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| "Portrait of a Merchant," Jan Gossaert, c. 1530 Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Open Access Program |
Hello friends,
If there's any single lesson I have learned from my non-creative life that can easily be imported into the world of my creative business aspirations, it's that being good at what you do doesn't mean you're qualified to run a business doing what you do.
One of my first jobs when I was still a teenager was as a receptionist for a local office of a company that recruited people to sell products door to door. The guy who ran my office was barely older than I was, never received any kind of education or training in business management, never worked as an assistant manager or in another managerial capacity before, but had been the top seller in the state at a very young age, so they put him in charge of a regional office. The office failed and was shut down within only a few months.
He didn't know how to lead, voicing platitudes in attempts to motivate those under him rather than actively making changes that would address our concerns. He worked hard, but his time, energy and resources were often wasted because they weren't channeled correctly. A few times he violated state labor law, not out of malice I don't think, but because he'd never been taught to take things like that seriously (and maybe didn't know what they were).
Looking back on it I feel bad for the guy, but at the time he was an awful person to work for.
Since then, in a variety of work and extra-curricular environments, I've encountered a number of common management mistakes that have led to serious consequences. I have actively sought to remember and learn from these mistakes so that I don't repeat them as a management level professional at my current job or as a future creative business owner.
This is what I have learned:
You must delegate. A business owner (or other top level management) must oversee all aspects of the business and does not have time to get into the weeds. If your business or other endeavor is a labor of love it can be very difficult to let go of control, but it is necessary to avoid becoming overextended. And an overextended manager becomes a bottleneck. Things awaiting approval don't get approved and don't move forward. Meetings with staff, where staff was counting on your guidance, get pushed back or canceled, and then your staff can't do their jobs.
But what, you may ask, if my creative business is a one person show and I don't have employees to whom I can delegate? The same principle still applies. Can you hire someone else to do your photography? Maybe a friend or someone from Craigslist willing to cut you a deal? Can you get someone online to design your logo and other marketing materials? Can you hire your niece who is in high school or college to do your social media and Instagramming?
You may also want to consider farming out some of your components if you can do it without compromising the quality of your product or completely eliminating its crafty charm. As an example, I recently discovered Ponoko, a website where you can order laser cut components in a variety of materials. Imagine that instead of hand-forming every single component of whatever it is you're making you streamlined the process by having the components laser cut for you and then you assembled and added the finishing touches yourself. Ponoko isn't the only service that does this or something similar - look around. And Etsy now offers a whole slew of partnership resources that link sellers up with outside manufacturers.
In a similar vein, don't micromanage; trust your employees (or outside contractors or services) to be able to do their jobs until they give you reason not to, and don't spend your time in the weeds.
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| "Monkey Business in Old Holland," Coryn Boel After David Teniers the Younger, 17th Century |
You must adapt. I have noticed a tendency among owners, directors and CEOs who have been in their positions for a long time to fall into the mistaken belief that what has worked in the past will continue to work in the future. But the world changes, and so businesses and other organizations need to regularly take a fresh look at their focus, their product offerings, their marketing, their branding, their target audience, their internal processes and their overall business model and make continuous updates. Online shopping and other Internet businesses have completely changed the landscape in only a few years and are continuing to shift and adapt. To survive businesses must keep up with consumers' changing expectations in an age of dramatically increased options, convenience and customization, and must offer something special that consumers can't find anywhere else. Simply offering a good product isn't enough anymore.
Furthermore, business owners and managers who fail to adapt often become dismissive of other people's new ideas or, perhaps more importantly, their legitimate concerns about real problems. Not only is it a terrible waste of resources not to consider good ideas from other people, it also breeds resentment among the people you work with.
Being an Executive Means Executive Decision Making
Indecision is death. If you want anything to get done you have to make a plan and stick to it, even if you're not 100% sure it's the right plan or there were many different ways you could have gone (this is some advice I could definitely learn to follow better myself).
Certainly, do your due diligence. Don't be reckless. But eventually there needs to be a reasonable cutoff point. And when you do have a plan, make sure it's a detailed, chronological plan. Outline your steps before moving forward to ensure you don't get ahead of yourself, and set internal deadlines, even if it's just you. Build in time for setbacks and for trial and error. Your plan should also account for the resources (time, money, social capital) that will be sucked into each and every step. You don't want to get halfway down the road and realize that all of a sudden you don't have any more resources to dedicate. You can always revisit the plan and make adjustments if something isn't working, which brings us to...
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| French 18th Century Ground Plan for an Academy of the Fine Arts Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Open Access Program |
Know When to Cut Your Losses
This is a big one. Sometimes projects turn out to be nothing but an endless pit. Kill them swiftly and ruthlessly, even if you have a lot invested in them (you'll often find, after the fact, the largest part of that investment was emotional and that this was the source of your resistance).
In game theory there's a concept called buying a dollar. In this game, someone comes to you and one other person and says I have a dollar that I will sell to the highest bidder. However, I will keep both your highest bids but only one of you gets the dollar. The other person immediately bids 25 cents. You bid 26 cents, standing to make 74 cents. He bids 50 cents. You bid 51. He bids 75. You bid 80. He bids 90. Now you're starting to sweat. If he bids higher than you, you're out 80 cents because the person selling the dollar gets to keep both your bids. So you bid a dollar, hoping to break even.
Well, the other guy is now out 90 cents so what does he do? He bids a $1.01, hoping to only lose one cent in order to protect his 90 cent investment. You bid $1.02. And now you're both bidding more than a dollar to keep a dollar, hoping to protect what you have already invested. And it keeps going. You probably shouldn't have bid to begin with, but once that damage was done you should have set an upper limit at which you were willing to cut your losses and walk away.
The shorthand phrase for this behavior is "throwing good money after bad." It applies equally to time. For instance, you may find yourself continuing to wait in a line you've already been in for a long time because you've already spent so much time, even though the amount of time you still have left may end up eclipsing the amount of time you've already spent. This prevents you from leaving and doing other things (which implicates a related business concept: opportunity cost). Another real world example? Gambling addiction. If you're trying to turn your creative hobbies into a business rather than just something you do for fun, don't become addicted to your failing creative projects.
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| "Card Players," Josse van Craesbeeck, c.1645 Digital Image Courtesy of the Getty Open Content Program |
So how about you, readers? Have you learned any lessons in your non-creative pursuits that you think can be applied to creative entrepreneurship? Share in the comments!
Emily
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