Anything You Want

The advantage of no funding

Having no funding was a huge advantage for me.

A  year  after  I  started  CD  Baby,  the  dot-com  boom  happened.  Anyone  with  a

little hot air and a vague plan was given mil ions of dol ars by investors.

It was ridiculous.

Most  business  owners  I  knew  would  tel  you  about  their  businesses  by  talking

about  their  second  round  of  funding,  their  fancy  encrypted  replicated  load-

balancing  database  server,  their  twenty-person  development  team,  their  nice

midtown office with a pool table, and their weekly promotion parties. When you

asked what the business actual y did, they couldn't explain it clearly.

Then they would talk about LOI, ROI, NDAs, IPOs, and al kinds of things that

also had nothing to do with actual y helping people.

I'm  so  glad  I  didn't  have  investors.  I  didn't  have  to  please  anybody  but  my

customers and myself. No effort spent on anything but my customers.

I'd get weekly cal s from investment firms, wanting to invest in CD Baby. My

immediate answer was always “No thanks.”

They'd say, “Don't you want to expand?”

I'd say, “No. I want my business to be smal er, not bigger.”

That always ended the conversation.

By not having any money to waste, you never waste money.

Since I couldn't afford a programmer, I went to the bookstore and got a $25 book

on  PHP  and  MySQL  programming.  Then  I  sat  down  and  learned  it,  with  no

programming experience. Necessity is a great teacher.

Even years later, the desks were just planks of wood on cinder-blocks from the

hardware store. I made the office computers myself from parts. My wel -funded

friends would spend $100,000 to buy something that I made myself for $1000.

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They did it saying “we need the very best,” but it didn't improve anything for the

customers.

Never  forget  that  absolutely  everything  you  do  is  for  your  customers.  Make

every  decision—even  decisions  about  whether  to  expand  the  business,  raise

money, or promote someone—according to what's best for your customers.

If you're ever unsure what to prioritize, just ask your customers the open-ended

question,  “How  can  I  best  help  you  now?”  Then  focus  on  satisfying  those

requests.

None of your customers wil ask you to turn your attention to expanding. They

want you to keep your attention focused on them.

It's counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on

your existing customers. Just thril them, and they'l tel everyone.