3 easy steps to starting your business plan.

1. Starting a business can be a daunting task for anyone.  Trying to build a business in the music industry can be down right frightening.  A lot of people who try to make it inside the music industry do not approach what they do like a business.  Below is a bit of background and an exercise that will help you begin to think about what you do as a business, and help figure out where your focus should be.

Throughout history, there have been many parables about knowledge and understanding.  One of the most famous was written in Ancient Greece by a poet Archilochus, and further expounded upon by Isaiah Berlin in the 1950s in an essay called The Fox and The Hedgehog where Berlin examines Tolstoy’s outlook on history in his philosophy of history in his epilogue to war and peace.  The Fox and the Hedgehog basically says that the clever fox is sort of a jack of all trades, knowing a little bit about many subjects, being fascinated about the breadth of subjects that are available to study, while the hedgehog knows a whole lot about one important thing, expressing the value of the niche study.  The master of the one thing.  

Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, outlined a concept of successful businesses that involved the ideas in Berlin’s essay.  The three hedgehog circles of success.  These principles, when applied in an honest and thoughtful way, can help you begin to outline your business model with a greater chance of success.

This concept is best visualized in three intersecting circles, more on that later.

Follow this plan to outline your hedgehog circles of success:

Step 1

Establish your core values and write your core values statement.

We need to make sure that you are morally aligned with the things you try to accomplish with your music business.  In doing so you will continue to be authentic which is tremendously important when you are trying to build your brand, particularly within the music industry where people are pretty in tune to their own moral stances.  This can be anything from faith, green living, science, or really anything you use as a compass for your actions.  Once you decide what your core values are, write them down.  No, don’t type them. Write them, with a pen or pencil on a piece of paper. Then read it out loud.  I know this sounds kind of hockey, but there are a lot of studies that show it is easier to internalize something if it is repeated out loud.  This should be at the heart of your business and everything you do.

Step 2

Answer the following three questions.

1. What are you MOST passionate about?

2. What can you be best at the world at?

3. What best drives your economic or resource engine?

Step 3

Figure out where these ideas intersect.  Where do your passion, your talent, and your potential income intersect?  As an example, if your passion is music, your talent is teaching, and your potential economic driver is writing courses that teach people how to play music, write your business plan around writing e-books and webinar courses for an e-commerce business model that allow for both live launches and evergreen customers.

Doing this won’t give you your business plan, but it will definitely be a great place to start writing one.  The intersection of the three circles will be your sweet spot.  The focus of your niche.  This niche can be a great jumping off point for your business plan and model.

Thanks for reading.  

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1. Ryan