First posted five years ago. Still rings true, business is still growing, I’m still glad I bought it. Must be something to it. Thought I’d share it again. —DM
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“I’m just a dumb writer,” my dad used to say, with genuine humility that was rare for him.
I’ve always been just a dumb writer, too. Then about three and a half years ago, I swallowed very hard and bought a publishing and training company, and became a business guy.
I was so tense around that time that my then 11-year-old daughter asked me what was the matter, and then answered her own question. “I think I know,” she said. “You’re afraid you’re going to screw everything up.”
I’m not rich yet, but I’ve had three really rewarding years, I’m almost out of debt, and though I may have screwed some things up, I sure haven’t screwed everything up. (Also, I’ve been wonderfully lucky in several of ways that I’m aware of, and probably just as many ways that I’m not.)
Anyway, a little more than a week before the big annual conference we host—when I feel my very happiest and most secure about everything, because my customers are right in front of me, clearly enjoying the hell out of themselves—I thought I’d “give back,” as we capitalists say, by sharing a few things I’ve learned, in case there are other dumb writers out there thinking about starting a business, and wondering what they don’t know:
Get ready to fuck some stuff up. As a writer with writer parents and writer friends, I knew the editorial business, and I knew myself in relation to it—knew how to react to good and bad editors, good and bad pay, good and bad reactions to my work. As a business owner, I know some aspects of the business, and am an ice cream-cone-on-his-forehead-and-licking imbecile in others. It’s like going from star quarterback to player/coach/general manager. You’re going to do your best, you’re going to surround yourself with good teammates who tell you when you’re being an idiot, and you’re still going to blow some stuff. For instance, if you’re trying to grow your business …
Go where people know you. You think people buy stuff from you because you’re handsome and charming. But the homely truth is, you’re neither that handsome nor thatcharming. People buy stuff from you because they know you and have come to like you because you know their business and you always show up and you always come through and you’re useful. If you want to grow your business, you’re better off deepening your relationship with your friends—or getting them to tell their friends about you—than waltzing shiny-shoed into some world where they’ve been doing fine without you since Lincoln was alderman.
Related: People probably won’t steal your latest big idea. Why? Because your idea probably blows. And even if it’s good—if it can be taken from you and executed by another person, then it probably isn’t sufficiently of you to carry the day in a world that, again, has been getting along perfectly well without it since time began. And besides: Stealing an idea also requires executing the idea, which takes absolute assloads of work. Most people have jobs, and no time to execute a new idea, stolen or otherwise. And the unemployed are not typically intellectual property thieves either. So stop whipping out NDAs in the J&M Tavern or at the breakfast buffet at the Hampton Inn, Steve Jobs.
(Also related: People who you’re paying to execute your big idea will tell you it’s a good idea, whether it is or not. They definitely think it’s a good idea, because as far as they’re concerned, it is a good idea, because it’s getting them paid! Pay someone to help you start a professional basketfoot team in Muncie, Indiana, and they’ll become so excited about the idea. And you won’t blame them, because you know goddamn well you’ve earned money on that basis yourself.)
Simmer down in general. When you start a business, every day feels like an Italian opera—which you and your colleagues have to find a way to embrace, the way you would any other adventure (like a writer does!). But don’t get hooked on adrenaline. Eventually, routines and procedures and business patterns develop. And if you still need every day to be a crisis and every negotiation to be a drama and every competitor to be a baby-eating dingo, then you should go work in the Trump White House, not try to run a company of employees who want stability and sanity, vendors who want to make a profit too and competitors who can become strategic collaborators if you take the emotion out of it and focus on the customer, who may need you both.
Running a company brings happinesses your dumb writer brain never anticipated. When I was a freelance writer, I used to love not being accountable to anyone for when and how I did my work, because I was free! Now, I find I actually enjoy being hourly and geographically accountable to our COO and other close partners and colleagues, and feel a sense of daily connection and team accomplishment that I didn’t know I was missing. Also, I have less anxiety than I used to; I spend far fewer nights staring at the ceiling now than I did when my clients could end my livelihood with one Monday morning voice mail. I feel like I’m building something—something that keeps building itself, because it wants to grow. Also, I can occasionally write off a steak dinner. And now that I play far less golf, I enjoy it far more.
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