24/08/2026
Hats Off | “ Week “ 3
This is actually my second rodeo 🤠
I used to think that meant it would get easier. That the mental load would lighten, the hard conversations would get smoother, and at some point I’d actually clock off on a Friday and mean it.
Spoiler: I do not mean it.
Being in business doesn’t come with an off switch. You’re thinking about it in the shower, in the middle of the night, at dinner, on a holiday you booked six months ago specifically to stop thinking about it. Not always because something is wrong, sometimes just because your brain has decided that 11pm is the perfect time to replay a client conversation from four days ago and identify seventeen things you could have said differently.
You don’t fix that. You just get better at living with it.
What experience actually gives you is clarity on what deserves your energy and what doesn’t. You get better at knowing what needs your attention at 11pm (almost nothing) and what can wait until morning (almost everything, it turns out). You get better at making decisions without all the information, at staying calm in a crisis, at looking like you have absolutely everything under control when what you actually have is a plan B, a plan C, and a very good poker face. 🃏
That’s what you’re paying for when you hire someone who’s been around the block. Not the hours on a timesheet. The decade of knowing what breaks, who to call, and how to fix it before anyone else in the room has even registered that something went wrong.
I once had a potential client respond to a marquee wedding quote with his own version of what he thought it should cost. A detailed, personal breakdown calculated by a man who had never coordinated a marquee wedding in his life, never managed a supplier in a paddock at 6am, never sweet-talked a florist into a last minute turnaround, and almost certainly never had to make a tent look like a fairytale in the pouring Hawke’s Bay rain. 🌧️
He was taking the p**s, frankly.
We responded with a very warm “good luck and we wish you all the best with your wedding” and left it at that. 😊
Because no formula in the world can measure what it costs to show up, year after year, in every kind of weather, for every kind of client, and make it look easy. That knowledge isn’t free. It was earned, one rodeo at a time.
The second rodeo is still a rodeo. You just know where to hold on.
Fellow business owners, what’s the one thing nobody warned you about? Drop it below. I have a feeling we’ve all got a story….
(Also offically my new favourite cap 🤣)
