Draught Horse Press has not developed according to some detailed master plan. In fact, there is no way I could have predicted three years ago where we would be today, and I can’t predict now exactly how the business will evolve over the next three years. We began with some rough objectives in mind—to create a family business, to be involved with books, to promote thinking that had been important to us, to support parents of older homeschoolers—and at each point we asked ourselves what we could do in the short term to move ourselves in the right direction. First we published a book. Then we offered a few books for sale from other publishers. Then we designed a decent website. Then we created and distributed the sort of catalog we always wished someone else would do for us. Then we reorganized and expanded our offerings with homeschoolers in mind. Then we designed a better website. Each of those was an achievable short-term goal, fairly certain to get us closer to our objectives, no big disaster if it wasn’t successful.
The Ridgewood Boys, being more of a spare-time project, has proceeded by setting even less ambitious, shorter-term goals. We tried getting friends to jam with us. We signed up for open microphone events, and prepared thoroughly for them. We signed up with a working band and spent a couple of months playing real live dates as sidemen. We played on a small cable TV program. We played on the radio, several times. We signed up for ongoing lessons from working local musicians. We arranged for one-time lessons from world-class musicians. We learned to record and make CDs in our basement. We arranged for a weekly three-hour performance at a local coffee shop, and stuck with it for two months. We listened to hundreds of classic bluegrass CDs, and learned to play lots of the best songs. We started asking to be paid for our performances. We involved ourselves with the local community of working musicians. We attended the annual convention for bluegrass professionals.
Among the things we did not do: promote ourselves widely, seek out lots of gigs, press our friends to get us work, accept work that would be a hardship on the family, or arrange to be discovered by a Nashville talent scout. Those were goals that were either beyond us, wouldn’t take us in the direction we wanted, or too distasteful to be worth the benefits they might bring. It was important to us to stay in charge of the project, even if it put limits on the progress we might make.
In both cases, we have continued to make forward progress. The goals at any given time are manageable (and can be easily adjusted as circumstances change). We regularly accomplish something new and gain confidence thereby. Changing circumstances never force us to adjust our long-range plans, because we don’t have any long-range plans. We are constantly looking around for the next sensible thing to do, and once we find it we have the time and resources to accomplish it.
If you know the general direction you want to go in, the best way to make rapid, steady progress in that direction is to constantly set yourself achievable short-term goals. Think of something that you can do which is neither trivial nor overly ambitious, something that would be a real accomplishment while still being well within your capabilities. Do this again and again, and you will not only move in the direction you want to go, but you will also produce much fruit that can be enjoyed along the way.
