My friend Christine Martell in Oregon wrote about the struggle she is now having with her business, VisualsSpeak. Christine uses photographs and drawings to help people figure out strategies and dreams, in order for them to be successful in life and business. Unfortunately, demand for Christine’s services is way down right now, something that is happening to a lot of businesses both large and small.
Christine courageously posted about her failing business on her blog, under the title “My Business Has Cracked!” She recognized that some of her failure was due to mistakes that Sonia Simone documented in a blog post entitled ”7 Things Dumb Small Businesses Do That You Can’t Afford (Especially Now).” But, I feel that in this business climate, demand is down for many discretionary spending items, and that this is not a failure on Christine’s part. Within hours and over the next few days, some of Christine friends, colleagues, and clients posted long supportive comments and stories, showing that social networking, even when it is virtual, can bring people together for support. I wrote in my comments:
“Being beaten up by being in business is a story that any of us who have been in business for ourselves can tell. Somedays I tell myself how dumb I was to give up tenure at a university in Toronto in 1996 in order to go into business full time, and other days I remember how bored I was doing the same thing year after year, being surrounded by the depths of cloned mediocrity called academia.
Business is a rough game, and most don’t succeed in the end. But art can also be frustrating and usually not very rewarding financially. To be successful in either endeavour, you need to make lots of mistakes, put in your 10+ years of experience/10,000 hours suggested by Malcolm Gladwell, and have lots of luck. But to succeed at all, you have to keep trying.
Business just seems simple – as Father Guido Sarduci said on Saturday Night Live, “you buy something, and just sell it for more.” I found that reading the book “Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics” by Eric D. Beinhocker to be very helpful in deepening my understanding of business as a set of experiments in a complex environment. From an evolutionary perspective, the environment for business has radically shifted, and those who are offering something that is valued by the market in the new reality will succeed, as they are better adapted.
Unfortunately, that means that businesses like MacDonalds will grow by 1000+ stores this year, and funeral homes will not go under (excuse the pun) as the baby boomers arrive (dead) at their doors.
If you want a business in this new environment, you need to figure out what YOU can do that would be attractive to the new (and remaining old) sets of needs that people will still have over the next five years.”
I worried afterwards that I had not been warm and supportive enough in my comments, but the message I wanted to leave with Christine was that she needed to not give up, but try again with a new idea that fitted what people need right now. Christine generously replied:
“Gary, thank you for saying business is hard. If I read one more blog post about the 10 Easy Steps to Your Business Success, I’m going to scream. As a matter of fact, my feed reader is full of unread posts because I am avoiding them.
You are totally right that art as a business can be even tougher. Been there. But it is way more fun. I think I am getting closer to the 10,000 hours doing visual communication, and I don’t think I will give it up totally, just in the current form. I don’t know about the luck, but it does seem to be a big part of it. Luck specifically in timing.
I do think you are right in low overhead, low production. And I certainly have a lot of IP that should be able to repurposed. Love to hear more of your ideas about where the new market opportunities might lie.”
We are all trying to think through the new market realities right now. For example, what research or presentations should Brandon Hall Research be doing in the next year? I’d love to hear your views on that question.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
The “ten easy steps” folks mostly fall into a few groups: people extremely eager to sell you their ten steps (see “infomercial”), people recycling nostrums (see Stephen Covey), oversimplifiers, bloggers working on SEO, and people whose walls are covered with inspirational posters.
In my career as an independent consultant, I’ve often smuggled less-traditional approaches into a project by wrapping them in labels that the client uses. If they’re all about “training,” then job aids become on-the-job training and performance support becomes transfer of training.
Doesn’t always work. Sometimes you have the combination of a client who thinks it’s really important to go through the manual page by page. And sometimes that combines with two things: not having tenure (as so many experts seem to have), and having bills to pay.
Gary,
One thing I have noticed as I talk with colleagues is many of them have no work. But as I talk with them, they are thinking about it like it is just another gap like all others they have had in their careers. When I ask them what they are doing about it, they tell me they are doing the same things they always have done. When I ask them how they have adapted their offerings to the new market realities, they look at me like I am crazy.
Independent and small business people in general have to remain optimistic in order to survive. Not sure how much that is serving some people right now. Seems there needs to be balance and a lot of creative innovative thinking.
@Dave – Going through the manual page by page reminds me of the SwissAir plane that crashed into the ocean near Halifax, Nova Scotia a few years ago. There was smoke in the cockpit, and the co-pilot suggested landing in Halifax immediately. The pilot was going through the manual to see what the correct procedure was when they crashed.
In the present crisis, many of our responses, on both a group and individual level seems to be going through the manual. Bailouts are just ways of priming the same pump, when in fact the well has gone dry from overuse.
@Christine – A small business is a high risk at the best of times. One reason is that the skill set required to develop a startup and take it to a going concern of say 50-100 people is immense. At a minimum, I wouldn’t get involved with any new company that didn’t have a management team of at least 4-5 people, and enough capital to survive for a year or more. The skills needed include managing finances (an accounting type of personality), business strategy (a clever hyper-competitive CEO who has learned from lots of mistakes), technical management(a genius super geek who can also relate to people), marketing (a publicity hound who understands how to get positive attention), sales (someone who actually likes calling people and closing sales, and is very good at it), and product development (a visionary who excites people with deep knowledge of the industry and the creative ability to translate needs into products and/or services that people want).
That’s my startup dream team. But beyond that, you need to be able to differentiate your offering from all others, and the good luck of finding contract opportunities to start the cash flow.
“I now figure that of every five trips I take, two are going to get messed up,” said Michael Steiner, the executive vice president of Ovation Corporate Travel, a travel management company whose clients include major corporations as well as smaller companies like law firms.
Like a lot of us, Mr. Steiner has good Internet skills. In years past, that usually sufficed to manage individual travel. But, of course, disruptions were not as frequent back then, and a few minutes online — or a call to an airline customer service center or a hotel — could usually patch things up.
Tom