Heroes and Small Business.
The story of Icarus, the son of Deadalus a Greek craftsman, (he built the Labyrinth, but that is another story) tells the tale of how the lad, when given a pair of wings made for him by his father, showed that he was an excellent flyer. Trouble is he got a little too big for his britches, and in spite of his father’s warnings not to fly too close to the sun because the wax holding the wings together would melt, well boys will be boys so you know the rest; he did, the wax melted and he fell into the sea. Let’s face it when it happens to a celebrity today it is all over the television, newspapers, the web, whatever. It has become a regular opportunity for the media, the reporting of the collapse of public figures, and they love it, and there have been plenty of them over the last decade or two.
It seems like the myth is still working. Well myths tend to hang around like that.
Success seems to be the aura of these individuals, it is what our latter day Icarus’ believed about themselves. I wonder if  Marshall McLuhan, in his influential book, Understanding Media had this in mind when he summed it up in his commentary about the movie “Room at the Top” , “the moral being that success is not only wicked but also the formula for misery.” Pretty strong stuff, mind you that was back in the Sixties, when anything was ok, more or less. Maybe he was being prophetic as usual or maybe he did have the Myth of Icarus in mind?
One of the real life advantages of owning and running a small business, as opposed to being famous, is that you grow with it. The whole edifice rests on your behavior; it can be humbling and spectacularly satisfying all on a Wednesday afternoon! Whether you grow and the business follows or the business grows and you follow is a moot point. The real point is there is a direct co-relationship between the success of the business and your personal life. I haven’t met a successful small business owner for whom flying too high is a preferred attitude of mind. There is a fairly high failure rate in small businesses, and likely the mental attitude of the owner had a good deal to do with its failure.
The essence of a small business would likely include an acute awareness of the real value of the product or service provided by the business, how it is presented to the prospective customer or client, the internal relations within the company and finally the delivery of the product or service to the client. The loop is complete when the follow-up service generates new business with the client or by referral. Keeping all this together can be a trick, but if you make it work and become famous you should be able to handle it ok!
JFC Feb 2010
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