It Wasn't Raining When Noah Built the Ark...

Here's more advice from my new book, Never Leave Money on the Table - How to Grow Any Business and Get Really Rich with 10 Simple Marketing Strategies. This isn't a book about music, it's a book about business.  More specifically, it's a book about how you can grow your business and make more money with it.  Same business, more money.

The book focuses on 10 principles and how you can use them to get more customers, generate more money, and do more of what you love.  If you're already doing these things, this book will show you to to do them better and more efficiently.

The principle I want to focus on now is planning for success...

Ask any 9-to-5er what you should plan for when going full-time in the music business and they'll tell you, "Have a back-up plan in case you fail." True entrepreneurs, however, will warn you to plan for success. Because, surprisingly, it's success that can really kill a new business if you aren't prepared for it.

When two renegade cows took over a billboard above a busy highway outside Atlanta in 1995, no one knew the message they conveyed would be heard all around America. The three-dimensional billboard shows one black and white cow atop the back of another cow, who was painting the words, "Eat Mor Chikin®."

In his book by the same name Eat Mor Chikin, Inspire More People, Chick-fil-A® founder S. Truett Cathy explains that the company had no idea that the advertising campaign with the now-famous cows would prove to be so popular. The company had not planned a major, nationwide billboard campaign, but when Cathy saw the positive response from that first billboard, he saw the unexpected opportunity and took advantage of it—and the rest is history. For more than a decade, Chick-fil-A's renegade cows have been amusing the public and driving customers in herds to the popular fast-food restaurant.

According to Chick-fil-A, within a year, the Richards Group, the advertising agency that developed the original billboard, turned the renegade cows into an integrated advertising campaign that included point-of-purchase items in the stores and radio ads.

Since the cow campaign debuted in 1995, Chick-fil-A's business has increased five-fold from $500,000,000 in 1995 to more than $2.64 billion in 2007. Not bad work for a couple of renegade cattle and a paintbrush!

Prior to that campaign, the company hoped for success in the general sense, but no one could have foreseen the impact that one little billboard would have. So, don't just prepare for failure; prepare for success.

Numerous business books are filled with horror stories of businesses cannibalized out of business by their own success. It doesn't matter how good you are if you can't meet an increased demand for your product or service. Be ready to succeed. Plan for it and have a contingency plan.

In 1995, when teenage rebel Shawn Nelson decided to build a bigger, better beanbag, not too many folks laughed. He sold the oversized, overstuffed bean bags to family and friends until one day he got an order for 12,000 of them from a company rep who saw and liked the bags. He officially founded LoveSac® with some friends in 1998.

Their $500,000.00 order might have seemed like a windfall, but with a company of one, Shawn had to scramble to produce that first big order. He did, using all the profits to complete the huge order, but the Cinderella story had begun. In 2005 he walked away with $1 million as the winner of Richard Branson's (Virgin Atlantic® owner and billionaire) reality TV show "The Rebel Billionaire."

Then in 2006, with only $500,000.00 in estimated assets, Nelson filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. His top 30 unsecured claims totaled more than $3.2 million. That hasn't stopped him. In 2008, Nelson's unique seating became the only seating in a refurbished Texas movie theater. He hasn't let his roller coaster ride of success and failure deter him from his business.

Entrepreneurs, especially in the music business, never travel smooth, flat highways. While most businesses won't ever experience the extreme ups and downs of Shawn Nelson's LoveSac® venture, complete with winning a reality show and a million dollars, you never know what can happen. So, plan for success. Failure will take care of itself. If you focus on failing, that's where your mind will be. Refocus and plan to succeed. Big corporations do.

Car manufacturers are working on new models years before the public ever sees them. Microsoft knows what will happen this year, next year, and the next. Even as one new product is hitting the shelves, research and development has already started working on the next product and the next improvements.

For the new full-time musician just starting off, that pressure can seem immense. You haven't even gotten your first year under your belt and already you need to project the next year and the next and the next!

Relax. You don't have to do it all at once. There is a process to get to the top of the stairs. Take it one step at a time . . .

Recognize that most musicians are entrepreneurs by default. Default entrepreneurs simply have a hobby, passion or need to make more money selling something they're particularly involved in. They are sold on their product and assume others will be too. They fail to look ahead, let alone plan ahead. If this is you, be aware that there's a lot more to owning, running and succeeding in a business than just having a good product or service.

So what are your plans for the upcoming year?  Post your thoughts below...

Comments

[Miss Kristin]

Record, perform and then record some more ;-)
http://misskristin.com
New Music for a New Age
Hear It First

[LloydPage]

What she (MissKristen) said and THEN some! Play, rehearse, perform, rehearse some more, record, throw some publication in there somewhere, keep creating, practicing, polishing, and performing. That's your "JOB"! And PUBLISH! Persist and keep persisting and persevere. Remember that most "over-night successes" took years and even a decade or two to happen! This has been my "plan and procedure" for the last few years and will continue to be so in the coming year and beyond.

[Sean Clark]

Thank you for this info and everything else you do David! As a new business our plans are to build our client base and contacts. We have established some very good ones already that led to our first significant project.

http://www.customtracksmusic.com

[Toggo Toggoinreallife]

To become a viral phenomenon on youtube by combining my musical/creative talents with my experience as an online marketer.

[Dave Booda]

GREAT article Dave, too many people don't give themselves the opportunity to succeed and you're exactly right that 9 to 5ers will always be the naysayers.

You know what I'd love to say to the people who ask if I have a back up plan? I'd say "hey - what do you do?" they answer: "blah blah typical 9 to 5 job" my response: "cool, that's my back up plan if I fail"

- Dave Booda

[Mr. Jimmy]

I'm paying the last bit of my credit card debt off while rehearsing a band then playing shows so we can gel, finishing up the songs for my album, recording the album, learning photoshop more thoroughly to be able to do my own press photos and album art, talking to a lot of bloggers, hiring a publicist, sending my album out for review, giving it away for free download in exchange for an email address, playing a cd release show, hopefully getting some press, offering the limited run of physical copies of my album for sale, small tour all the while recording as much of it as I can for a documentary film on being an indie musician, then begin concrete plans to release the film independently... In between shows I'll be targeting licensing opportunities to generate some additional revenue streams and to plan my next couple of steps..

Those are my plans, more or less.