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By Root 752 0

’s feedback plays a very important role. Of course it does. It’s more like, the better the idea, the more “out there” it initially will seem to other people, even people you like and respect. So there’ll be a time in the beginning when you have to press on, alone, without one tenth the support you probably need. This is normal. This is to be expected. Ten years after I started doing them, drawing my “cartoons on the back of business cards” seems like a no-brainer, in terms of what it has brought me, both emotionally and to my career. But I can also clearly remember when I first started drawing them, the default reaction when I started to show my work on the back of business cards was a lot of head scratching. Sure, a few people thought they were kinda interesting and whatnot, but even to my closest friends, they seemed a complete, non-commercial exercise in futility for the New York world I was currently living in. Happily, time proved otherwise.

And again, from our first lesson, let’s not forget: GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS. THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED. The good news is, creating an idea or brand that fights the Powers That Be can be a lot of fun, and very rewarding. The bad news is, they’re called the Powers That Be for a reason—they’re the ones calling the shots, they have the power. Which is why the problem of selling a new idea to the general public can sometimes be a piece of cake, compared to selling a new idea internally to your team. This is to be expected: having your boss or biggest client not like your idea and fire you hits one at a much more immediate and primal level than having some abstract housewife in rural Kansas hypothetically not liking your idea after randomly seeing it advertised somewhere. Which is why most team members in any industry are far more concerned with the power relationships inside their immediate professional circle than with what may actually be interesting and useful for the customer.

And of course, once your idea starts outgrowing its “lonely childhood,” you might have a new problem to contend with. I refer to it as the “I want to be part of something! Oh, wait, no I don’t” syndrome.

I’ve seen this before so many times, both firsthand and with other people. Your idea finally seems to be working, seems to be getting all sorts of traction, and all of a sudden you’ve got all these swarms of people trying to join the team, trying to get a piece of the action.

And then as soon as they get a foothold inside the inner circle, you soon realize they never really understood your idea in the first place, they just want to be on the winning team. And the weirdest part is, they don’t seem to mind sabotaging your original idea that got them interested in the first place, in order to maintain their newfound social status. It’s probably the most bizarre bit of human behavior I’ve ever witnessed firsthand in business, and it’s amazingly common.

Again, this is to be expected. Good ideas don’t exist in a vacuum. Good ideas exist in a social context. And not everybody has the same agenda as you.

Good ideas can have lonely young adulthoods, too.

5. If your business plan depends on suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.

Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.

I WAS OFFERED A QUITE SUBSTANTIAL PUBLISHING deal a few years ago. Turned it down. The company sent me a contract. I looked it over. Hmmmm . . .

Called the company back. Asked for some clarifications on some points in the contract. Never heard back from them. The deal died.

This was a very respected company. You may have even heard of it.

They just assumed I must be like all the other people they represent—hungry and desperate and willing to sign anything.

They wanted to own me, regardless of how good or bad a job they might do of helping me make my dream a reality.

That’s the thing about some big publishers. They want 110 percent from you, but they don’t offer to do likewise in return. To them, the artist is