Starting a new business is something totally new to me, I’ve seen many friends go through the process of starting businesses to varying degrees of success.

I’m naturally a shy person by nature, and like not to be the centre of attention at a party, instead love hearing about the lives of others.

Covid has really changed this for me for several reasons, but the main one is being cut off from my usual circle of friends and family. I actually have felt pretty isolated in 2021, except of course for the conversations I have with my beautiful wife Anna :-).

Most of my family and friends live in Queensland, and being a resident of NSW, even merely a few kilometres from the border, has caused the Queensland government to throw me in the ‘high risk’ category, as if I was living in the heartland of the covid outbreaks in Sydney and Melbourne (even though that is over 1000km away??).

So unless I had some sort of medical or critical work appointment, I haven’t been able to cross from NSW into QLD. Although weirdly it is ok to have a coffee with my QLD friends at “the wall” the bright orange water barriers erected on the state lines of NSW and QLD. Cause as we all know Covid cant jump the orange barriers 1m high barriers and be passed into QLD, but it can jump 1000kms from Sydney to Northern NSW! (Yes the covid rules are crazy, just like the whole sit and stand rules around drinking at a pub, lets no go there)

So, I’ve had to make and form new friendships, in particular with my neighbours, since in lockdown, they are the only people I really regularly see. Honestly it has been amazing, stepping out of my comfort bubble of friends and meeting new people. I have really enjoyed the new friendships I’ve formed, I have some top neighbours, so you could say the Covid lockdowns have been a blessing, forcing me to meet new people, and form some wonderful friendships and turns out potential business partners too!

Going back to the starting topic, learning, as I mentioned earlier, I am a shy person by nature, but heading into the small business world, and to generate an income from the selling of the products with business, I knew I would have to get out of my shell, and be comfortable meeting new people and generating working relationships.

I guess it took a Covid lockdown or two, to help me come out of my shell, meeting my new neighbours, was the perfect training and learning I needed, to help kick start my level of confidence of meeting new people!