How to succeed in business

Yeah, there’s no “without really trying”; you will need to be trying a lot.

The scariest conversation I’ve ever had involved a friend telling me that, on my advice, she had invested in another friend’s business.

While I was unemployed, I took a class, and briefly did some tax preparation. Seeing the different sources of income and deductions and liabilities, as well as dealing with my own job situation, really got it into my head that things have changed. Pensions are rare now, as is starting at one company when you’re young and retiring from there decades later. People who had been very responsible savers and investors had suffered huge losses. That wasn’t just stocks. People believed in homes as good investments, and that bubble burst.

It just felt like all of the rules were out the window, and it was as good a time to gamble as any. If you had something different you wanted to try, and some resources to do it, go for it.

I told her that being supportive of something that she was already doing. I was saying, “Good for you!” Well, I thought that’s what I was saying. What I didn’t know is that another friend was also trying to get something started, and she needed funding, and apparently what I said sounded like “Go!”

It seems to be working out okay. They both still have their day jobs, and they have the sides where they are following their abilities and their passions. It keeps them busy, and more satisfied than they would be with only the day job, which – well, I better not even go there.

So, it’s not that I was wrong, or I didn’t mean what I said, but the bottom dropped out of my stomach when I realized I was responsible for the allocation of a few thousand dollars. Don’t ever sneak something like that up on me.

I have been thinking about this more as there is sort of a perfect storm around the topics of money and creative endeavors now. First of all, there is me wanting to be a professional writer, though still being much better at writing than at marketing it. There was a storm over an email thread between writer Nate Thayer and The Atlantic over payment, which led to many other comments and tweets and blog posts from various writers on the topic of getting paid for work.

In addition, it is something I think about a lot with music. The bands that I review are at different levels of establishment, and they are doing different things to try and succeed. Some of them may very much hope to get signed by a label, and for some of them that would be a bad thing.

It’s not an automatic bad, but again, the rules have changed. Under the old model, it was fairly common that the label would get the money from record sales, and the band would get the touring money. That worked for a lot of people. The problem now is that record sales don’t make the money that they used to, so you get this thing called 360 deals, where the label is taking from everywhere.

Now, I’m not saying that the label shouldn’t make any money. The point is that there isn’t as much money now, period, and you need to know that going in. You are probably not going to get extremely wealthy. It’s not a reason not to try and succeed, but you should probably be doing it for more than the money, and also, you need to have the right frame of mind. If someone offers you a contract, you need to decide its real value. What are they really offering?

Part of the reason this is a concern for me is that some of these bands that I will eventually be reviewing, or possibly a few that I have reviewed, seem like they are being corporately molded, and so while they could have had a unique voice, they are becoming something not of their own making. And yes, you can become extremely wealthy being a corporate product, but not everyone goes down that route successfully either. There is a limited market, even for that, and it feels saturated to me, though that could be personal aversion.

Don’t be afraid to read things carefully, and ask questions, and propose changes. Most of all, don’t be afraid to walk away. Sometimes you can do exactly what they would have you do on your own, and then they are not taking a cut.

I was impressed with some of the different things In Passing has done. They have been creative. Some bands are using Twitter effectively. Bands set up channels on Youtube, Reverbnation, and SoundCloud. I can only imagine some of the things that I will be seeing as I keep this up, and if at some point I see things that are really effective or not effective, I will post about that.

A lot of them keep their day jobs. I have my day job. With some of the mailing lists I am on, there is a lot of push to go into copywriting, or various kind of freelance writing, because “You can be getting paid right now to write!” Well, that’s kind of true, except that I would have to build up a customer base, negotiate, deal with people who wanted to pay me with “exposure”, and it would take up a great deal of mental energy, which this job does not (and it has good health insurance). That’s my choice.

In terms of whether I will be effective, getting in where I want to, I don’t know. I had all these things I was going to do when I got back from vacation, and a cold that I picked up while there has dragged on, bringing in a secondary and a tertiary infection, and I am really behind schedule. I can confrim that would have been worse if I was freelancing, but then I probably woulnd’t have been able to take a vacation.

So, how do you follow your dreams? First, have your eyes wide open. That’s going to take some courage, but then it should also inspire some creativity. If you can get that idea that no one else has, about how to be heard and seen, then go for it. This is the time to be non-traditional; now more than ever! But we’re creative types, right?

Now, if your goal is merely to be rich, or famous, possibly the best starting point is to be venal, but I just can’t recommend it. Sometimes you need new goals.