Metrics/Measures
I don't quite know if everyone is like me in this way, so apologies if it's a little weird. Something that I find very motivating and de-stressing is knowing I'm moving in the right direction, that what I'm doing, seeing or achieving is, more or less, what I'm aiming to do. I can get a little bit too excited and hopeful and if this happens I can also get really sad when those too-high expectations aren't met.
So I find having some form of baseline or more grounded expectation really helpful.
I remember when I was maybe 10 I really wanted a watch, my friend at the time had found a cool one for like $14 at a random shop. I begged Mum for it and she said no and it really upset me. I sat in the car outside of our home that day angry and sad, and eventually Mum came out and explained she'd bought me a watch for my birthday which was around the corner.
I think she then said something like 'you get so fixated on what you want and then it doesn't happen and you get upset'. It was a good lesson and I think I've largely been able to roll with the punches a lot more (thank god) and mitigate my internal compass a bit better.
In some ways this is a bit contradictory, as I also like surprises and serendipity, but we're people, not easily explainable ideals.
I've been thinking more concretely recently about what makes me feel successful, especially when it comes to running my small business it can be a bit tricky to know how well I'm doing. After all, no one else is doing quite what I am, and if they are they aren't publishing their balance sheets - so it's a bit of guess work.
It's easy to know I've done well when something sells out, but until that happens I find that I'd like to know, clearly, how well we are doing. What constitutes, for example, good sales? What constitutes a flop? It's easy to see retrospectively, but in the moment, when things are less clear - THAT'S what I want to know.
Over the last 6 weeks I've attended two book fairs. These are large selling events where, going in, I have these hopes that things will fly off the shelves and people will be buying lots. Of course I know that hope is more a day dream than anything to really believe, but what I don't know is what is more reasonable to expect.
I've come down to this metric: one book an hour is enough. That isn't a stellar sales day, but it's average. It's a baseline from which I can decide 'this is a big sales day' or 'this is a slow sales day' and having a realistic baseline prevents me from flying too close to the sun.
One book per hour, more or less, equates to 20-25 books over a weekend, which is about $1000-$1250 in sales, not bad at all, and on Sunday, while at Melbourne Art Book Fair, I came close to getting to the elusive TWO books per hour.
It might seem reductive or a bit too simple, but I find having these internal checks keeps me steady throughout long and hard days. Working retail for a whole weekend, while having a day job to go back to, is quite draining. Seeing people come and spend 20 minutes with a book then put it down and walk away is quite lame. But, at the end of it, if I sell 1 book per hour, minimum, I'm doing fine. So, for me, that's the foundation, that's what helps.