Nothing to waste: The advantage of being under-funded
Start-up companies who have too much money often blow it. There’s an advantage to being under-funded to keep you from making mistakes.
I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember the first dot-com boom of 1999. But I’ll describe what it was like for CD Baby to have a booth in the exhibit hall of these conferences:
- 1998. Me at a plain table, talking with people and handing out flyers. Not many other booths.
- 1999. Me at a plain table, talking with people and handing out flyers. Other booths have big LCD displays and fancy corporate backdrops.
- 2000. Me at a plain table, talking with people and handing out flyers. Other booths have booth-babe models, fancy multimedia displays, and giving away $50 items.
- 2001. Me at a plain table, talking with people and handing out flyers. Others have bought out an entire pavillion, laser light shows, giving away cars, offering a million dollar prize.
- 2002. Me at a plain table, talking with people and handing out flyers. Not many other booths.
I remember being pressured during the dot-com boom to take venture capital. But my response was always, “I’m profitable and have plenty of cash. The company doesn’t need more money.”
They’d come back saying we could “expand our reach” or other vague terms that to me sounded like blowing money on ineffective advertising.
They’d say we could have a big marketing budget, but I’d say, “Marketing doesn’t cost money. ‘Marketing’ is another way of saying ‘being considerate’. It’s all in how you talk with people.”
By then they’d decided I was just crazy and would surely fail, which was fine with me, because it let me get back to focusing on my clients and customers, undistracted by investors.
Positive Vibes and Respect to you, have a great week, thanks for the great article, I have the same approach of connecting with people in a real and sincere effort to bring something in their life to give more happiness.
Michael
I think for musicians, this translates to something like this: if you're a band with missing members, don't wait around until you find the perfect member. Figure out how to play your music without that piece. Or have a rotating slot for your friends and acquaintances to fit in. Just get out and play -- if that's what you set out to do.
If you stop, that means you're delaying your success by that much, whatever the excuses.
ari
this makes so much sense to me... thanks for sharing your vast experience of success with us!
t
Very enlightening. Thanks.
Interesting point. I used to work at exhibitions and the I noticed was that most customers knew the 'booth babe' was just there to look beautiful. Very nice too, but very useless if wanted to actually talk about the business in question.
Meet and greet is mentally hard graft if you're doing it day in, day out. However I have come to same realisation. There is no substitute. All the really successful 'house hold' names I've met can really 'work' a room when they too. I don't belive this is by accident.
I love this! My own mantra for the uninitiated (and, sadly, easily bamboozled) is "Marketing is talking to people." Period. If you unpack that, there's all kinds of other stuff, like "you have to really listen to really talk" and "you have to really understand people before you can really listen" (or come up with a great product/service to market). But the germ of it is in that one statement.
Bravo to you, sir, for sticking to your guns and for telling the world to do the same.
Good news for those of us who are financially challenged!
Absolutely.
I've been doing this for years one customer at a time. Offer great service, a premium product, a clean easy to understand web site, and just be pleasant and caring of everyone who asks you for help.
No expensive marketing campaigns. Just keep plugging and be where your clients are.
EC
Good stuff... a great example of being different as well.
Sweet trailer for your bike. I could get a marshall stack and my rack on that! LOL
I remember those days, Derek...Indiegrrl was the booth next to you with no big displays, no giant giveaways, and our sponsors were CDBaby, Oasis, and like minded businesses. When Revlon came to us in 1999 and wanted to sponsor the first Indiegrrl tour, we said, "You seem to be missing the point..." We sat and talked to people and handed out flyers at the first Rockrgrl Conference and at the second one...the only difference between conferences was that there were tons of .com companies that had gone out of business by throwing money out the window by the time the second one came around.
The slight, subtle panic that comes from being underfunded (or underemployed, for that matter) is incredibly motivated. As a writer/editor in my non-musician life, i worked as a freelancer for many years -- making a go of it full-time in September, 2001. Not the best time, considering i didn't have much savings in the bank. But i was so motivated that it didn't take long to be successful. It's not about the money, in music or in life -- it's about the persistence and commitment to longevity.
Absolutely! Money is not the miracle cure so many people think it is. The belief that a lack of money is holding you back keeps the power to build your career in someone or something outside of yourself. But that's not where your power resides! Thanks for the reminder, Derek.
Why baffle 'em with BS when you can be genuine. Either you've "got it" or you don't. And you've got it Derek! Thanx, Peace & Love
It just doesn't get more elegant than this. Brilliant as always. BTW, I just noticed your creative commons license for the first time. Thank you. I've wondered how to propagate your words. I send people to you but now I can go pandemic. Are there any new words for cool?
LOL!
SongNet!
Still giving out flyers & educating the community for free!
:)
The lack of funds in The beginning of The New York Songwriters Circle has actually been the reason we grew. we learned to work with each other and with very little. We Kept it simple and never lost site of who we were and why we started the company. There were a lot of people who didn't take me or my partner seriously but it didn't matter. In a funny way, because we didn't start out with huge funding, (just our own picket money) we didn't have anyone telling us what to do and we stayed the course.
I guess the challenge is to manage that same feeling as you grow financially.
...enjoyed it tremendously, it takes vision, common sense, and maturity to withstand such hype and to keep it real, and it appears you had plenty of all.
A tip of the hat to Derek and to all the entrepreneurs who keep it real.
Ky Ekinci
Co-Founder
Office Divvy
____________
on twitter: @OfficeDivvy
hey you had money for printing flyers, that's a budget ;)
How did the man say it? KISS.
Stretching the metaphor...
In Robert Townsend's classic business book, Up the Organization, he points out that many companies made the mistake of trying to waste money the way General Motors did, thinking that must be what big successful companies do. I thought of that after the Wall Street meltdown of 2008 when the GM executives were caught flying to Washington to ask for money ... in dam private jet.
Stretching further, Niccolo Machiaveli pointed out that a government must be frugal. He didn't have to add that Rome declined into a stupid empire after the upper class started believing in conspicuous wealth.
Come to think of it, like in some of today's non democracies. I would see at college how young kids from those countries were overly concerned with affluence.
Concentrate with one thing,focus on the priority,develop on main business,
Distraction or development, You must keep a Balance of it