My bad business advice
If you’re going to think big, think big. Otherwise, you’re trying to make Hollywood dreams happen in Toledo. (Photo by John Margolies)
As a business owner, I often hear from friends (and friends of friends) who are headed down that path. They’re looking for advice and encouragement.
Often, I can’t help very much — we have a mismatch of values and priorities.
One woman called wanting to learn about finding commercial space for a school she hadn’t started yet. She was disappointed in my recommendation that she start humbly (for instance, leasing from a church) instead of forging ahead with a multi-year commercial lease in a high-traffic area. Her plan was to raise money, which sounded terrifying to me.
Another frequent topic is the business plan. (“When will you start your business?” “Well, I’m writing my business plan…”) People can get stalled out at this stage for years. I sacrilegiously suggest that they don’t need a formal business plan. Such plans make sense when you have to justify yourself to someone else — for instance, an investor. But for yourself, you don’t need to figure out every nuance of how you’ll get from point A to point B. You just need to figure out how your business can make more than it spends. You can figure out your initial budget and service offerings and then see how it goes, adapting to what’s working and taking advantage of new opportunities.
The list goes on. Logos, websites, press releases, mission statements — to me, none of that stuff matters as much as connecting with people who want what you’re offering. Everything you do is ultimately for them.
When I first started teaching music lessons, I lived in a shabby one-bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood. I taught piano lessons in my bedroom and guitar lessons in my living room. I had a terrible self-designed logo and an equally terrible website. I found my clients via postcards and flyers placed at local businesses. In this way, I attracted clients and customers who didn’t care much about formality and polish. They were willing to take a chance on me, and they spread the word among like-minded people.
Now, my music school has a beautiful, professionally designed logo (a gift from a client), a decent website, and cute retail storefronts. Our clientele is a bit less bohemian and a bit more bougie. We’ve got Gantt charts and spreadsheets. It works. But it would never have worked if I had tried to start at that level.
Even now, starting a new project, I resist the pressure to have it all figured out ahead of time. I love business strategy — I teach it. But a slick, masterfully optimized approach to sales and marketing isn’t what I stand for. I’m not ready for that yet. I’ve got to listen and learn, and the best way for me to do that is to simply begin and then go from there.
If you’re thinking of starting a business — or trying to figure out what’s next for your existing business in the upheaval so many of us are experiencing — by all means, create a detailed business plan if that’s what works for you. Get everything in place so that you can launch with a level of refinement that suits the clients or customers you seek. However, it’s also permissible to start small and scrappy, experiment as you go, and evolve upward.
It’s your business. You get to choose the values you wish for your work to reflect and the manner in which you engage with your people. It can go in any direction you want. It helps to know where you’re going, but you can change your mind at any time — and how you get there is always a decision you are free to make.