Honestly, as much help and support as I've gotten from people--family, friends, customers, employees and suppliers--Skyline Music would not have survived (nor would it have had the character) during any period if I were a person with narrow interests. Were I just a guitar freak, band-o, tech guru or simply a salesman, it wouldn't work.
You see, we've never had enough capital to hire people to do the background stuff. The very few times when we had to rely on outside help on mission-critical tasks, it's been a disappointment--or worse.
I learned right away that advertising companies--from newspapers to yellow pages and other media, like ValPak--didn't understand our business. From odd gaffes due to unfamiliarity with our products and services (I received one proof for a Christmas ad that offered special pricing on "Metro Gnomes". Certainly a collectible series of Urban Elf figurines...) to a complete disconnect with the way we wanted to present ourselves (one ad rep pitched a "cheapest lessons in town" approach), it was obvious I had to do that myself. So early on I started designing any ad we placed (by the time we got a PC and PageMaker, i submitted everything as camera ready art). I also wrote the articles that ran when we bought into any of those "place an ad, get a writeup" packages some small papers offered.
Of course, that opened the software thing as well. Learning PageMaker, Photoshop, Word, Excel, and Access--and later web design software--isn't a course I took. I sat down and cranked my way through the manuals and tutorials, read books and magazines, and figured it out. Not that I'm an expert at any of it. I learned what I could, and implemented as much as I could. I wish I'd had someone to explain it to me--it would have been easier and faster. But no one I knew had much background, and early on when I asked about databases and point-of-sale,supposed professionals just laughed at me.
So I did what I could myself, and usually had some fun with it.Were the results elegant? FAR from it. But they worked n some fashion, and we still rely on most of the paste-ups and McGuyvered solutions today.
On the merchandising front, my meager skills in carpentry and other tool-based activity allowed me to finish off studios, build displays, and do some electrical work we couldn't otherwise afford. Even down to the backdrop for the Front Porch stage, it's all been home grown. Sometimes there's been a helping hand at the brainstorming or assembly stage, but it's always been someone from the store that helped.. Yet every task I've tackled, someone has come up to me while I was doing it and asked, "Where did you learn to do that?" I'm astonished at the dads who saw me tiling the ADA bathroom who couldn't get over the fact that I didn't hire someone to do the work. With what money?
Repairs have been the same--I didn't train as a repairman, nor do I consider myself one. I just learned how to do a few things, and found I could rely on myself to do it faster, and often better, when it was something I was confident doing. Guitar setups, wind repairs, the little i do with violins--there are all people who are far more experienced and talented. I've just managed to do the easy stuff. But most of the stuff we see IS the easy stuff, and it's been more profitable and efficient to have me do it.
Thankfully, the biggest plus in my column is that I like making things, and can (given enough hands-on time and development think-time) manage to do OK with stuff. Far below the level of expert, only occasionally approaching "talented amateur", but adequate for the need and within budget--which is usually zero. Without that, we'd have no database, no website, no publications, no fixtures, far less revenue, and no Skyline Music.
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