Business is as creative as the fine arts. You can be as unconventional, unique, and quirky as you want. A business is a reflection of the creator.
No matter which goal you choose, there will be lots of people telling you you’re wrong. Just pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close attention to when you’re being the real you and when you’re trying to impress an invisible jury.
You’ll notice that as my company got bigger, my stories about it were less happy. That was my lesson learned. I’m happier with 5 employees than with 85, and happiest working alone.
Yes, refund his money in full. We’ll take a little loss. It’s important to always do whatever would make the customer happiest, as long as it’s not outrageous. A little gesture like this goes a long way toward him telling his friends we’re a great company. Everyone always remember that helping musicians is our first goal, and profit is second. You have my full permissions to use that guideline to make these decisions yourself in the future. Do what makes the musicians happiest.
There’s a big difference between being self-employed and being a business owner. Being self-employed feels like freedom until you realize that if you take time off, you business crumbles. To be a true business owner, make it so that you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left.
Every outgoing email has a “From:” name, right? Why not use that to make people smile, too? With one line of code, I made it so that every outgoing email customized the “From:” field to be “CD Baby loves [first name].” Customers loved this!
Email blasts are the best training for being clear. When writing an email to everyone, if I wasn’t perfectly clear, I’d get 20,000 confused replies. Writing that email - carefully eliminating every unnecessary word, and reshaping every sentence to make sure it could not be misunderstood - would take me all day.
Unfortunately, people writing websites don’t get this kind of feedback. Instead, if they’re not clear, they just get silence - lots of hits but no action.
I see new websites trying to look impressive, filled with hundreds of puffy, unnecessary sentences. I feel bad that the people behind those sites haven’t felt the pain of trying to email that text to thousands of people, to directly see how misunderstood or ignored it is.
Banks love to lend money to those who don’t need it. Record labels love to sign musicians who don’t need their help. People fall in love with people who won’t give them the time of day. It’s a strange law of human behavior. It’s pretty universal.
If you set up your business like you don’t need the money, people are happier to pay you. When someone’s doing something for the money, people can sense it, like they sense a desperate lover. It’s a turnoff. When someone’s doing something for love, being generous instead of stingy, trusting instead of fearful, it triggers this law: we want to give to those who give.
Set up your business like you don’t need the money, and it’ll likely come your way.
My well-funded friends would spend $100K to buy something that I made myself for $1K. They did it saying, “We need the very best,” but it didn’t improve anything for the customers.
Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make very decision - even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone - according to what’s best for your customers. If you’re ever unsure what to prioritize, just ask your customers the open-ended question, “How can I best help you now?” Then focus on satisfying those requests.
None of your customers will ask you to turn your attention to expanding. They want you to keep your attention focused on them. It’s counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone.