We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michael Marlowe. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michael below.

Michael, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?

There is a temptation when starting any kind of business or creative project, to focus on perfecting the product, idea, song, book, etc. Often fresh business owners or developing creatives view their project or business like their “baby” and are obsessed with perfecting every detail of it. Writers can do the same, toiling for ages trying to work out every intricacy of a story before writing it down. This couldn’t be a more wrong approach to beginning anything.

I can describe the best approach with an analogy from my days years ago at fashion school in London. At the end of one day, our teacher assigned us 8 looks to design by the next morning. The next morning myself and the entire class didn’t finish. “Do you know why?” our teacher asked us, “Because you spent all night trying to draw and create 8 perfect looks in a collection, instead of drawing 800 looks and picking the best ones.” What makes your creations great, what makes your products great, and what makes your business successful is repetition of completing the goal.

2 people go fishing, they catch the same amount of fish, and both try to set up a wild caught fish company. One spends the rest of the day designing the packaging, a website, a logo, an app, etc. while the other one spends the rest of the day driving seafood restaurant to seafood restaurant offering to supply fish to them for below corporate price. At the end of the day one has a nice website and branding, while the other sold all his fish and made a profit.

A group of friends I had in London were all in a band together. They were Australian and only had 2-year visas to stay in England. They spent the entire 2 years in the studio trying to hone a perfect album of songs and played one big launch show that got attention, but they couldn’t do anything with it because they had to leave. Had they spent the last 2 years playing live shows 3 times per week somewhere in the city and honing their set on stage, not only would they have built a grass roots audience of loyal fans and confident promoters/venue owners, they would have probably been in a much better position to extend their visas and see how far they could go.

The truth, is that your first business or project will suck. It will probably not make money. It will also probably not look or sound great. It doesn’t matter and no one cares.

You will hear a lot of people lie about the “steps from idea to execution”. Oh it was cold plunge.. Listening to David Goggins… a business plan.., a website… I changed the ISO on my Instagram… That is all wrong. The only way to get from idea to execution is to start.

Product idea? Before you make some fancy website & branding, go see if you can sell it. Get revenue first, then you can worry about the rest. Revenue is also a much easier sell to investors than an idea. If you can make some money, you can make more money. If you only think you can make money on something, I probably don’t believe you.

Idea for a song? Start creating. Make 100 god-awful songs that make Rebecca Black look like Earth, Wind, & Fire. The only way you’ll get to a great song is on top of a mountain of garbage ones. Your favorite artist probably has 15 songs on an album, you never see the other 50 songs that got scrapped.

The same goes for any kind of business or creative pursuit. Be willing to have things suck, and most importantly, don’t be so attached to one idea you cant let it go. You cant force some product, chord progression, or idea to work. You have to be willing to scrap something and move on.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I stumbled into what I do now the way I stumbled into everything else I’ve done. I wanted to design clothes, so I went to fashion school and designed suits for a living. I wanted to travel more, so I learned how to do marketing off of YouTube and became a remote marketing consultant. I wanted to make music so I made music, and now I write and am at war with several large publishers because I always wanted to write and have integrity in the craft.

We are all inundated with motivation, theories, this type of business, this type of that, and it is all fake. No millionaire or billionaire Ive ever met attributed their success to listening to Gary V, a “4hr work week”, and doing a cold plunge. No famous writer got there because they hacked the self-publishing market. No band has longevity because they do influencer marketing.

Here is the truth about what you need:
To have a successful business? revenue, a USP, scalability – specifically in that order. Think back to the fish example. I get 5 restaurants to supply to – revenue – then I market myself as local wild caught seafood – my USP – now I have some scalability to expand in the local area and I become attractive to investors.

To always be employed with a good salary? Have marketable skills, and provide solutions. Learn digital marketing off of YouTube – extremely marketable skill – then I go to businesses unsatisfied with large agencies because they are locked into long-term fixed contracts with little results and offer them a better service for less money and a shorter, negotiable commitment – provide a solution. In a company environment, you will find that most C-Suite executives don’t care how or why something happened, they just want to know what is being done about it. Always come to meetings or interviews with a 3-5 point action plan (even if you made it up 5 minutes before), you’d be surprised how far that takes you.

To complete a novel, painting, song, or other creative pursuit? Create constantly. Make one song per day, write a few pages per day, paint as often as possible, etc. The only way you develop your skills and create masterpieces is by constantly creating and throwing out ideas, even if they are dumpster fires.

I am not special. I have no talents and no natural skills. Im not a trust fund baby or some genius. What I have that separates me from most other people is a willingness to do what it takes to achieve my goals and a resilience to keep trying in the face of resistance and failure. That is what I am most proud of. I am proud of what I create, but more proud of the act of completing another cycle in the process to becoming better. Each new created project is one more step closer to greatness.

I would just add that I believe creativity exists outside of us, and that we are just conduits for it – like a radio antenna. Greatness isn’t because we are great or that we became great, but the better we are at creating, the source of creativity gives us more important projects. That great song idea wont be given to you if you suck at playing your instrument. That great script wont be given to you if you haven’t even started writing. Through repetition, become highly skilled at your passion, then you will be able to facilitate creative wonders.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Everything is your fault. Read it again and burn it into your head. Business, companies, teams, bands, collaborations – you name it – fail because of bad leadership. Everyone is playing hot potato with accountability while the house is on fire. If you manage a team, understand the success or failure is up to you. If an employee or team member fails it is because you did not equip them enough. Many boomer led companies equate morale to “fun”. Employees are not children. High morale cant be bought with pizza parties, or installing a ping pong table or free beer in the office. Morale goes deeper than excess stimuli. Morale comes from a sense of purpose, respect, loyalty,
These shallow gestures can actually do more to harm morale, it shows the employees you have no respect for them, and that for them giving you literally hours of their lives they deserve a consolation prize that would fit a kids soccer team who just lost a game.
Employees must feel that what they are doing matters, that you or the company are loyal to them, that there is mutual respect (not millennial entitlement), and they can grow along with the company.

You aren’t a “family” you are a business. Being a “family” implies I should sacrifice for you with no thought of reward because we have an intimate shared bond or blood. Steer clear of any company that has this slogan. What they mean universally is “work 80hr weeks, get nothing in return”. Also if you are a manager, steer clear of this language. Again it is not a family, it is a business. We are a ship with a captain, first mate, and below. We are an army with a general, centurions, and foot soldiers. We aren’t “hanging out”, we are trying to feed our families, to create beautiful things, to push the boundaries of the impossible. We want to die with smiles on our faces. We don’t want our last thought to be a montage of stress and half empty lattes in the company coffee shop.

Managing a team is easy:
Have clear and realistic goals, and deadlines
Give tasks to each team member based on their skill set
Give them freedom to achieve the goals however they see fit.

The problem with micromanagement is it creates a culture of just following orders, so when the unexpected happens people sit around waiting to be told what to do instead of being proactive. ex: most physical product companies run by boomers, they spend billions on consultancies because they have zero proactivity and zero accountability.

The problem with laissez-faire management is it creates a free-for-all and nothing ever gets done, they succeed only on hype or trends and become bloated messes. ex: silicon valley. 15k employees at Twitter and only 1k are actually working. Who’s the boss? No one knows. What do we do? sit around and argue, eventually orchestrating a mutiny.

You don’t want robots, and you don’t want mutiny. Clear guidelines, clear roles, clear objectives, and freereign on how they get there.

This begins to tie into morale. This gives people a real sense that they are a part of it, that they can be creative in their tasks, that they are needed, and feel ownership over part what the team accomplishes. They respect management for using their skills, respecting them to solve problems on their own, and giving them the satisfaction of achievement.

Loyalty is the hardest one to swallow for a lot of companies, my answer is always the same – you’ve got to give it up. Pay people what they are worth. Give them a clear timeline and structure of what progress looks like. ex: Stay 1 year you get a raise, stay 2 years you get promoted from junior with another raise, stay 5 years get promoted to senior and get another raise. Not just anecdotal potentials, put a meeting on the calendar that says “on this day we review you and if you qualify the promotion and raise starts then”.

The reason companies and teams have such a high turnover rate is employees/members are treated as disposable cattle. “Work hard! Work 80hr weeks! You wont get a raise and I might fire you anyway, but who knows? I might let you work here another year!”

Companies try to buy loyalty and morale without having good leadership. It cant be done. Once you make everything your fault you will search for solutions and run things better. You will make better decisions and your team members and employees will be happier.

That said, if you run a business and you have “leaders” in your organization who refuse to take responsibility, get rid of them immediately. They will sink your ship. Example:
CEO: “Why was this delivery not completed on time?”
Head of Department: “One of the junior product designers didn’t finish the prototype in time, the production facility ran out of raw materials, and a few of our drivers were already out on deliveries.”
The head of the department should have taken responsibility for making sure the junior product designers were trained correctly, he should have taken responsibility for making sure the production facility had enough materials and the logistics of delivery were scheduled correctly, but he choses to blame everyone but himself, the one who is supposedly in charge.
Fire this guy.

In ancient Rome, it was the Contubernium’s job to make sure each member of his unit was correctly trained and placed in their formation. The Centurion’s job was to make sure each of his 10 Contubernium were placed according to their skills, talents, and attributes in the best way to succeed. If a part of the battle formation failed the Cohort would hold the Centurion responsible, not the front line soldiers who failed. There was no greater humiliation and disgrace than if in the face of defeat, a Centurion pointed at his men instead of himself. It should be the same at your business.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Yes, to be a perfect conduit of creativity so I can be the facilitator of the greatest creative ideas. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t believe raw creativity comes from within. We each have our own unique style and skills sure, but we don’t generate ideas within ourselves. Put it this way, there are all kinds of differently shaped vases, but they are not the source of the water, wine, Baja Blast, or whatever fills them. Whether you call it the muse, or being in the zone, every creative has their own name for it, but we grasp onto ideas that come to us. We hear the notes in our head, we see characters faces. Michelangelo saw David inside the column of marble, he didn’t create it. He said he was just releasing him from the column.

There is nothing worse than hearing a melody in your head but not being able to play an instrument, of seeing character’s faces and stories but not knowing how to write. My goal is to be as skilled as possible in every creative outlet I am drawn to, so that when an Idea is given, I can facilitate its manifestation as honestly as possible.

This is also why I suggest most creatives have a side job. Not just because rarely do creative pursuits pay, but that you are not tied to monetization. Hunger does drive hard work, but hunger also makes people compromise and sell out. If you have money from a side job, it doesnt matter what the publisher says you should write, or if the label executive comes in the studio and tells you to change something. You don’t need their approval and you don’t need to sell at all actually. Which is the most beautiful thing. Once you are free from requiring your creativity to produce money, you can produce the most honest and raw creations.

I was able to go back and forth with publishers for 7 years for my last book because I wasn’t needing to eat off of the book. If I needed to I would have compromised, written something else entirely, changed my writing style, changed everything that made my work honest, raw and unique to appease a bloated beast.

Honesty is the most powerful tool in all creative pursuits, and you cant have it if you consciously or subconsciously compromise.

Contact Info:

• Website: spicymarlowe.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/spicymarlowe

Image Credits
Anetta Odnoralova (instagram.com/_bl.eu)