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

Hard lessons. Is optimist too kind a word for someone who keeps getting let down by people she trusted?

You tell me. Yesterday, I was reminded yet again how blase, fickle and/or undependable humans can abruptly reveal themselves to be. It’s a fact I guess you have to be aware of in business as in life (remember: don’t be the bunny), but when you have what you think is a good relationship with someone, it’s all too easy to be crushed when that person walks out on you.

Here’s what happened: I had been talking for weeks with a talented, well-established artist about selling some works in The Geniocity Shop. We’d had several cordial conversations, I’d visited the studio, we’d agreed on the pieces and the details and I’d prepared the contracts. Then, one day before we were both to sign the papers, I got a chilly, out-of-the-blue e-mail announcing that there’d been a new development, the artist needed to keep all the pieces and that was it. Oh, and thanks for the friendship.

Friendship? It doesn’t feel like friendship when you’re frantically working 15- to 18-hour days trying to establish a new business and someone you thought was going to help by participating suddenly, inexplicably drops you flat. It hurts. You feel betrayed and sucker-punched, even if your relationship was strictly professional.

Personally, I think this kind of blow is one of the hardest to recover from. I’ve been smacked a lot more than once and some of the disappointments have been slighter, and some much worse, than this latest one. But every time it happens, I still feel stunned, sick – angry – that someone could be so callous. So conscienceless. So self-justifying.

I started to say self-interested, but it really isn’t self-interest to create ill-feeling where warmth had been. How do such people sleep at night knowing they’ve kicked someone who held them in good faith?

Perhaps I should be warier. Maybe a lot of business people succeed because they’re shrewd or cynical about their fellow humans. But even when I get blindsided and bruised like this, I can’t wish to be suspicious of everyone. I still want to be open, trust my instincts and answer enthusiasm in kind. 

So I guess I’ll keep getting smacked once in a while. What I have decided to do though, is to always have a contingency plan. What if this person goes away? What will I do?  From now on, I intend to know ahead of time and spend fewer hours feeling nauseated by the abandonment.

Maybe it’s ok to be the bunny if you have an Alternate Plan B.     

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

The fair-weather factor. No, I’m not being metaphorical. Even English majors actually say what they mean at least one percent of the time. 

I’m talking about the real weather. Like Monday’s.  It’s hard enough to light a fire under yourself at the start of the week without it being darkly overcast and smotheringly humid, as it was in Cleveland. On a day like that, it’s a constant struggle just to stay upright – most of me wants to collapse under the barometric pressure, preferably with my brain crushed senseless by something heavy. Ice pack. Guilt. The unwatched Collected Films of Ingmar Berman (also a great doorstop). 

But I work for myself now. No paid days off. So I can’t even call in sick for a little mental health day, ’cause the boss knows what I’m really doing. It’s sit up and work or wave bye-bye to the happy supply of comestibles in the fridge.

Am I whining here?

Sorry.

Yes, I did voluntarily sign up for this entrepreneurial gig. And most of us Clevelanders find a way to self-motivate in spite of our annual 364 1/2 dark-gray days or we’d be in an even worse mess here than we are. But it sure is easier to accomplish something when the sun’s shining. And sometimes I sure do miss the reflexive, Olympic-level kvetching of the newsroom, where there’s always something to complain about and at least half a dozen fellow inmates ever ready to hit save and launch a group gripe. 

So, now I’m the one responsible for my own misery. There’s something refreshing in that, something satisfyingly, poetically just, if only my humidified, unstarched, slack self cared about that instead of about moving to Arizona or just dying quickly.

But it’s ok. I got a (limp, flaccid) grip on myself, finished my fourth free-lance piece in five days, sent out a bunch of e-mails, scribbled down some more appointments and notes to myself (make money!) and did the mom thing in between. A first-person triumph-of-the-will story.

Entrepreneurs, here’s what helps: Coffee. Tea. Chocolate. (Duh. And not necessarily in that order). Simon & Garfunkel or Led Zeppelin if your inertia is nostalgia-tinged. Acoustic Dave Grohl and White Stripes if it’s not. Catalogs. Turning on every light in the house, including the one in the oven (don’t get any ideas). Avoiding mirrors. Patting the rabbit (buy one). Phoning someone. Anyone. Driving somewhere (especially somewhere there’s coffee, tea, chocolate and Led Zeppelin) .  

And if all else fails, haul out your company bank statement and take a look. If that doesn’t goose your ignition, nothing will.