RULE NO.1: NO PYJAMAS

Industrial Nutcracker Device. Read on...it will make sense later!

This is probably more for me than you.

Starting a new business is a daunting prospect when you've predominantly spent your career as an employee of established organisations, with the lovely safety net of a regular pay cheque appearing in your bank account every fortnight.

It's not my first rodeo. I've dipped my toe into the self-employed waters before. But this time, the landscape looks quite different. When I started Little Black Dress Productions, I was married and had the support of a husband with a good-paying job. My 'little' business was largely seen as something to keep me occupied. Something creative. Something fun.

Dear Tourism, Love Tab Consulting is different.

I'm properly serious about this. It needs to earn me an income. I have a mortgage. Utilities. Groceries. Two teenage children. And the occasional late-night compulsion to buy completely unnecessary things on Temu. Let me elaborate on this...for entertainment rather than advice.

Last week I bought an industrial-strength nutcracker. (Laugh away!) There is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

My neighbour has a macadamia tree that has encroached across the fence into my yard. Last month it was laden with nuts, many of which conveniently fell into my garden bed.

Macadamias! I thought. Have you seen how expensive these things are? I'm sitting on a gold mine!

So I gathered my quarry, dehydrated them and prepared for my new life of abundant, free, home-roasted macadamias. Except macadamia nuts, as it turns out, do not surrender easily.

First there's the green outer husk. Inside that is another shell apparently constructed from the same material used for bank vaults. I attacked one with the ordinary household nutcracker, akin to the one my Dad used at Christmas for cracking walnuts and Brazil nuts. It snapped in two on the first try and is now adding to the landfill problem. Clearly Australian nuts expect you to work harder. You must prove yourself worthy.

Then, as if the algorithm somehow knew of my dilemma (and I genuinely don't recall saying any of this aloud), an Industrial Strength Nut Cracker appeared in my Temu feed.

"Ideal for macadamias!" it boasted. (Good Lord. Can it read my mind now?)

Regardless, it was the answer I didn't know, it knew, I needed. So I am now the proud owner of a rather magnificent nut-cracking contraption and have successfully cracked my entire stash like an industrious squirrel preparing for a Canadian winter.

If Dear Tourism, Love Tab doesn't pay off, I'm relying on my new side hustle:

The Mad Macadamia Mistress. Website coming soon.

But I digress. Entertainingly, I hope.

I'm approaching this new chapter with equal parts excitement, determination and trepidation. And gently explaining to my Mum, who persists on asking me if I've found a new job yet? 'THIS IS MY NEW JOB!'...(breath! Let me explain it again!!) And I've decided I need some rules. Which I feel compelled to share with you.

Rule No. 1: GET DRESSED

With two teenagers still at high school, I have a very convenient reason to get out of bed every morning. The alarm goes off at 6.30am. I shower. I get dressed. I put on some make-up. I pack lunches. I attempt to wrangle two moody teenagers out the door on time.

But here's the important bit: No school drop-offs in pyjamas. Because when I arrive home, I'm not coming home for the day. I'm arriving at work.

Dear Tourism, Love Tab Consulting might currently operate from my home office, but this is now my workplace. And that means when I sit down at my desk, my working day has already begun.

It sounds ridiculously simple, but I think I'm going to need these little rituals. Because nobody is waiting for me to arrive.

• There's no boss checking their computer clock to ensure I've arrived on time.

• No labelling my lunch box in the communal fridge hoping no one steals it. (Because I took time to prepare something I'm looking forward to eating.)

• No colleagues gathering for the 9am meeting in the Boardroom.

• And, slightly terrifyingly, nobody is automatically depositing money into my bank account every fortnight.

  
  

It's just me.

So for now, Rule No. 1 is simple:

Get up. Get dressed. Go to work.

Even if work happens to be approximately twelve steps from the fridge.

Which, come to think of it, might be a good starting point for Rule No. 2.