Working Within Constraints

Warning: this is not a typical This Charming Candy blog post.

One of the things you learn when running a small business is that there are a lot of constraints - mainly on your time and your money. You can't just throw money around and god knows there's never enough time to get everything done.

A story: I co-run the strings program at my daughter's elementary school. She's been taking group violin lessons for about 3 years now; this is an after-school music program. Most music programs are these days, what with state education funding drying up and federal standards focusing on reading and math. She's also started choir this year - she loves to sing and this gives her a great outlet. Both of these programs give her, and the other kids at her school, a great outlet for their emotions and it's a great learning opportunity for them. I've worked with my daughter to help recognize patterns in the music and she loves making music.

But these programs, along with band, are all funded solely by parent donations, and a different parent runs each program; one program, choir, even spans two elementary schools. And sometimes, today being one of those times, the inefficiency of that frustrates me beyond belief.

It would be so much more efficient, time-wise, if one person could coordinate all the musical programs across all the elementary schools. That person would could schedule all the concerts, could know what facilities are available when, could cut deals to buy sheet music, and who could develop relationships with the local businesses who rent instruments and the press who could write up a heartwarming story or two about kids learning music. The school district can't afford to fund that position, they can barely fund the bare bones these days.

Instead, it's a mishmash of people pulling together what they have because their kids want to play music. It's frustrating. Sometimes I want to cry and throw things. We work with the budget constraints we have - and the kids don't care. They just know that they get to play instruments or sing or be in a program they like with their friends. Most of the time, I see how happy the kids are and how much they're learning and it doesn't matter. I'm happy that we've found a way to help the kids express themselves and learn something about music.

And, to me, there's a business lesson there. One of our business goals is to make people happy with sugar on a stick. Susan and I wish we had unlimited time to do everything we wanted and unlimited money so we could make as much candy as possible and get it to every single person in the world. But we can't. So we look at the customers we have made happy and we figure out how to make a few more happy in the next week/month/quarter/year with the time and money we've got.

In short: we love you guys.

Back to our regularly scheduled bloggery.