Pushing the Boulder
Talking about some of the best business advice I've ever recieved.
Lately, I’ve been doing a series of classroom talks to youths of all ages about career paths.1 Yesterday was the latest, with a full classroom of grade fives. One of the wildest thing about these talks is seeing just how much of a difference a year makes in the development of kids. I’m constantly “time travelling” in my role adjacent to their education, hopping around different grades in different schools. Each classroom is a fingerprint - a result of the teacher’s style, and the way the kids all interact with each other. Each experience has been incredibly unique.
During today’s talk, one of the kids asked me if there was ever a time that things were too hard, and if I wanted to quit. Inside my head, my lizard brain laughed. Of course. I think every single small business owner has multiple points, every year, where it all becomes too much. The business can be doing great. It can be doing poorly. It can be doing fine. It doesn’t matter. There are days that the events that are happening are just too much, and you either want to tear it all down, or just walk away. This was not something that I was going to tell a ten year old. So I talked about some of the best business advice I have ever received when we were still in the lean days of starting a business. We had gone through a lot at that point - shedding two different partners and pushing forward with our vision. We then came into contact with a dude who had built a couple of successful businesses here in Canada - including Knifewear.
We found each other after supporting some living wage things that were happening in 2016, and he took us out for a meal. Over the course of the meal, we all talked about the importance of treating people well and paying them what they deserve, and how that translates into sustainable living for everyone - with less turnover, and more enthusiastic employees. He also dropped the “best business advice” nugget, which I shared with the class, and it was this anecdote.
He said (and I am clearly paraphrasing), that starting and maintaining a small business was like trying to push an incredibly large boulder up a hill. Each and every day, you’re pushing and pushing and getting ahead by mere inches at best. Sometimes, the boulder rolls back on you. But you keep pushing, and you keep pushing, and then one day, you push, and the boulder ends up rolling away from you a little bit. And you’re thinking to yourself, “well that’s not normal. That’s not how this goes.” But you push again, because that is what you do, and the boulder rolls a little farther.
“There’s a bit of time where you convince yourself that it can’t be happening,” he (in my memory) said. You’ve only known life in inches, and suddenly, you’re getting feet. Your brain doesn’t accept it, because it can’t be true. It has never been true. But it is, and eventually you start to believe it. Things are moving. You’re not struggling to push so much.
But then one day, you’re pushing that boulder, and it starts rolling on it’s own. Now, you’re chasing after it. And it starts picking up speed. You can’t let the thing out of your sight, because if you do, you can’t control where it will land. The terrain ends up being peaks and valleys, and surviving becomes about anticipating what is to come, and adjusting as things surprise you.
The class seemed to take this in well. I can say that, because I was apparently the “closer” for the day, and the kids didn’t start packing up their stuff until I was done, and even then, several of them approached me afterwards to ask me questions (some showing me the things they drew during the talk, others just to ask if I liked Naruto, or what my favourite anime was).2
Regardless, it felt good communicating that information to folks. Running a small business is fun. Running a comic book shop, is better. But it is never easy, even when it is easy. It takes a lot of gumption and love. It takes conviction, and compassion. But like I told the kids: all the effort is worth it. To do something you love, to be in the position to share your passion with others? There isn’t anything quite like it in the world.
Anyway. That’s it for this week. On Tuesday, I return to The Beat to talk a little bit more about how staying small as a comic book business (and as a business in general) is the best thing you can possibly do, and how we structure things to stay in good shape.
Talk with you soon.
-B.
I spoke in depth about this early in my latest column for The Beat.
Jojo’s, which apparently 10 year olds are also into? I honestly assumed it was too weird for kids, but I mean, I rocked with Teddy Ruxpin, and that shit was wild.