Opinion: Jantsch's Foolproof Business Plan

When it comes to entrepreneurship, there are many reasons why a start up business may fail.  It could be a lack of knowledge of the field or not enough planning prior to launch.  The owner may become quickly overwhelmed by the responsibility of running a company and the stress can overtake the possibility of success.  Some businesses get past the first troubles of starting a new company, but quickly get consumed by the competition.  In the world of the Entertainment industry and regarding talent management specifically, the biggest obstacle is maintaining lucrative clients.  The business that is show business is one of the most, if not the most competitive industry to gain employment and be successful in.  You can be managing the most talented up and coming band in the industry and still not be guaranteed an easy road to find good paying work for your artist.  Although networking, knowledge, and being open to multiple avenues of income for your client can help; a deep focus is necessary to maintain a profitable company.  John Jantsch addresses this deeper focus.

In the blog How to Build a Business That Cannot Fail, Jantsch is precise and specific in three major focuses that can help keep your start up business out of the gutter.  The first topic Jantsch discusses is probably the one that businesses miss out most, which is the concentration between your customer focus and your business focus.  Often times a business idea is built on the notion of building a profit through selling a product or service.  Although this is important, Jantsch makes the point that in order to sell those products or services you need to maintain a client base or you won’t have anyone buying what you’re selling.  Considering the consumer is necessary in order for your idea to launch and maintain success, why not build your business on the customer experience instead of the product experience?  He makes a great point.  It can be to your advantage to work this way if you have the proper people skills.  Everyone wants to make money and everyone enjoys spending money.  Instead of building a product and searching for the customer, identify your customer first and find out what product they are looking to buy.  Bam!  Identifying the appropriate market you want to work in and doing the proper research to discover what is missing in that market that you could bring to those clients will most certainly give your business a greater opportunity for success.  That is not to say that every business decision made should be done strictly by looking at the opinion of your cliental.  The point Jantsch is making is that too many companies lose sight of their customers.  The notion to stop listening to your customers will only lead to the eventual demise of your business.  They are your greatest assets next to your team.

The second idea is to test and evolve your product.  Don’t be set in stone on what you’re selling and critique yourself against your competition as much as possible.  It’s vital for a beginning company to compare what they are selling against the competition.  Doing so is like receiving free customer feedback without spending a dime on your own product.  Being able to see what attracts people to your competitor’s product, what they do and don’t like about it, and even things such as brand strategy and pricing can all be researched and analyzed with real-time data if you study your current competition’s strategies.  This is often times missed by entrepreneurs.  A person dedicates their blood, sweat, and tears for years to develop the perfect product and often times becomes so infatuated that they refuse change.  History has shown us that this business model doesn’t work.  Henry Ford is a great example of this.  He was so in love with his original Model-T that he refused innovation and change amongst his designers, up to the point that he fired some of his most promising employees.  This almost cost Ford his company, but luckily he woke up just in time.  Don’t make this same mistake with your business.  Showing humility and absorbing feedback instead of deflecting it will serve your business much better both in the short and long term vision of your company.

The last idea is by most accounts the most difficult to achieve because of the time and effort it takes to develop.  Having a strong sales action process is vastly important if you want to offer a consumer something to purchase.  Customers aren’t just buying a product anymore; they are buying an experience.  To be honest, actually, that is going to sell your company more than the product or service you offer will.  It’s 2012; every market is saturated in some way.  The best way to differentiate yourself from your competition is by the way you handle your day-to-day business.  A strong sales process brings your clients back to shop with you again because they cannot receive the same experience elsewhere.  Once you have that sales process down, your customers becoming your marketing.  Word of mouth can be a very powerful marketing tool, and first hand accounts of great experiences won’t stay unnoticed. 

When it’s all said and done, the primary point to keep a business from failing is this: customer, customer, customer.  We live in a world where most big businesses have lost track of the client experience and the consumers are starting to fight back.  Companies like Circuit City and Blockbuster have gone belly up because they lose focus of their customer’s needs and wants and don’t evolve their services to meet the growing expectations.  Following Jantsch’s suggestions to keep a strong business model can only help in your strategy to maintain a successful company.  Really, at the end of the day, the Darwin Theory of Evolution is the perfect example of what running a business is all about; adapt or die.

The True Power of Music

Everyone needs medicine.  It is perhaps one of the most important topics in the country, especially considering the current health care situation that our nation is in.  The primary issue is the cost factor of receiving medical treatment, as many Americans cannot afford to pay for the ridiculous costs of going to the doctor to be diagnosed and treated.  Because of the country’s current state, many are forced to look for online remedies and self diagnose.  This resurrects older health practices used in history, many of which are spiritual remedies.  Music, in my opinion, is one of the most underappreciated and underutilized medicines in human history.  Many modern day health problems have indicators that show stress as a catalyst to whatever illness a patient has.  Life is much more busy these days, and everyone is on the hustle.  With more work and less play, stress has become an illness that is often times ignored.  I’m here to tell you, as Robert Gupta said, “Music is medicine; music is sanity.”

Gupta is absolutely correct.  Music is medicine for many reasons.  Music allows you to release emotion that is otherwise often pent up.  Think about it.  You’re having a bad day, so you put on your favorite Ramones jam and go work out.  You had a long day at work, so you get home, crack open a bottle of wine, and put on some Miles Davis.  You’re getting psyched up for the big game, so you have Rage Against the Machine cranked up in your headphones before you walk out to the field.    You’re having problems with your girlfriend, so you go get relationship advice from the latest Ne-Yo album.  Whatever it is, we all use music to release the energy from emotions felt in our day-to-day lives.  It isn’t just emotion that our body uses the music to connect with, though.  Real healing power can be seen from music, especially on the psychological level.  Gupta makes this clear when he discusses The Soloist, a film about an LA journalist and a homeless man that was trained at the Juilliard School of the Arts in New York City, and their intense connection made through the power of music.   For some people, the most sane and calm they feel in this crazy, nonstop world is when their favorite music is playing.  It all comes down to the fact that music touches people.  It is truly an inspiration to know that the products we create in what some would consider an all-fun industry have a positive impact on the people who hear it.  Music has it’s own voice, and that voice communicates with each person in a special, different way that creates a type of fusion in the body that it can’t get anywhere else.  This kind of connection is something I most certainly want as a model for the products and services offered by my own business.