MIKESTOPFORTH

I am a beeeg fan of the Dave Matthews Band. Have been for nigh on ten years now. I own all their albums, most of their DVD’s and a healthy selection of their bootlegged recordings.

Their truly unique sound and jamband stage act is not everyone’s cup of tea, but despite that they remain one of the biggest live acts in the US and enjoy an enormous online following. Meeting him at Montecasino earlier this year was the realisation one of my life’s goals and a highlight in my ‘blogging career’ (it was blogging that established the relationships that afforded me the opportunity to be there).

I was thinking about the success of DMB the other day and realised I can draw a numbers of principles from it that I’ve seen benefiting small businesses and startups. Here are the 7 things the Dave Matthews Band has taught me about startups (after the video of course)…

1. Give it a go – Dave started out in Charlottesville, VA, as a bartender with a few good songs that he was too afraid to play for people. The Dave Matthews Band (DMB) started because he was convinced to share his music with top jazz musicians in his city thanks to a lawyer friend. So many great companies are never born because of the fear of failure or disappointment. The truth is all startups fail, at some point or another and to varying degrees. So the issue is not whether or not you’ll fail, but how you’ll react when you do. I do not – I repeat DO NOT – want to wake up in my 80′s one day wishing I’d tried and realising I was afraid. Besides, the bigger issue you should be concerned about when starting a business is what you’ll do if it succeeds, not if it fails… think about that!
2. Don’t try be all things to all people – DMB could have tried to sound like everyone else on the pretty vibrant music scene in the mid-90′s, but they didn’t. Instead they chose a sound that reflected their collective interests and influences. And honestly, it takes some getting used to. It’s a bit like red wine. First time you drink it you wonder what all the fuss is about. Three bottles later and you’re ready to propose to a vine. Dave stayed true to his unusual, percussive acoustic guitar technique (nothing electric in a grunge world), quirky voice and the band felt comfortable playing 15-18 minute jams on the stage. Not exactly what everyone else was doing, but it was what they did best. Do what you do best, focus on it and execute it passionately and you’ll find a market…
3. Hire talent – Dave Matthews can sing and play guitar, but he can’t mix sound and do lighting. And even if he could, it wouldn’t be practical for him to. This has been my hardest lesson to learn as an entrepreneur – surround yourself with the right people to do the jobs you can’t, or just shouldn’t, be doing. Those are the things that will eat away your time and consequently destroy your business
4. Diversity breeds creativity – DMB consists of three black guys and two white guys (excluding the extra white and black guy that frequent their live performances). The music reflects African, Native American, Rock, Pop, Jazz, Fusion, Funk and Blues influences, to name a few. They have differing religious views, different family statuses, vastly different ages. They’re a diverse bunch and you can hear it in their music and see it in their interactions. I believe diversity breeds creativity, creates opportunities for constructive conflict and can only result in a team that produces truly new and innovative ideas. How diverse is your startup?
5. Have a visionary, have a foundation – Dave Matthews is clearly the lead songwriter and vocalist in the band, and the guy who lands all the nice interviews and TV spots, but he’s not the foundation on which the band is built. It’s tough to have a visionary who’s also a foundational, operationally sound figure in business. In our business I’m the visionary and Angus is the anchor – our sanity. In DMB the anchor is the drummer – Carter Beauford. I don’t think it’s possible to be both simultaneously
6. Share – early on in their career the band allowed fans to plug into the mixing desk at performances and record live shows. They even allowed them to duplicate and share these recordings, provided it was not for profit – in fact they’ve been pretty harsh on people who try to make money out of bootlegged albums, but encourage free sharing of these resources. As a result their popularity has spread like wildfire on the back of technology that allows people to act on their generosity – the Internet. Quirk eMarketing recently displayed better than anyone else the value of sharing incredible IP with no expectation for return with their eMarketing textbook – a gesture that I hope will launch them into the stratosphere…
7. Invest in the community – early on DMB set up Bama Rags, a foundation designed to help disadvantaged youths in the Charlottesville region. Cerebra realised very early on that if we didn’t invest in our community (you guys) we’d not only be disconnected from the needs of our market but struggle to foster trust. Investing and giving away are necessary skills in any new business’s arsenal!

I hope these one or two thoughts have helped you. I’ll leave you with a video of the band playing Grey Street (one of my favourite tracks). It’s a little jerky but the sound is good…