Business Growth Strategies: Back To Basics

Are you wondering if you should move forward or backward with your business growth strategies? I stumbled upon this article on Inc.com, and found it to be a great example of how changing your business growth strategies can either really help you or hurt you. Time and time again, we have seen examples of this in the headlines and through friends and colleague’s experiences. I highly recommend reading it if you get a chance.

While I was in Los Angeles pursuing a music career, my band, Deepdown, had climbed our way to the top of the Hollywood music scene. We had worked hard for years, were very dedicated, and had a reputation around town for being the next band to be launched out of the local Hollywood scene to the larger masses. After years of feeling frustrated by our lack of nationwide exposure, we signed a management contract and had a producer — even though we felt a little weary about signing up with these two individuals.

Unfortunately, our manager blew our chances of that by having a nervous breakdown while meeting with investors that were planning on investing $500K in our band. It was quite rare for a Hollywood band to be raising expansion capital at the time. At that dinner, they walked away from the opportunity, after our lunatic manager made a scene and was apparently slamming the table and screaming, “Give me the money!” Had we not let these two overconfident executives into our career — just out of our own greed and impatience — we may have very well been the next big thing.

Shortly after this incident, we fired both our manager and producer and were back on our own again. My thoughts on this lesson came to the surface quickly and I decided to get back to basics with a fresh approach, pursuing my solo career in music. We were technically an expansion stage company and felt we had done everything we could do to grow our product. We were itching to expand even more and lost sight of what got us there in the first place: our hard work, our dedication and love for our music, along with a grassroots approach to promoting our art. Accepting two music executives into our family — for lack of other options at the time — derailed our business.

If you have patience and are confident in your business, when it comes time for raising expansion capital, the right people will find you. I’m sure you can apply this to many aspects of your business, in one way or another.