photo by emma.kate
Back in high school I played baseball at a school that was known for baseball. When your football team goes 0-10 three seasons in a row (I was on that football team too), the attention goes to baseball, or at least the sport that is winning.
Anyway, we had some great coaches and the drills we worked on were pretty intense. They helped with your form, your swing, your hand-eye coordination and dozens of other things to enhance your game. The thinking is that when the game rolls around they become muscle memory and you just do it. You get the job done.
From Baseball To Business School
Unfortunately business school doesn’t really do the same thing for entrepreneurs. You learn all kinds of cool (and sometimes pointless) stuff, from accounting to marketing to research papers and whatever else comes standard in your business package of course work.
Then comes the real world and all the tests, the studying and repetitive skills you learned go out the window when you have customers giving you money, when you need traffic in your door or to your website and there are salaries to pay outside of your own.
In these scenarios, there are no drills. There may be mentors, or phone calls or even a board to talk to for advice. That advice usually ends with something like, “Just do it.”
From Business Plan To Business
Yesterday I had the opportunity to sit on a panel at Full Sail, a creative school here in Orlando, and listen to the Music Business graduating class present their business ideas. All 3 ideas were viable, but they looked like scared out of their minds and the business plans read like they were out of a business text book.
When I was asked to give closing remarks I ended with, “stop everything you are doing and just do.” Do something.
One of the companies wanted to do artist development and had a 3 week launch cycle for their website. I asked if they ever worked with an artist and developed them. They said no.
My immediate response was…
“who gives a sh*t about your website, go develop some artists. Do that. Go through growing pains. Do this while in school, while waiting tables or whatever else you are doing to get by. Then you have something worth launching.”
This is what I think about when I think about AGL and the Latter Lifestyle. People choosing to do something, rather than talk, discuss, research and rework business plans for a business or idea that will never see the light of day. Those that take what they know, are not scared of the unknown and just do. You win some and you lose some, but you can never say that you didn’t play the game.
How are you going to play?
This post was written by Greg Rollett, who runs a music marketing company from his laptop in Orlando, FL. Connect with him via Twitter, @g_ro. He rocks AGL Brand because he believes that everyone has the opportunity to choose “the latter” and wants to connect with more people who actually do.
