The Rhythm of Business

David Rottenberg, Jeffrey C. Shuman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781138140776
• eBook ISBN: 9781136013058
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The Rhythm of Business identifies and describes the natural development process which all successful business people use intuitively when starting and running a business. Once you understand The Rhythm of Business, you will never feel lost or out of sync, no matter what business you are in, because The Rhythm of Business incorporates a process with concrete steps to attain business success applicable for any business. A lot of business books deal in `tips.' This book deals with the most fundamental principles in business. Fundamental principles might not sound interesting to someone who is trained to think in terms of the practicalities of daily business life, but, in fact, The Rhythm of Business is the most practical, down-to-earth business book you will ever read! Jeffrey C. Shuman has crafted a unique career as an entrepreneur, consultant, business professor, and author. He is considered a leading expert in the emerging field of entrepreneurial studies. His courses in entrepreneurship at Bentley College tap state-of-the-art knowledge about business creation. His writings include dozens of articles and a book on entrepreneurs and the business creation process.

Part I

The Rhythm of Business

1

Rhythm

If you can walk

You can dance

If you can talk

You can sing

…A SAYING FROM ZIMBABWE

Flash! InfoWorld says, “Bill Gates has rhythm!”¹ And InfoWorld is right. Bill Gates definitely has rhythm.

But the kind of rhythm I’m talking about is not the usual kind of rhythm. It’s not the rhythm of a Stevie Wonder, an Aretha Franklin, a Fred Astaire, or a Ginger Rogers. The kind of rhythm I’m talking about is the rhythm of business; and if anyone has rhythm, it’s Bill Gates. How do I know? Because Bill Gates tops Forbes’ list of the ten richest people in the world.²

What does rhythm have to do with business? And is rhythm really the key to success? The American Heritage Dictionary defines rhythm as, “The regular patterned flow, the ebb and rise, of sounds and movement in speech, music, writing, dance, and other physical activities, and in natural phenomena.”

So, we can say that rhythm refers to “patterns,” patterns that we can not only see or hear but feel, taste, or smell, as well. These patterns, these rhythms are very important in human life.

Rhythm is undeniably the structuring basis of life on this planet… The sun’s rays create the primary rhythms of rest and activity, of growth and decay, of life and death… Realizing that healthy living things are not only internally rhythmic but are also synchronized with their environment, the earliest communities of humans based their survival on keeping track of these rhythms.³

Whether in art, song, dance, literature, sports, love, or recreation, all human activity follows a rhythm. And, not surprisingly, this rhythm also runs through business. Rhythm is basic to how business functions.

Let’s look again at Bill Gates. In the late 1980s, Gates’s company, Microsoft, spent millions of dollars developing a software product called Windows. When it was first introduced it failed. Reviewers hated it. Consumers didn’t buy it. Rival software execs gloated that Gates was losing his touch. But Bill Gates wasn’t deterred. He learned from his failure. He spent several million more dollars and a few years later came out with a second version of Windows. It was better, but still not good enough. It also failed. Bill Gates tried again. A few years more and many millions of dollars later, Microsoft introduced its third version of Windows, and suddenly it was an “overnight” success. Microsoft revolutionized the PC business and made billions of dollars.

Does all this mean that stubbornness and persistence pay off? Not really. Stubbornness and persistence can just as easily and many times more often mean failure and bankruptcy. What this example does mean is that there is a rhythm to business, a pattern that all businesses follow, no matter what product or service they sell; a rhythm that we all can understand and learn from to help us build and run a successful business.

WHAT IS THE RHYTHM?

Most simply, the rhythm of business is attempting to develop a product or service that fulfills a group of customers’ wants and needs, testing the product or service in the marketplace, learning from that test, and then refining the product or service to more accurately fulfill your customers’ wants and needs. Every successful business, to a greater or lesser degree, follows this rhythm. Those businesspeople who have a “natural rhythm” follow it well; those who don’t, follow it less well. But no matter how good or bad your “natural” rhythm is, once you understand what the rhythm is and how important it is, you will follow it better and improve your ability to feel the rhythm of business.

To be successful in business you have to have rhythm. Bill Gates has it. Consciously or unconsciously, he followed this rhythm when he developed Windows. Bill Gates knew that his customers wanted and needed a simpler, more graphical computer operating system, so Microsoft developed Windows. After it was developed, naturally, the firm tested it in the marketplace. It wasn’t right, so the company brought back the product and worked on it. After another test it still wasn’t right. So, the company did some more work, tested it some more, and this time, helped by improvements in the speed of computer hardware, Windows was a sensation and Bill Gates had done it again. But, what had Bill Gates really done? Very simply, he had followed the rhythm of business; developing, testing, and refining a product or service until it was right.

Oftentimes, when we read in books or articles about some very successful businessperson, the author seems unable to identify and describe what accounts for the subject’s success. Writers use words like she had that “ineffable something—call it instinct, or even genius.” But the truth is, that “ineffable something” is not mystical or magical. It’s not some sixth sense. That “ineffable something” is the rhythm of business.

Consider how Ron Shaich, cofounder of Au Bon Pain, Inc. (sales of $259 million through 231 company-owned and 58 franchised bakery cafes), describes his recipe for success: “The way you build a business is you continue to dance.”⁴ In other words, he always is developing his company’s ability to fulfill his customers’ wants and needs. When Ron talks about dancing, he’s not using this description as a metaphor. He’s saying that he really has rhythm—that he’s continually researching, developing, analyzing, and refining his business by coming up with new products and business concepts, testing them in the marketplace, and devising new ways to make them better. Ron never stops dancing to the rhythm of business.

ARE SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSPEOPLE BORN OR MADE?

Whether successful businessmen and -women are born or made always has been a controversy. Obviously, this is an important issue. If successful businesspeople are born, then it could be assumed that, at some point, their inborn intuition somehow will awaken and lead them down the path to business success. Conversely, those without that special intuition shouldn’t try to start and run a business. But, if successful businesspeople are made, then perhaps anyone interested in becoming successful can do so after finding out what the ingredients are.

Actually, I believe that successful businesspeople are both born and made. But, there is a difference between the two types just as there is a difference between someone we would describe as having “natural, inborn” athletic skills and someone who practices a lot and plays hard.

Take basketball, for example. It’s not surprising that, when Larry Bird, a natural-born athlete, was asked to what he attributed his success, he answered, “I always knew where the ball was going to be.” And, when Wayne Gretzky, another natural-born athlete, was asked essentially the same question, he replied, “I skate to where the puck is going to be.” How do they know where the puck or the ball is going to be? They know because they feel the inborn rhythm of the game, which allows them to process information in such a way that, instinctively, they sense what they need to do and where they need to be at any given point in time.

But, what about all the other thousands of basketball and hockey players around the world, professional and amateur, do all of them have the inborn rhythm of a Wayne Gretzky or a Larry Bird? Obviously, the answer is no. That doesn’t mean that those individuals can’t work hard and become much better or even great. Everyone in the NHL and the NBA isn’t a Wayne Gretzky or a Larry Bird. The NBA and NHL have all different levels of players just as there are all different levels of businesspeople. Not everyone is a Bill Gates or a Ron Shaich but that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful.

DEVELOPING THE RHYTHM OF BUSINESS

We can say that there are six basic requirements to developing the rhythm of business:

(1) You need, at least, some natural skills.

(2) You need to work hard and practice.

(3) You need a basic understanding of the mechanics of the business you are in.

(4) You need to gather information about your business.

(5) You need to constantly think about your business.

(6) You need to love your business with a passion.

Interestingly, of the six, the least important is having some natural-born skills, because, whether or not you have any natural, inborn ability, if you work hard, if you understand the basic mechanics of your business, if you gather information about your business (such as talking to your customers and reading trade magazines and books like this), if you constantly think about your business, and if you love your business, you have all the ingredients to improve your natural rhythm and become successful. For example, one of the most important points I will make in this book is that a key component of the rhythm of business is failure. It took Bill Gates three tries before he succeeded with Windows. In fact, Microsoft has a history of not getting its software products right the first time. As Eric Schmidt in US News & World Report has commented, “Microsoft’s role and power in the industry are stunning. No other company could routinely release such weak first versions of its products, then use its own customers as a test group for revisions until it gets a fully working product.”⁵ But Microsoft’s first releases are not “failures.” Rather they are the first steps in the rhythm of business. In a recent television interview, Gates had this to say about listening to his customers:⁶ “We appreciate the feedback we get from customers. Every time they calls us, we write that down and we use that to make a better product.” And, in the same interview, he added:

It is true that if you find an idea that requires three or four years of improvement and patience and really sticking with it, that we’re very good at that. Take Windows, which we bet the company on. Everybody doubted that would succeed—IBM did not support us in that. It took longer than we expected, over four years, before finally, graphical interfaces got popular and now people take it for granted. It’s part of every personal computer and you just expect it to be there. That was one of the grand successes of the company.

But Gates’s success is not just vision, or persistence, or ideas, or market clout. It’s a specific pattern. When Gates begins developing a product, he allows for “failure” in his business plan. Intellectually or instinctively, he dances to the rhythm of business and makes the correct decision that he will continue to develop his product, bring it to market, listen to his customers’ wants and needs, and refine his product until it becomes a success.

This is the rhythm of business. It’s a rhythm that anyone can understand and follow and into which all the down-to-earth aspects of business, such as financing, researching, negotiating, manufacturing, marketing, advertising, and managing, fit. You have to know how to plan for failure as well as success because both are part of the rhythm of business.

No one can devise a perfect business plan. It doesn’t matter how good your business instincts are. It doesn’t matter how hard you work. It doesn’t matter how much you understand business or how much you love it. Too many variables are involved and the variables change too quickly for any one person or group of people to ever start and run a perfect business. This means that change is inevitable in business and anything that changes follows a rhythm.

THE FIRST BEAT

Where does the rhythm of business begin? It begins with the first beat. To start a successful business, first you need to have an idea about a product or service that fulfills a potential group of customers’ wants and needs. Once you have that idea, you need to learn as much as you can about the exact nature of your customers’ wants and needs. Then, you have to design a business that best fulfills those wants and needs—you have to decide how to make the product, how to market the product and how to distribute the product, and so forth. Then, of course, you have to actually open for business. But, as mentioned, no matter how well you’ve planned, no matter how good your instincts are, no matter how hard you’ve worked, no matter how much you understand your business, and no matter how much you love your business, change is inevitable, because the only way you can truly understand your customers is from direct contact with them.

All the analysis of secondhand market research is good only for a start. True understanding of your customers’ wants and needs begins when you open for business—whether it’s your first day or the thousandth. At that point, you have to be ready to analyze your customers’ responses and refine your business according to their actual wants and needs. You have to be ready to come up with new ideas—new ads, new methods of distribution, new manufacturing technologies, new features, new pricing, and so on—to make your business more accurately fulfill your customers’ desires. The faster you learn how to develop, test, analyze, and refine, the faster your business grows and the more profitable it becomes.

For example, let’s say you’re starting a business and you think there’s a market opportunity selling theater tickets in malls. First, you do as much research as you can to see whether the idea has merit. Maybe your research simply consists of you and your spouse walking through malls asking shoppers questions. Maybe you hire a professional research firm. No matter what type and level of research you use, the results have to be good enough to convince not only you but potential investors to put their hard-earned cash into bringing your idea to reality. You need to know what type of malls work best, what type of tickets you should sell, how much of a surcharge your customers are willing to pay, how many sales people are required at each booth, and the like. When you feel you have a viable business plan and enough money to start, you open for business.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I. The Rhythm of Business
• PART II. Learning to Feel the Rhythm
• PART III. Let the Dance Begin
• References
• Index