I’m exhausted! Totally, hands shakingly, can’t quite see straight exhausted.
Why, you ask? Because this week we have been packing up and moving our factory.
To say it's been a roller coaster of emotions would be a gross understatement.
This latest episode started at 4pm on Thursday last week when we finally got the ‘ok’ from our new landlord that we could move into our new, ginormous, super expensive but awesome factory. It also happened to be the day our current real estate agent put up a “for lease” sign on our front gate - just reminding us, ever so bluntly that we had to be out on the 21st of February. Precisely 10 days from then.
At least we now had a place to go! Spirits were high and we definitely needed some good news so we immediately started planning what we needed to do. Our factory is 450m2, and when I say ‘our’ I really mean Matt’s. I’m happy to take full responsibility for the office, which I keep in immaculate condition (excluding Matt’s desk which is a force of its own) and the kitchen area. The plan was I’d do my two rooms and help out Matt when required. We’d be done by Thursday this week! TOO EASY!
What dreamers. What crazy, deluded dreamers.
You’d think after moving the factory before we would’ve remembered how hard it was to pack up a factory… pallet racking needs to come down, ducting needs to be uninstalled, timber piles need to be consolidated and sorted, tools, screws, sawdust - it all has to go.
Not to mention on Friday we had the snap announcement that ALL of Victoria was going into stage 4 lock down for the next 5 days. That meant NO school. We were already going to be stretched with Matt’s 2IC being a graphic designer who would much rather be researching fonts than cleaning spider shit off dusty machinery. I felt adding a 5 year old to the clean up crew probably wasn’t the best/safest/most sensible thing we could do so we did the only thing we could. Rang Grandma.
Grandma saved the day! We got a full 50 hours to get the factory packed up. We didn’t even get close to finishing but it gave us enough time to realise our gross underestimation of task verse time available and we picked up the pace.
So here we are a week later with 3 days to go. The 5 day lockdown has meant everyone is behind schedule. The new real estate agent was going to send through the new lease so we can sign it and get our machines moved into a corner of the new factory (we aren’t officially taking over until the 1st of March) but that hasn’t happened so we have to move our machines to some random factory (long story and fingers crossed a good one) for storage for the next week. Accompanying the machines we have a 40ft container filled with every single thing we need to build prefab panels so therefore contains our livelihood.
We couldn't get hold of our original crane truck driver (backlog of work) so had to go with another that can only move the big machines tomorrow! This is why my normal Friday morning writing session has been replaced by this Thursday night rant & meltdown.
There is one thing that keeps me going on days like today and it’s Matt. How the fuck does he do it? How is he so confident that the path we are on is the right one? What if it isn’t? What if he nearly killed his wife by getting her to pack scaffolding on top of 2m high wall installation panels inside a 50degree hot shipping container? What if TinyOffice never takes off and it was all for nothing?!#
But what if he’s right and this is the right path?
That path just includes some of the most sweaty, stressful, overwhelming and grubby moments I’ve ever experienced. Most entrepreneurs have an epic story behind their success. I can only hope that this ridiculous week and being forced to change our plans in the heat (literally) of the moment will be looked back upon fondly as the path we simply had to take. It will all make sense upon reflection.
One thing I can guarantee now and in the future is the incredible gratitude I’ll have for the family and friends helping us out. Grandma taking the kids on a few hours notice completely saved us. We have amazing friends who have offered to look after the kids whenever they can and a family friend just gave us the keys to a factory that we can store our machines in. Without these people around us none of this could happen. Despite the fact I can barely lift my arms up to the keyboard to type (they are so sore) I feel incredibly lucky.
