Start-Up Suicide: What Do You Think, Honey?
I often work with “Mom and Pops.” I’ve got a real soft spot for them, since my parents were entrepreneurs, putting in long hard hours to build a successful (and unusual) business together. (An armored car service in Hobbs, New Mexico, back in the 60s.) However, the kiss of death for a start-up is often when one spouse asks the other, “What do you think, Honey?” Now, it’s great that they’re talking to each other about what will truly be a joint endeavor (even if only one of them is going to be actually working the business), but often “Honey”:
1. Has zero business and/or marketing experience. (If he or she does have experience, it’s in a totally unrelated field…or they worked in “marketing” as - say - a junior copy writer…ten years ago.)
2. Isn’t really thrilled about giving up their life/retirement/family time for the start-up. (”Um, [sigh] I guess I can work about 10 hours a week on the business.”)
3. Doesn’t want to spend any money. (”We can do it all ourselves.”)
4. Isn’t the target market for the business. (”I don’t like that style…”)
5. Doesn’t know anything about the marketing tactic, technique or technology. (”We’ll just buy that cheap list for direct mail.” “We need a Yellow Pages ad!” “Why should we spend $10,000 on an e-commerce web site? Our nephew can use that cheap template!”)
6. Isn’t even remotely (sorry) qualified for their designated role in the start-up (and sees no reason to learn.) (”Who needs a CPA? How hard can QuickBooks be?”)
(P.S. M&Ps - the time to bicker is not while you’re paying your biz attorney, CPA or consultant to sit there. They’re not marriage counselors.)
Related Posts:
You Can’t Handle the Truth!
Business is Hard. (Duh)
Small is a State of Mind
Start-Up Suicide: Fear of Heights
Start-Up Success: People Before Plan
Start-Up Suicide: Free Business Plan Help
Three Ways to Waste Your Marketing Budget
Read More:
All my entrepreneur sanity check posts
All my marketing troubleshooting posts
Lurking Readers! Like what you’re reading? Don’t “get” the whole RSS thing? Simply subscribe to Mary’s Blog by Email (I don’t send you any email or give the address to anybody else. It’s an automated feed to your email box to read at your leisure.)
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so. It may take a bit to show up since I hate making people type in little letters (I can’t read most of them myself) - so I moderate all comments. Feel free to disagree - debate is healthy. However, I’ve blacklisted the worst obscenities, including the “f” word, as part of the troll wall.
Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, entrepreneurship entrepreneur sanity check, product development, customer service, success
View the Blog Roll
June 13th, 2007 at 6:53 am
Ouch! This one hits close to home.
I share my life with a funeral director, who, one would think, would be the perfect sounding board for my product. Plus, because he manages a mutli-million dollar business, you’d think he’d have some really great business advice.
But he works for a large funeral service corporation (200+ funeral homes) and has never started a company.
Further hampering me is that the funeral industry is regional , with tastes, price tolerance and needs changing based upon location.
Plus, he sees my day-to-day work and expects the success we have. He no longer makes that “wow!” face when I tell him how well business is going. And that used to help drive me to keep going.