After a lot of thought and advice from my business advisor I’ve decided to stop working on the business. It’s a mix of having to get a job to become solvent any time soon (Africa was expensive), together with the current recession shrinking the market and a competitor undermining the business model. I don’t consider it to have been a waste of time as I can take positives from it (winning £2k is definitely a positive). It’s not to say I won’t come back to it (I like to think of it as putting it on the shelve) but in all honesty I think it’s unlikely.
My other idea requires quite a lot of money and is (apparently) quite bizarre to some people. I’m not sure what’s wrong with everyone!
So I find myself looking at job websites and going through the motions my friends went through to get a graduate job. We’ll see what happens.
Having returned from my trip through Africa almost a fortnight ago, I’m back to where I was before I left, slowly working on the business. It seems however that the country, or at least our economy isn’t quite the same as before I left. Sure it wasn’t exactly as healthy as it has been in recent years before I went but at least no one was using the “R” word.
Recession, it’s a word that worries me. It’s the general feeling of the unknown felt by everyone as they try to guess just how bad things might get. Unemployment is at the same level as it was in the middle of the last recession in 1991 and retail sales are down to their lowest level for two and a half years. I won’t mention home repossessions or increasing debt. It all just makes me wonder if I should bother. I mean, if I set up a business which relies on people buying car number plates (which many people consider frivolous) will there actually be enough of a market for it left? Should I just cut my loses and get a job?