Blog


Work at a Tanking Startup, + NDE

May 16, 2024 | 9 minutes read

This one is a two-in-one Last time I spoke to you I was enjoying the warm Cyprus winter. There, surrounded by friends and family, I celebrated Christmas and new-year’s eve, ate loads of food and for the first time in a really long time, really let myself unwind. In this post, I muse about my stint working at a tanking social enterprise and surviving a direct collision with a car as a pedestrian.

​ In November of 2023, I was hired as Lead Workshop Facilitator at a young social enterprise that offered group music lessons in piano, guitar and bass. The core offering of this business was group music lessons, packaged in a single two-hour weekly slot; one hour of instrumental lesson, one hour of workshop. The business’s unique selling point is that, once the kids came out of their group lessons, they went straight into the workshop, which is a fun, creative space that brings together their technical learning journey with the plethora of skills that musicianship entails. I was the lead workshop facilitator.

As lead workshop facilitator, I was responsible for a) running/delivering theworkshop + coordinating resources related to it and b) developing a macro quasi-curriculum using which we could track student’s progress. This was a very exciting job prospect and thus a very exciting time. I was entering a job I was passionate about, at a promising startup whose vision I shared!

Unfortunately, things at the company were not going according to plan. There were many signs from the beginning that this job was, for lack of a better expression; too good to be true. After my successful interview, the contract that was drawn up for me was a generic placeholder which, to quote the CEO, “would be replaced with a specific one related to the role in January 2024”. The position was advertised as a full-time, employee position (37.5 hours per week), but I was I was offered a temporary variable hours contract. At this point, I should have walked away. Already at this point, bells were going off in my head; why wasn’t there a contract ready for this new position? How can someone advertise a position without having drawn up the contract? Yada yada yada . . . I was excited by the prospect of working at a startup and more importantly, I was passionate about the work itself. Something something . . . . red flags and rose tinted glasses. After a year-a-half on the job search, after re-locating to Glasgow to find something just like this (thanks mom for sponsoring me), I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity like that .

Here’s what went wrong with the situation, from a buisness strategy perspective:

In short, the job advertised was critically contingent on future business growth. The CEO, wary of the potential risks if he’d sign me onto the job as it was advertised, protected himself from liability by getting me to sign onto the variable hours contract, isntead of the actual position.

I got started in my new job! I met the team, who are all fantastic people who are passionate about music education. Winter holidays came and went, and lo and behold, an email from the boss is sent all ops staff explaining that hours would need to be cut. What was going on?

To understand, you need to know a little bit more about this business. During in the pandemic era, the now-CEO began had the brilliant idea of teaching guitar in group lessons for kids at church halls around Glasgow. He would rent out a church hall for a weekend morning or weekday afternoon, and deliver engaging group lessons in guitar. This was massively valuable to the children who attended, and their parents understood that, so this small enterprise grew quickly and showed great promise.

I wholly see the value of this style of group lessons too. While it might not meet the rate-of-progress metrics of individual instrumental music lessons, that’s not the point. Group music lessons are an opportunity for kids to socialize in a practical environment outside of school and as the company’s pitch says, off their screens.

So, seeing the success of the church-hall lesson model, he decided to expand. The venture was incorporated as a social enterprise and the CEO made optimistic, best-case plans for the explansion and assumed the risk/capital costs invovled. But; growing pains were more than he bargained and he made the decision to subcontract marketing, which was a mistake. Perhaps in a different macroeconomic environment this buisness would have flourished. After all, the cost-of-living crisis is biting everyone right now and parents are among the most affected demographics.

Anyway, back to Marketing. What does a marketing strategy look like for a buisness that sells Group Music Lessons and Musicianship Workshops in Guitar, Piano, and Drums? First of all, we must note that we are not selling to the kids, but their parents. So, we’ve got to do two things; firstly we must make the case, by all means necessary, that our product is having a positive impact on these kids and secondly, we must find a way to show that indeed this to the prospective buyer.

Marketing and advertising encompasses a whole universe of design choices, rhetorical devices, tone and branding. This is an area that I have little experience in and which, frankly speaking, frustrates me immensely. But it was obvious to me from the get-go that marketing had to be done in-house, somehow, by the operations team. Instead, we subcontracted the marketing (during a time where growth was critical), and sat around waiting for the results. We didn’t put up a single poster, we didn’t leave any flyers; all digital, all generic banner ads on feeds. . . cringe. This didn’t work, the leads coming in where low quality, too, and it was becoming clear to me that something was going to break.

​ It was a Monday afternoon. I had just finished moving all my stuff from my old flat Glasgow’s Southside to the new place in Partick. I had to be in at my aforementioned workplace at five pm and decided to take a neighbourhood stroll listening to my podcast. Shoes-on, headphones in, sidewalk walk. Boom - a silver Audi A3 swerves off the road and takes me with it before crashing into the fence surounding my apartment building’s garden, I got about 50 metres from the gate. Direct hit from the back, instantly rendered unconsious. Look mom, I made it onto the news!

​ I woke up wedged between the car and the fence. Somehow, the car was totalled and I was still alive. The whole crew was there; The Police, The Fire Service aaand the First Responders. They gave me morphine in the ambulance, it felt sweet, but kind of scary. While I didn’t literally just “walk it off”; given the ods it definitely feels like I did. A few lacerations, a broken ankle, lower back damage, and a nasty concussion. I couldn’t have died. It’s mid May ‘24 now and I’m back on my feet, while I’m not jogging or doing advanced acrobatics just, I’ve made a pretty neat recovery! Now I’ve just got a ‘bad ankle’ and struggling with chronic pain in my back ; I still got a long road ahead of me but then again I did get hit by a car.

​ Everyday as I walk to the subway station in Partick I pass by the site of the collision. The fence which the car ran into has been fixed. For the first couple of months after the accident the metal bit of the fence was bent out of shape and the wooden part was completely crushed. Now it’s been reconstructed, straighted and it even has brand new lick of pain! It’s a strange feeling to walk past the point where you could have ceased.

​ It’s cliche, but my near-death experience has left me with a renewed love for my life and all who are part of it, including you, dear reader.

After the accident, I took a couple of weeks off work as paid sick leave after which I started helping out with buisness back-end; the customer on-boarding and communications, which was a mess to say the least. There was no cloud back-end to the buisness, it was a bunch of jank: gmail accounts strewn accross google drive services plus microsoft outlook emails. IT security was non-existant. Zero planning. So I just decided to ride it out.

I returned to work in-person in March, and on the day I got back my line manager was made redundant. She was the programme manager and was also the safeguarding officer. She was perhaps the most valuable member of staff. Co-ordinating between the opps staff and the CEO. With her sacked, two people resigned. I had already decided to ride it out. And I did.

Then, almost exactly a month later, he called me two hours before I was going to go in, and made me redundant.

In retrospect, I learned several valuable lessons from my experience at the startup.

First, always trust your gut. As soon as I saw the red flags, such as a vague contract and a position that seemed too good to be true, I should have walked away. In the future, I’ll make sure to probe deeper into any company I consider joining and ensure their business practices align with my expectations.

Secondly, marketing is crucial for any business to succeed. The failure of the start-up to effectively market its services locally was a huge misstep. Even though I’m not an expert in marketing myself, it’s clear that outsourcing this crucial aspect of the business was not the right move.

Lastly, value is found in people and relationships. The abrupt redundancy of my colleague showed a lack of appreciation for her contributions to the team and resulted in further staff resignations.

Despite these challenges and experiences, including surviving a near-death accident, I’ve come out stronger at the end of it all. These experiences have given me a newfound appreciation for life and have taught me invaluable lessons about work-life balance, trusting my instincts and valuing people over profits.

The journey was tough but every experience is an opportunity for growth. Thank you for sticking by me through this journey - here’s to many more adventures!