Theme Songs
Volume 12, Number 29
Issue 577
What does your business stand for? Ever hear a song that made you think about your business or about a customer story? Are you a businessperson that hears a song and lets it get into your head? Wonder why it’s in your head? Is it because you relate to that song on some deep emotional level? Since true entrepreneurs live their business lives personally on a deep emotional level, maybe that song means something to you professionally and not just personally.
If your business doesn’t stand for something, it stands for nothing. If you aren’t sure what it stands for, neither are your customers, associates, employees and friends. Does your business “stand” for becoming rich in profit? It must, as long as you remember that profit doesn’t necessarily need to be measured in money. Profit can be measured however the entrepreneur wants to measure it: in money, fun, freedom, investing in training and educating the next generation, investing in society, friendships—however the entrepreneur wants to measure it is what’s important. Songs are great ways to facilitate the emotion that it will take for you to think through what your business stands for.
One easy way to help you think through what your business stands for is to have an entrepreneurial theme song. Some businesses have a theme song and don’t know it—it just hasn’t hit them yet. Is it Debbie Gibson’s “Anything is Possible”? Is it Pink’s “Let’s Get This Party Started”? Is it The Police’s “Every Breath You Take”? How about Naked Eye’s “Always Something There to Remind Me”? Is it Lone Star’s “Amazed”? How about James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend”? Maybe more like Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone”?
We all have songs that we hear on the radio or CDs that get into our heads. Once there, it’s hard to get rid of them until a new one comes along to replace it. We think about the lyrics, hummm them, sing them and even try to catch the words we are unsure about. Me, I choose one theme song at a time that I obsess over and over about. Then I pick a new one every few months as I keep trying to invent a new idea or reinvent an old one.
Every entrepreneur should have a theme song that reflects business goals, climate, and philosophy and target market. The theme song is a quick reference of what your business stands for.
Theme songs have helped me start and end each busy season. In fact, they help me get through it. Listening to a song over and over late at night as I am struggling with the reality of a CPA’s busy season workload helps me focus because it allows me to get a rhythm and to keep my focus through knowing the timing and beat of the song.
Theme songs have helped me mark particular events in the history of my company where there has been transition to a new event or through an old one. I’ve used theme songs to help me redefine target markets and make decisions about demographics and about which particular goals and philosophies that I want to redefine. Theme songs have helped me make decisions about what components of profit (money, fun, freedom, investing in training and educating the next generation, investing in society, friendships) make up my ideal combination of being rich in money AND rich in relationships.
Sometimes your songs choose you. I suggest that you choose your own because you are better able to chart your own destiny towards your own goals of how you want to define profit. I’ve seen businesses that have fun as a cornerstone of defining profit—that’s one of mine. It’s easy to have theme songs when you look as fun being just as worthwhile as monetary profit. The reverse is also true: Businesses that focus solely on money being the determining factor of successful profit are hard to choose a theme song for. Perhaps Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne” may be appropriate for the grip that the lack of fun has over this type of business.
I had a lot of fun for four years playing my theme songs on my weekly radio show. One way that I constantly kept the show fresh and new was to play lots of popular music and come back as the host and relate the lyrics in that song to entrepreneurial topics. Just like the movie, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” where the father was able to relate any word origin back to the Greek language, I was able to relate any song lyrics to a story about entrepreneurialism.
A theme song also helps convey fun to employees and, yes, even customers. Often, they will help choose it. There was a period of time in my business where we had so many things go right that were so unusual in such a short amount of time that an employee chose OMC’s “How Bizarre” as the theme song for that period of time. Then, as all good things do, that period of time came to an end. As I recall, one song adopted me for a while until I could get away from it. I believe it was Larry Verne’s “Please Mr. Custer.”
David B. Robinson, CPA
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