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

EntrepreneurFest? My company has started getting invitations to take part in business shows and media promotions – the types of things designed, not just as ways to let the public or business community shop for services, but also to give companies that buy tables or booths or advertorial space the chance to do some marketing.

These things always look like great opportunities … until I see how much they cost. 

They’re never priced for start-ups like mine: small, undercapitalized, struggling. Doesn’t that describe an awful lot of start-ups?

What we founders of tiny (for now) creative enterprises need is collaborative promotions of our own on the edges of the big ones. They could be to mainstream business shows and promos what the Fringe is to the Edinburgh Festival, a lively showcase of the independent, nimble,  daringly different, even weird little efforts of entrepreneurs who are stretching the fabric of the industry establishment.

Tables, booths and ads here on the outskirts should cost little – maybe $50 for a two-day conference or a sixteenth-of-a page magazine space – and cheap-chic inventiveness should be the aim of the presentations. Stuff as many of us as possible onto the sidewalks or corridors of the business-show arenas or into the back pages of the booklet so the atmosphere provides a thrilling little hint of the chaotic and experimental, and the start-ups’ displays spill over into one another’s the way entrepreneurs’ ideas bubble out of the box. 

Humor, spontaneous interactions, impromptu collaborations, visual connections – a sort of live business improv theater promising adventure, discovery and fun to the openminded – wouldn’t that be a terrific contrast to the staid and proper business-card exchanges taking place among the suited masses in the main show? 

It might turn out to be something the general public demands to experience because it’s so much unexpected fun and showcases so many new ideas. And best of all, it would give start-ups an affordable and outstandingly cool way to promote themselves.

Any takers?      

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

Doing what you loathe. I went to a networking event last Thursday and I had a good time.

That doesn’t sound too remarkable until you take into consideration that I want to go to networking events about as much as I want to climb into a fully tubular, lightless water slide with no glasses or contacts on and drop at about 90 miles an hour through wet, plastic, enclosed airlessness into a deep tank where I know I’ll thrash about blind and disoriented until I drown.

I agree that this sounds curiously pathological. I can’t explain how it is that I became a journalist and now an entrepreneur when the thought of having to talk in person to people I don’t know can send me into a coma of pure dread. It’s like trying to be a doctor when you pass out at the sight of, oh, not even blood. Maybe saliva.

Of course, it’s only certain situations that make me feel that way. Loud cocktail parties. Big receptions. Man-on-the-street interviews. Occasions where I have to inflict myself on people who are just minding their own business. Events where I have to make polite, empty chit-chat with slight acquaintances or outright unknowns whom I can barely hear above the noise and who have nothing more in common with me than a vaguely humanoid shape and sweaty palms. 

I would rather stay home and scrub out the rabbit cage with an old toothbrush. Any. Day.

My idea of a great gathering is a small dinner party  where I already know at least four of the six people present and all of us are ready to get into a three-hour-long discussion about environmental policy or arts-based economic development or, at the very least, why “Young Frankenstein” is a better comedy – by far! - than any contemporary drivel like “Zoolander” (with maybe the exception of the underwear-removal rumble scene).    

And yet, for reasons unknowable, I have chosen occupations that absolutely require me to mingle.  Maybe it’s the same psychology that compels people to jump out of airplanes or eat blowfish for fun.

Whatever. The point is that, after I’ve spent hours or even days in leaden apprehension of one of these mass encounters, I usually end up having a much better time that I feared – just as I did on Thursday. As the guest of a nice new business friend whose graciousness I simply could not allow myself to affront by squirming spinelessly out of her invitation, I managed to walk into the party under my own power, breathe without a paper bag and meet several interesting, potentially helpful people.

It was great. Now if only I could just keep reliving that one networking event, like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day” (still not as good as “Young Frankenstein”) instead of having to steel myself for the next scary roomful of strangers.             

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

Hot damn. It’s happened twice now, so maybe it’s not a fluke: For the second time since launching Geniocity.com in June, I’ve mentioned the name of my business to a total stranger and gotten the response, ”Oh, I’ve heard of that.” 

Someone’s heard of my company?  Someone who’s not a personal friend or the friend of a friend or my second cousin once removed has heard of my company?! I can’t fully describe the flash of sheer, scintillating euphoria I felt, as if I’d won the lottery or discovered I was born a wizard.

Two persons I’d never met before had heard of Geniocity.com and not because I told them about it with my own lips. That means something is working – people have read a story about the site or seen a brochure or gotten some word-of-mouth or maybe even just discovered it by accident on the Net.

There’s so much I need to do to make that happen more often. I need to learn to use the available tools better – the online social networks, the well-placed and repetitive images or ads, the linking, the sponsorships, the collaborations – all the marketing stuff that lets you reach people more effectively. It takes a long time to learn about it and a longer time to figure how best to use it.   

But even though I’ve barely made a start on all that, I now have proof that even the little I’ve been able to do so far may not be in vain. Because not only had those two people encountered the name Geniocity.com before - they’d also remembered it.

Ok, maybe I’m making too big a deal out of this. It was only two people. And I admit that they were both in Cleveland. I’m guessing people in London and Tokyo probably won’t have found out about Geniocity yet.

But with our web presence and hard work, they could and they will.

Even the thought of that is a happy shock.

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

Questions to ponder. People ask me why I started Geniocity.com and what makes me think it’s worthy of their attention and support. Well, there are a few things I’d like to know, too:

1) Creativity and innovation are the acknowledged characteristics of the new knowledge economy. … So why is it so hard to get money people interested in start-ups that aren’t the same old thing? 

2) College educators are busily teaching entrepreneurship to budding artists of all kinds. The arts generate billions of dollars for regional economies around the nation. … So why do all the start-up grants seem to be for technology companies? 

3) Clearly, reading about the arts and creativity has never been more important to society that it is right now. …So why are America’s ailing newspapers getting rid of their arts critics?

4) Why do people of no talent, ethics or imagination so often rise to the top?

5) Why does everybody else obey them like sheep?

6) And why, for god’s sake, don’t any of today’s coffeeshops sell pie?

I ask you.    

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

Money = hope. Most of us would like to say that the most beautiful thing we ever heard someone tell us was “I love you,” or “You have a healthy baby” or “It’s not your transmission.”

But let’s be honest, entrepreneurs: Wouldn’t the most gorgeous declaration to fall on your ears right now be “I want to invest in your company” ? Followed by, “Here’s the check” ?

Some of you with emerging tech-based businesses in the Great Lakes region may get to hear those syllables of joy: A new Cleveland-area venture-capital group called Flashline Partners LP is setting up a fund for IT start-ups in Ohio and nearby states. A story and podcast  in this week’s Crain’s Cleveland Business explains that the partnership is looking for young enterprises qualifying for investment on one of three levels: idea stage (up to $50,000); proof-of-concept stage ($250,000-$750,000); and go-to-market stage ($750,000-&1.5 million).  

For comprehensive information on both the start-up funding and Flashline Partners itself, go to www.flashlinepartners.com. Good luck. And if the best should happen, don’t forget to take some cellphone video – you’ll want to remember that moment for the rest of your life.  

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

FX on family. I do the majority of my work on Geniocity.com from my home office. And because I’m the spouse, parent and daughter most available during the day to run the house, see to the kids and assist my mother, what’s going on with my family frequently influences my ability to function professionally.

For most working people, the impact of home life on workplace productivity and vice versa has become a much-discussed public issue. But among entrepreneurs?  I doubt anyone hears a lot from them about how their risky start-ups and punishing hours affect their families.

Entrepreneurs have to stay focused, a state intensified by fear of failure. I think it would be easy to assume, from our laserlike stares, our passionate, adrenaline-fueled chipmunk chatter about our business ideas and our incessant popping up out of nowhere to hand you our cards, that we’re blocking out what our families feel during this hard-driving, concentrated effort to create something out of nothing.

Actually, the opposite may be true. I can judge only by my own experience, but I find that I’m hyper-aware of my husband’s and kids’ reactions to what they see me going through. My first concern always is that they not feel worried by the uncertain outcome of my new business and how long it’s taking to get going. So I try to explain why the process takes time, always careful to be factual but upbeat when I talk to the children about how things are going.

This helps them understand what I’m doing, which – I hope - lets them feel involved and invested in my project, at least to the extent of knowing that Mom’s trying hard to build something useful for our family and for the community.  Conveying my enthusiasm to them and explaining my tasks fairly simply also lifts my spirits and helps me clarify my own thinking.

But nothing helps me feel better and think straighter than talking with my husband. We have always talked shop, both of us being journalists, and found good, sympathetic sounding boards in each other, I think. It’s the same now, only more so - we trade ideas and perspectives, hash through what troubles us, examine alternatives. I get both great advice and great emotional support from him and try to offer the same.

Still, neither of us can or wants to pretend with the other that we aren’t anxious about the financial realities of my starting a business. For entrepreneurs, I think it’s really important to talk about this with whomever you share your life – to honestly assess your situation, develop an alternate income plan in case the original one doesn’t work out, keep each other in the loop about developments good and bad and, above all, reassure each other that, together, you’re going to work out whatever the problems are. If you shut your partner out when you’re worried, it’s bound to lead to isolation and fear for both of you and disaster for your relationship. 

That’s just common sense. I mean, I’m no expert on the effects of entrepreneurship on the family unit. But the one true thing I’ve discovered in all this is that my concern for my loved ones’ welfare and peace of mind has toughened my resolve to make a go of my business. The more determined I become that Geniocity.com has got to work, the more I’m sure it will and the unlikelier I am to accept anything less than success.  

My family deserves to see that I will never give up on my dream or on my commitment to providing the best future I can bring about for them. And they’re witnessing what it takes. That’s got to have a good effect on all of us.     

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

Rewards. I don’t try to pretty up the fact that entrepreneurship = hardship a lot of the time. That’s just how it is. And it’s better you know what to expect if you’re thinking about starting up some enterprise of your own.

But there are plenty of good moments, too, and this is one of them: Today we welcome our latest member of the Geniocity.com blog team, an experienced lawyer and law professor who will keep you on top of the legal system’s creative next waves as it adapts to our - sometimes radically - changing society and nation.

Ladies and gentlemen, Peter Friedman.

And you thought the law amounted to a bunch of dusty books on an office shelf. Well, loosen up your preconceptions: Peter’s here to show you that the law today is creatively shaping the life you’ll live tomorrow. And you might want to have something to say about it.

So check out his blog, “Ruling Imagination: Law and Creativity,” to start discovering how people and the law throw each other curve balls, sparking a process of mutual reinvention that’s making us and our country different before we even know it.  

This is going to be fun.   

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

Breaking the code. Geniocity.com has a rate card! Not stunning news to the rest of you, maybe, but cause for much jubilation here, where digital advertising has proved a Rubik’s Cube of a torment to my print-conditioned mind. 

As you may well know, businesses that sell Internet-based advertising size, price and measure the effects of their products much differently than do traditional newspapers and magazines. There are whole new species of ads that have developed because technology has made them possible: ads that share the same space because they can rotate; animated ads; services that place display ads or links on your site for you… . It goes on and on and some of us really need a jargon translator and maybe a math teacher to understand what used to be so simple on the paper page.

But with the help of a kindly and patient internet-advertising professional I am lucky to have met, I have triumphed over CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CTR (click-through rate) and IMUs (ad unit sizes, I think) the way a 10-month-old triumphs over gravity: by blithely ignoring the scientific details and simply hauling herself up by the rail of the crib.

What I’ve done, with coaching, is work out a very simple selection of ad sizes, positions and prices that doesn’t deal with complicated metrics, because I’m not ready to yet. Advertisers will get nice choices and nice prices and reports on how many people clicked on their ads over a certain period of time. And as our traffic grows, what we offer will get more and more detailed, I’ll grasp more and more of the complexities and, one day, I’ll discover I understand online advertising. (I also once had a dream in which I spoke fluent Chinese, but that’s another story.)

If you don’t know much about Internet advertising and you want to learn the basics, try going to www.iab.net, which is the site of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. It has information about pretty much everything related to online ads and offers templates of standard ad sizes. Another helpful site is www.marketingterms.com, which includes a dictionary of words and, hurray! acronyms.

Sorry, I don’t know a site to help you with your Mandarin.