Pimpin’ IS Easy: 3 Myths Blocking the Success of Your Start-up
From the Stackdough School of Business
Welcome to the Stackdough School of Business, where our motto is “Get Rich, or Die Tryin’.” In today’s orientation, we’d like to share with you how Stackdough differs from other schools of thought (like the Hardknock School of Life). We’d like to dispel the following misconceptions many prospective students believe to be true.
IT TAKES MONEY TO MAKE MONEY: Not so much. Many of you are waiting for ‘investors’ and ‘capital’ before you launch your venture. Please stop. At Stackdough, we’ve adopted a ‘run before you walk’ philosophy. If you want to design t-shirts, start with one and get a buyer. Either have them pre-pay for it or beg/borrow (no stealing!) the money to produce it. Cost out everything related to producing individual units in order to set a price that furnishes the dough for the next 2 units. Let your customers cover your costs until you have enough to increase your production schedule. If you want to build up 3-6 months of reserves, you might be waiting a minute. Start small, start today.
DON’T GET HIGH ON YOUR OWN SUPPLY: You better light it up and pass it! Since your Stackdough business must be legal, we mean this figuratively. Be your best advertisement! If you customize kicks, start for cheap by revamping a pair of your own AF1s that don’t have to be crispy clean to be your walking billboard. If you’re a fashion designer, you should wear your stuff — and only your stuff — until enough people start asking you where you shop. If you write, maintain a (free) blog so you are constantly producing and refining how to write for an audience and meet your self-imposed deadlines. If you don’t believe in your product, why should the world?
YOU’RE JUST A WANKSTA, YOU NEED TO STOP FRONTIN: There’s really nothing wrong with frontin’ — in a productive way. Other b-schools will tell you to “act as if.” That’s when you take a wad of ones and cover it with a C-note and a rubber band. Better to have 60 ones underneath a hundred, than 1 one and no hundreds. Maintain a business-like presence and people will take you seriously. Remove words like “tryna” and “bout-ta” from your vocab. Replace “I’m tryna launch this label. I’m bout-ta holla at Russell about my joint” with “I’m a label owner in the process of connecting with artists and larger labels for partnerships.” Get a professional business card on glossy heavy card stock with whatever title you want to give yourself, a Google domain name and hosting, and you’re in business for little of nothing.
So, your homework assignment until our next session is to detail how you’re going to remove the myths to success that have stopped you from advancing. Get dem dollars!
