My very first entrepreneurial venture was to put
together a band to perform for an eighth grade graduation dance. Here is what
happened.
A local junior high school contacted our high school
music department to inquire if they knew of a band that could play for their
eighth grade graduation dance. My music teacher approached me about this
opportunity and I said immediately said what any aspiring musician would say to
being given an opportunity to perform his or her first paid live performance:
�yes�I can do that!�
I was immediately awarded the �gig� as we musicians
call it. There was no audition, no discussion of musical requirements or
expectations, etc. Getting this gig was really easy I recall thinking. I put
together a jazz quartet: trumpet, guitar, bass and drums and created all the
music we would perform at the 3-hour dance.
After the first hour, we took a break. In retrospect,
I suppose it should have been important that no eighth graders danced during the
first hour but I thought nothing of it � I assumed that this was as new for them
as it was for us � they had just never been to a graduation dance before.
A teacher approached soon approached me to tell me
why the kids were not dancing: it was the music � the wrong music. It was not
that the music was bad � it just was not right for this audience.
And, then it hit me. I had put together a jazz
quartet to play what I wanted to play and never even considered what the paying
customer � the eighth graders � would want to hear and dance to. It was all
about me pulling off my first paid performance playing what I like to play
without any thought or regard for my paying customer. The music would have been
great for my parents and grandparents, but I never considered whether what we
planned to play would work for my paying customers.
How could I have been so short sighted? I am sure it
had little to do with the fact I was a freshman in high school.
I quickly caucused with my fellow musicians about
what we could do to salvage the next 2 hours of the dance. We decided we needed
to instantaneously transform into a rock band. So, for the next two hours, the
majority of what we played involved the loud, raucous and highly-innovative tune
by Iron Butterfly called
In-a-gadda-da-vida.
The dance floor filled, the kids were smiling and dancing and we had fun
improvising around music that we never would never have dreamed of playing.
This story illustrates many things:
It is really easy to forget
about the customer when you get wrapped up in what you want to do
When you forget about the
customer, you put your future at risk
Once you realize you are in
trouble, you either pivot � make a significant course correction � or your
business continues to struggle and suffer until it dies.
In a San Jose Mercury News article on May 24, 2013
called The Pitch: New Venture Capital Q&A Feature Debuts with Paul Santinelli at
North Bridge, Paul, a venture capitalist, was asked: What is the biggest mistake
entrepreneurs make? He responded,
�Having been an entrepreneur in the first bubble, I
can speak from experience: Not determining if there is a real business to be
built. As a founder, I was always enamored with what we were building and why it
was "exactly" what the doctor ordered. Had I listened to our first VP of Sales
and realized, "Hey, the market does not want X, they want Y and are willing to
pay for it," I might have been able to move faster to a more acceptable
solution.�
Ultimately, it is all about the customer: how well
you connect with them, create engagement and adoption with your product or
service, and keep them waiting on the edge of their seats for what you are going
to do for them next.
David
J.
Gardner
is a Fellow of The Business Forum Institute and held senior management positions in Product Development,
Manufacturing, Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and
Product Management. He joined Tandem Computers in 1979 where
he was responsible for Corporate Documentation Standards for
Tandem's highly configurable and expandable computer
systems. In 1983, he designed and implemented a
Configuration Guide for Dialogic Systems instituting a
process that greatly simplified a complex, modular product
such that the field sales organization and international OEM
customers could easily define their order requirements. This
methodology satisfied the product definition needs of sales,
marketing, engineering, manufacturing, customer service and
finance. David founded his consulting practice in 1991. He
is a graduate of San Jose State University (BA) and Santa
Clara University (MBA). David is a member of the Society for
the Advancement of Consulting (SAC) and has been Board
Approved in the Area of Configurable Product & Services
Strategy and Implementation. In 2010, he was inducted in the
Million Dollar Consultant� Hall of Fame. Out of
over 1,000 consultants who have completed Alan Weiss�s
mentoring program, only 26 have been inducted into the Hall of
Fame.
Note:-- Dave Gardner can be
reached on
Twitter
and you can check out his
video describing why he
is in business.
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