The new music industry offers the opportunity for an artist to go it on their own without a record label, a manager, agent, publicity firm, merchandise company or publishing company. The same is true at startups - bootstrapinstead of buying your way in, use open source tools, virtual offices, online colloboration, Skype, Google tools and more.
But it's also a reality that trying to do everything can make you nuts. There are never enough hours in the day to tweet, post, network, fix your Wordpress theme, make calls, ship orders and... the list is endless. So smart advisors tell you to gather a team. Not an unwieldy permenent team, but rather a small nimble group brought together because of a specific project and then dispersed until needed again.
It makes sense and it works. But no matter who is on your team and how small or large it is, nobody cares about you as much as you care about you. I'ts just human nature. They're responsible for their own well being and happiness; and you need to do the same. But how?
Raise Your Baton
The fact that people don't care about you as much as you care about you doesn't mean that you have to do everything. But it does mean having your own clear vision and communicating it. It also means knowing what success looks like and enough about what has to be done to get there so that you can tell if your team is on the right path.
The conductor doesn't know how to play every instrument, but he know how to read music and he knows what the symphony should sound like.
Think of yourself as the conductor. Start by learning the business. Assemble the players. Then raise your baton. - Bruce Houghton
