Ooog

[bladespark]

Today is one of those days that makes me tell would-be entrepreneurs to not quit their day job. Because oooooog, setting your own hours sounds great, but if you're going to actually make money, you sometimes need to give yourself some serious overtime, and you don't get time and a half for it.

I cut and sewed pretty much straight through the day, with two breaks, one to go run our renter's application down, and the other for dinner. I even shut off firefox so that I wouldn't get side tracked by interesting websites, though I did keep IRC open, else I'd have gone mad with boredom. I am not set up to focus on a single task. I just don't work that way.

Anyhow, today is an example of why most fursuit makers who try to go into business doing it fail. In several ways, in fact. Today, you see, I am working to a deadline. A customer was promised something at the end of the month, and I will deliver on that promise. I'm not perfect on this, and my website has the little "look, I may have to change this schedule, nothing is set in stone" disclaimer, but if you let yourself just put things off and put things off and put things off, you never get things done, and you have unhappy customers, and you have no money.

Which is the other problem I'm happily heading off today. (The no money bit, not the unhappy customer bit.) My current customer has paid his supply down payment, which is long since spent on all the stuff I use for the suit, and sometimes a smidge extra which generally buys me groceries. But he hasn't paid the rest. I don't require the full payment up front, and indeed prefer not to receive it until the suit is done or near done. I've seen WAY too many fursuiters get into the trap of taking full payments right away. They get their thousand bucks, or however much it is, and they stick the suit at the end of their queue of stuff to do, and then they go spend the money. And then, oh then, when in a month or season or however long it takes to get to that bit of the queue, they are broke! The money is spent, and the work hasn't been done. And they don't want to do the work now, because they will get nothing for it. It's already paid for, there is no reward for completion. Not only that, but they need more money now to pay the rent, so they must go after new commissions, which in turn will be put off for months while the money is spent today, and they get further and further in debt to their customers and themselves, and it's just not fun at all. But so many suit makers do this. I see them doing it, and I kind of shake my head and hope that their customers eventually get their suits.

But myself, oh virtuous person that I am, I try very hard not to do this, and nearly always succeed, and certainly never do it serially, so I never dig the hole deeper than one suit. (It was one suit deep before finishing the sheep, for example, as that was late in being finished, and thus ended up getting paid for before it was done.)

Anyhow, I am tired, tired, tired after working much harder than I normally would today, but I feel good. By the end of the week I should have a completely finished fursuit, which I can then get paid a nice tidy sum for, and I will have all the money I need for deposits and moving trucks and other such things required by our move. So all is well.

Comments

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I could NEVER me self-employed. Ever. I don't have that kind of self-discipline - and I hate self discipline at the best of times