by Billy Jaan

Created on: January 30, 2007   Last Updated: March 21, 2009

The hardest part of running a successful business isn't setting it up. Of course it matters that you secure the finance, lay the correct foundations, know your market and offer a superior product or service at just the right time. If you retail, nothing beats an attractive shop front with carefully thought out features and a thorough marketing campaign to lure in buyers and persuade them to part with their cash.and return later to do the same again, and again.

The hardest part is actually maintaining and developing a business that is successful in the face of competition and changing markets, as well as perhaps your own development and changing outlook and circumstances. Lucky the business that doesn't hit tough times which test creativity and will as well as sheer stamina. The point is, the owner makes a commitment and does what it takes to protect their investment.

This morning, I answer the phone and it's my cousin complaining (again) about her "useless" husband. Apparently channel surfing is his favourite sport now; it used to be the local Sunday morning football league. The analogy strikes me as I listen to her ranting. I wonder if he really did give up playing because his knee hurts (as he claims), or simply because he got fed up of being nagged all day Saturday for the sin he would commit on Sunday. There was a time she used to cheer him from the sidelines, and shout at the referee for bad calls. Now she just shouts at him.

I am wondering whether this is why so many marriages are failing these days. At the outset, we are seduced by the packaging and engaged by our sensory response to all that glitters or even gets happily muddy in a most manly way. Perhaps like the shopper who resorts to retail therapy we encounter a partner who makes us feel amazing and somehow has us believe that just their being in our life will make good our own short-comings and deliver the promised Happily Ever After.

In the initial thrill of our new "acquisition", we want to show off to our friends and family, as well as disappear behind closed doors in deep and sensuous exploration. Biochemically sabotaged to bond, tousselled hair and crumpled sheets are simply one vista of our exploration. We do not see the trail of socks that will later cause tempers to fray, nor the way he never buys milk and how pizza four times a week is actually totally indigestible.

Like a business that's up and running, the doors are open and gradually it dawns that day to day trade does indeed involve a lot

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