On Tuesday night, I was sitting at home, when a random thought came into my mind. It grew quickly into a potential new business idea. Since then, I haven’t been able to sleep much because I have been running over scenarios, ideas, designs, and many other aspects of how to get this off the ground. Upon reflection, it made me think: I’m not the only one who has these ideas, but I tend to chase them and make them work more than others. I want to change that for some of you.
I grew up with parents who owned their own businesses, so I had that trait engrained in my psyche from an early age. I started my first business at 8-years-old, selling school supplies on my bus and at school. I would find cool pencils, pens and other small items that I could sell for a considerable markup to my classmates. In my school days, most kids used basic #2 pencils. I found some with sports teams’ logos on them, crazy designs, etc. I discovered mechanical pencils and introduced those to my small-town grade school. I found grips you could slide onto pencils that made them easier to hold. Yes, it sounds boring, but for a kid I made a pretty good chunk of change from that. A few years later, I expanded to include candy and other items kids wanted in school.
In my adult life, I started Stillwater Scene magazine as a single sheet of paper with an event calendar on one side and an article and venue list on the other. That was in June of 2001. By the beginning of 2002, I quit my regular job and Stillwater Scene was a full-time career which I sustained for 15 years. I designed a website for Stillwater Scene and then decided I could design websites for others, as well. I started doing graphic design, based on the success of Stillwater Scene as well. A few years later, I started a monthly, one-nighter comedy club with a friend with just a few bucks and some negotiation and ingenuity. That club lasted for four years, successfully, and the business model was even mirrored by another couple after I closed it. Most recently, I have changed the culture of karaoke in Stillwater by doing it a little differently.
Maybe I’ve been lucky in all of those adventures, but I think I approached every single business carefully and with as little risk as possible while planning for every potential hurdle. I’ll admit, I have been pretty lucky too. Out of necessity, most of my businesses started small and grew naturally to what they became. I don’t have a lot of money. I don’t have the best credit. I just have ideas and the fortitude to carry them through. For example, the original idea for the comedy club was to be a full-time location in downtown Stillwater. After crunching the numbers and reviewing the business plan financials, my partner and I decided it was too risky; but we didn’t give up.
We found a local hotel with a rarely-used ballroom that could be our “showroom.” The hotel could also provide the food and drink portion of the show, utilizing their bar and grill area with a scaled-down menu specifically for those in attendance for the shows. Of course, travelling comedians also need a place to stay, so we negotiated a couple of hotel rooms for those from out of town. Additionally, I used my contacts through Stillwater Scene to get the comedians a free meal, low-cost advertising, and a built-in marketing audience who might be interested in attending a comedy show.
Plus, my partner and I did virtually all the work. We set up the room before each show and cleaned it up afterwards. We hung the posters. We sold the tickets. We greeted and seated people when they arrived to the venue. My partner was normally the host of the show while I handled music and introductions at the beginning. It was all us and everyone who came to the shows knew it. I still get asked about those shows to this day.
Once we realized that Stillwater wasn’t probably ready for a full-time brick-and-mortar comedy club, we pitched the one-nighter idea to a couple of different venues, who didn’t see the potential that we saw. Finally, once we secured a venue and started doing shows, those other venues that turned us down in the beginning contacted us offering more to get us to bring the comedy club to them. It turned into one of the busiest nights of the month for the hotel’s bar and restaurant and we were making a profit, too.
That’s just one example of how I took an idea and was able to scale it down to better fit my abilities and make it successful. Keep in mind, while I was doing all of that for the comedy club, I was still publishing Stillwater Scene, so don’t think having a full-time job should stop you from exploring and chasing your dreams of entrepreneurship.
If you have an idea that you think could make a good business, don’t hold back. I’m not saying throw thousands of dollars at it blindly to see if you can make it work on the fly. That is a big mistake far too many people make in business. I’m aware that everyone doesn’t have access to the kind of money it takes to start a business. I didn’t either, but I still made it work. Here are a few tips to consider if you feel like trying to start something of your own.
- Write a business plan. Most business plans are in-depth documents that are used to secure funding for your business. If you need outside funding to start, then spend the time writing out your idea and plotting out financials that will hopefully impress those that could end up backing your idea. If you are trying to open without using a bank, relative or friend for funding, you should still write a business plan. It doesn’t have to be as in-depth, but it will give you an evolving document that can help guide you to success. Too many businesses fail because they don’t have a plan. It happens every day. How many times have you seen a restaurant change hands from one owner to another only to be closed a year later? Much of the reason for that is because of lack of planning.
- Start small. Don’t sign a five-year lease on a piece of prime real estate right out of the gate. Don’t spend your entire savings on equipment for your full vision immediately. Many businesses spend their entire bankroll before they even open and that is terrible planning. If you want to start a comedy club, find an acceptable space to rent occasionally and keep your expenses low for a while until you have built up the kind of audience that can support you in a full-time location. In virtually every business, there are ways to start small to keep your expenses down. Limit your operating hours, minimize your staff, offer limited services to begin with and add more as you grow.
- Do the work yourself. Are you opening a bar? You better plan to be a bartender. Do you want to open a restaurant? You better learn how to cook, clean and wait tables too. Are you starting a magazine? You better plan to do the writing, layout, printing, ad sales, distribution and everything else yourself. The more work you do keeps your expenses down and that is especially important in the beginning. As your business grows, you can hire more staff and hand off some responsibilities to them. Don’t think because you’re the owner that you don’t need to do some of the grunt work.
- Keep your idea to yourself. Before you launch your new enterprise, tell as few people as possible. It’s not completely about being paranoid that someone else may take your idea and run with it, but that is part of it. It’s also about not letting your friends or family become a negative impact on your idea. Especially if it seems like a crazy idea. Look at the world we live in today. The whole damn place is crazy! If you believe in your idea, you can make it work. It will take some dedication, time and research, but you can make it work.
- Do not hire your friends. If you do need to have other employees, you need to hire the best people for the position. Don’t hire the first person that walks in. Interview several people before making a decision. If your friend truly fits the position well, you might be able to make it work as long as you both agree beforehand that work and friendship are separate. Still, I wouldn’t recommend it. It turns out badly more often than it works.
- Always be marketing. You’ve opened the doors. You’ve been talking about the new business for a month before it opened. Your first week was phenomenal and busier than you ever dreamed. Everyone is loving your new business. Six weeks later, business is down 75%. What happened? Likely, you stopped aggressively marketing your business as you were before you opened. It’s easy to get bogged down in daily business tasks after you have opened, but you should always include marketing in those daily tasks. Marketing is easier than ever before with the use of websites and social media. Do you realize there are businesses out there that don’t use these cheap advertising options? Well, many of them have closed. I recently saw one business that was so badly using social media that they were posting animal memes and jokes when their business had nothing to do with animals. They recently closed after being around for over 40 years. Don’t be dumb.
- Ask for advice. I know I said to keep your idea to yourself, but if you find yourself backed into a corner, ask for advice. Find someone you know who runs their own business and ask how they got through a specific obstacle. Search for online support groups. In a town like Stillwater, you can probably even talk to someone in the same field and still get some valid advice. There is always someone out there to help you, you just need to know where to look and who’s advice to trust. Hell, ask me. I’m full of good ideas!
- Don’t rush yourself. Take the time you need to fully examine your idea and its potential. Crunch all the numbers. Look at your strengths and, more importantly, your weaknesses while trying to determine how to capitalize or improve those. Don’t launch until you are ready. Don’t be afraid to delay for a week, month or year if you are not ready. Nothing irritates me and other customers more than entering a business shortly after they’ve opened and realizing they weren’t ready, either through bad service, lack of inventory, or other problems.
So, go for it. Yes, it’s scary and overwhelming at times, but in the end it’s so worth it. Not only are you able to support yourself or increase your regular income, there’s a sense of pride like no other when you successfully operate your own business. An, seriously, if any of you have an idea that you think could work, I’ll be a sounding board for you. Let’s have lunch and chat about it. One of the other services I offered for a while was business and marketing consulting. I’ll be blunt, but also encouraging in ways that can be productive and inspiring. Good luck to you all!
