Carolyn Jack

Editor and CEO, Geniocity.com
A project of The Genius Group LLC

Creative Nerve: What It’s Really Like to Start a Business

Not yet ready for prime time? Got my spirits severely malleted Friday, along with my ego. I went to a consultation with a marketing firm to find out what creative, hopefully inexpensive ideas these folks might have for me about getting the word out on Geniocity.com. They told me I shouldn’t do any marketing yet because the site isn’t good enough.

Ow.

Maybe that blow to my self-esteem caused my personality to split, because now I both see their point and reject it, too. 

Yes, the site is not nearly as rich with interactive information and creative merchandise as it will be one day, if I keep breathing long enough. And yes, I agree that I should not build expectations that Geniocity. com can’t meet right now, in its first phase.

But don’t you have to start somewhere short of perfection? 

And if the answer is no …  then when do you start marketing? Does your enterprise really have to be glorious first? And if so, wouldn’t that mean that only businesses with enormous start-up funding could actually open for business?

I’ve heard of many companies that started in garages, spare rooms or on kitchen tables. I’m pretty sure that the likes of Google and Amazon.com didn’t spring from their founders’ imaginations fully formed and visually designed with endless layers of interactive features and every book or site in the world all ready to be accessed from their pages.

So when did they start marketing? And if it wasn’t right away, how did they ever grow into the global behemoths that they are now?

I know I’m asking a lot of questions here, but I’m honestly confused. I thought the idea was to start building name recognition for my business from the beginning, even though it has a long way to go before it even faintly resembles the spectacularly creative, fascinating, have-to-visit-every-day site I have in mind. 

How else do I build the site traffic necessary to attract advertisers and sell some merchandise? Without ad and store sales, how do I afford the development the site needs to grow?

Is this yet another one of these chicken-and-egg situations? Do I have to have a magnificent site in order to get a magnificent site?

Well, here’s reality: I don’t have a magnificent site yet and I’m going to have to keep changing it tiny bit by tiny bit until it’s outstanding enough to catch people’s attention in a big way. And I don’t see how the site or I can survive until that point unless we slowly build a customer base for the fewer-but-good services and products we can offer and bring in revenue.

So I guess I’m going to have to market my imperfect business anyway, keep trying to sell my vision of what this thing can be and risk that some people will be disappointed in what it is now. I’ll just keep inviting them back every time Geniocity.com gets a little better. And maybe someday, they’ll discover it’s great.