The fried sole proprietor and other fishy tales of necessity and invention

It didn’t take a collapsing economy to show me that starting a business was going to demand all the ingenuity I have. Since I was beginning with essentially no funding but my own little savings, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to be able to hire all the experts or buy all the ready-made tools and services I needed.

I had to invent my own, instead. I’ve needed to learn to be my own marketing director, for instance, and my own office manager while crafting my own promotional materials, press strategies and inventory systems. When things turn out all right, I can feel some pride in my own creativity. And when they don’t, I find myself wishing like hell that I could just pay to get someone else’s. 

The fact is, no matter how energetic and determined I am, I just can’t be as knowledgeable, efficient and innovative as an industry professional in any field except writing. Which kills me, because I’m a type-A perfectionist.

So, on the one hand, limited money brings out my creativity, as it does many people’s, and on the other, it frustrates me with how inadequate that creativity often is. Thus, I am stimulated/bummed nearly all the time.

Only a licensed psychologist (which I’m not and I slump dejectedly to admit I never will be) can assess how many months and years of this sort of caffeinated moping my psyche will take before it cuts its moorings entirely. But in the meantime, the sleepless little orderly in my brain compiles growing lists of the creative tasks I want to keep and the ones I cannot wait to unload on some specialist whose personal economy I’ll be helping to develop.

This last list starts with fund-raising and, so far, ends with orchestrating search optimization strategies. But there’s a lot in between and the tally gets longer all the time. It all feels like homework and I seldom have a night without it, whereas the fun stuff, such as searching out new bloggers and artists, goes by as fast as recess.

Here’s the upside: Doing the creative jobs I like provides enough endorphins to get me through – well, almost – the icky stuff. But here’s the downside: Inevitably, say by Thursday night, I and my powers of imagination become burnt little knobs of pure filter-grade carbon. Week after week after week.

How can I and other lone business operators keep being endlessly creative (because we have to, especially now)?  Feed off other people’s creativity, I guess. Whether it really works or not, it’s a great excuse to spend Friday evenings reading novels, listening to music, watching movies and eating someone else’s cooking. For a sole proprietor, it’s a relief once in a while to make like a pilot fish.