Its mental health awareness week. So, I thought I’d share this update, which might also help someone to keep fighting and never give up!
May 2024
Its never happened to me before. I always had a huge sense
of self belief and confidence. Despite having had a very chaotic, abusive and dysfunctional
childhood I wanted something better. But I’ve been beaten before, I’m almost
conditioned for it and its hard to show weakness. When your vulnerable it seems
somewhat harder to speak up and seek help because let’s be honest, we can’t
afford not to work and what would people think if they see weakness. At least
this is how us men think.
I’ve always been good at acting positive and injecting
myself with energy before walking into a room. Especially where this is a room
of staff, a football dressing room, a football pitch or a room I’m presenting
to for business. I’ve always been fearless. I’d gladly take risks and I’ve
never got too down with setbacks, mistakes or failure. But, as I approach 50
something has hit me, fear, I know it. I can feel it, I don’t like it and its
holding me back. It’s like I can’t press the spin button because I’m terrified
of the outcome.
So far everything I’ve tried recently has gone wrong. Or at
least it feels like that. I’ve come so close so many times and yet here I am
again. I never thought I would have these feelings again. But, for sure we haven’t
been blessed with good luck. Some say you make your own luck with hard work,
but I’ve been doing this day and night for many years and things just keep
working against us.
I knew form the start I didn’t want to be a reseller again.
Its harder now than it ever was. Cashflow is a huge challenge in a business where
customers expect credit and your installing equipment. We were a consultancy
and then we had to be agile. We were let down on agreements and then we had things
changing out of our control. Political unrest, recession, cost of living
crises, industry slow down and changing user habits meant that business dried
up. Plus, in our industry there is barely any profit anyway. There were online
resellers selling products to end users cheaper than we could by trade at the
major distributors. But I had no choice now, I needed to sell something to keep
us afloat and get to 3 years so we can add further options.
We joined 22 government purchasing portals, spent weeks on
quotes, almost giving it away and didn’t get one deal. This fuels my frustration
when I read about the beneficiaries of the VIP lane scandal. Were having to
agree to integrity questions, show our history and skill in the industry and
financial stability, yet these directors of dodgy companies with no history have
scarpered with our money to off shore retreats and seemingly escaped any
consequences in the biggest theft in UK history. I also wonder about councils
who promote new business and innovation. Yet won’t give any new business to a company
that has traded less than three years. Isn’t that contradictory?
I wondered if I should finally outsource some skill, instead
of being Mr Ben and doing everything myself. We changed our google presence
control and handed it over to a third party that promised us the world to try
and improve our quality and quantity of enquiries. We spent thousands and it
failed awfully. Not one opportunity. We lost what little incoming enquiries we
had. So we spent thousands to actually be worse off.
We did lots of social media, mailshots, e-shots, call outs,
and we walked the industrial estates where we lived and contacted them. Nothing
happened.
Come Christmas we knew we had to change. I did some research
and It seems the industry had shifted again, and we had now not paid ourselves
in many months. We opened up to multiple categories and rebranded to be more
than VC. We created a new product concept and prize competitions that could see
us increase profits but also get us to three years which would enable us to add
leasing and to also compete better in local authorities. It took many more
weeks and long hours to redo everything, but we did it.
Things had become tough personally. My wife was back in for surgery,
but I was not feeling great myself. All the knee surgery was now taking its
toll. Arthritis has got a grip but now it was also in my hip. I thought I had a
groin strain, but it went on for months and I later learned it was also
arthritis. I can’t run or cycle (which I loved), I can only walk, but during
winter I was falling to the floor in sudden hip pain. Added to that I started
to not feel well generally. I’ve been feeling sick for over a year with
dizziness and strong vertigo. I strongly believe that albeit I was stressed out
but the timeline of this pointed to long covid that went on for months and the
vaccine. I am not big on conspiracy theories but one of the two had left me ‘different’
that is for sure. I was then feeling desperately aggrieved with the worsening
situation in our society. The only kindness you see is for internet likes. People
obsessed with videoing horrible cruelty. Frustrated to see rich getting richer
in awful ways like the VIP priority lane and seeing daily life getting harder. Tax
evasion by people making the rules and the super-rich, companies preying on the
poor in debt for more profit, GP’s impossibly overloaded, nurses now doing doctors’
appointments, huge waiting lists, NHS falling apart, water standards, trains,
energy costs, bins, grass cutting, potholes, schools, PC nonsense, policing, crime,
constant fraud attempts, left wing nonsense, right wing nonsense, basically,
every day-to-day task seems increasingly challenging.
I wondered; I could now get back to work. The business has taken
a shift that means my wife could now run it and I could go back to work. Which is
what I love. That didn’t go well. I’m used to people wanting me and it feels
like suddenly I’m not wanted. Am I too old? Is it because I speak my mind? Which
is about treating people badly? The same companies running campaigns for PR on
the very topic. In football I spoke up about child welfare and wanting a better
system for young people in football, ever since I’ve been isolated from the
game. Or because I was friends with certain people? People I never heard from
when my wife fell ill 5 years ago. I thought I had many friends, but when it
got tough, I didn’t hear from them.
Is it because I have a business? I need a business to survive,
and it was a consultancy, and it was used by a vendor who needed a business to
administer payments in the UK. But also, I have a lot of assets, skills and drive
that can bring another business new opportunities and can lead a team to great
success. Surely that is an opportunity not a threat?
I am working constantly, within minutes of waking up till I
go to bed at 11pm nearly every night. I’ve done all aspects, marketing, social
media, web building, branding, legal, administration, logistics, deliveries,
sales etc.
Every day waking up, I say “something good today”. But all I
get through the post, on email, on the phone is either bad news, people
pitching for business or people trying to scam us, every hour, of every day.
Its draining. I’ve been saying this now for 9 months. I now have thousands of
emails across my inboxes that I have not got time to even open but are not
‘good news’ I can’t remember the last time I punched the air in a yes moment.
Some things are keeping me battling. Of course, no1 being my
poor wife. She has lived and breathed all of the challenges. I have five really
close friends and they have always helped me and supported me. God knows where I
would be without them. And of course my kids.
I told my sister how I felt. That I was close to admitting defeat.
That I had lost all my confidence and was now admitting fear, this has never
happened to me before. She told me. You need to go back to that 15, 16, 17 year
old boy. Who decided he wanted something different, and you were going to fight
for it. With no support you trained like your life depended on it and got yourself
an opportunity to play football. Had that ripped away but never took defeat. In
full plaster and multiple surgeries, you got on market stalls and sold. You
went to work and grafted and studied football. You then went on and you did
break the cycle, you raised a great family with children doing wonderful things,
you did do it and you created great memories and you would never listen to
anyone that doubted you, you proved all of them wrong. This really hit me, it
was exactly the kind of reminder and motivation I needed and got me back off
the floor. I feel like I’m independent and a leader, but I guess every material
on earth ever has got a breaking point and sometimes another voice can give you
a lift. Just like I have done to others over the years with friends, work and
football. I know self-belief and confidence are the primary source of
performance in my opinion, ahead of skill, physicality and ability.
This is why I also love watching and listening to the
wonderful former apprentice Tom Skinner. Hes my favourite ever contestant and
since the show I love the positive hard work and graft mindset that he
projects. He says things every day in Dino's café, and I don’t know if he
realises how important and what a saviour to many people he is.
He says “Don’t go home until your proud”. Well, I work from
home so I re-worded and now say to myself “Make today count”!
I know that every good thing I’ve ever done and achieved has
been when I’m outside my comfort zone, so I’m aware of this and always deliberately
put my self in them situations for that reason. Be comfortable being
uncomfortable is what I said to myself, and Tom says this a lot.
But his best line recently was “Success and everything you
dreamed of is on the other side of fear”. That hit me with perfect Timing
recently. Thankyou Tom!
So, I completely rebranded, sorted my supply chain, added
new sales methods, and completely relaunched my website and launched new social
media in line with the new approach and more currently aligned categories. This
business is now perfectly also set up so it can be run by my wife, which if a
really great job/business opportunity comes up, I could now go for it and give
it my complete focus.
The only thing I can’t do, is nothing. So lets do something,
even if it’s risky.
Tony McCool
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