adventure. Not all things did work out that well though, but they never were complete failures.

The nice thing about having to trust myself is that with this I start trusting others more. My goals in work become more humane, because I see other humans go trough the same struggles as I do and we are in it together.

Financial info

One of the goals of my blog is to show my own learnings in the hopes you can learn something from it too. I did share some financial info while doing so.

I know that sharing financial info is often perceived as a thing not to do. But I see too much people struggling with it. That is why I am more open about it then you could argue is wise.

For example: Lets say I need 2700 euro incl btw at minimum a month to survive as a business, and want 6500 euro incl btw to get to a sustainable long-term healthy business. Then that is what I need, do I? Where is the problem with sharing this information?

I hear a lot of people in the business world say ‘well you should be payed what you are worth’, and from there on name numbers that are all about maximizing profits. Or about justifying their own requests. Or this ‘healthy’ grow number in the back of their minds that their company should grow with a 2 digit number each year. Or the shareholders should be payed.

To me that sounds like consumerism to the max. It is the old habit of “Why settle for less if you could get more?”
Well: because this is a spiral that will run out of control. I don’t NEED more, I WANT more. And then that ‘want’ will get hold of me and make sure I never ever have enough.

I think that with good financial skills you should be able to figure out what is enough to provide for yourself and your family, and then just stop getting more and start enjoying life.