The first year is just noise
When I picked up guitar, I had visions of ripping solos. What I got was sore fingers, buzzing strings, and chord changes so slow you could time them with a calendar. G to C took me three full seconds. THREE SECONDS. In music, that's roughly a geological era.
Nobody tells you this part. The YouTube tutorials show some guy smoothly transitioning between barre chords like it's nothing. What they don't show is the six months he spent in his bedroom sounding like he was strangling a seagull. Every guitarist you admire went through a phase where they were objectively bad. The only difference between them and the people who quit is that they kept going through the bad part.
Starting Dead Brands felt exactly like that. The first year I was fumbling. Bad pitches. Awkward networking. Proposals that went nowhere. I'd lie awake wondering if I was delusional. My fingers hurt metaphorically, if that makes sense. Every "no" felt like another buzzed string.
Here's what I wish someone had told me at the start of both journeys: the sucking phase isn't a sign you're on the wrong path. It's the path. There is no version of learning guitar where you skip the part where you sound bad. There is no version of building a business where you skip the part where deals fall through. The people who make it aren't more talented. They're just the ones who didn't stop during the noise.
Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent
My guitar teacher told me something that rewired my brain. "Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent. So make sure you're practicing the right thing."
He was talking about my picking technique. I had developed this weird wrist angle that worked fine at slow speeds but completely fell apart when I tried to play fast. I'd practiced the wrong motion thousands of times. I had to unlearn it, which took longer than learning it right would have in the first place.
Business has the same trap. You can grind for years on the wrong strategy and all you've done is get really good at something that doesn't work. I spent months early on chasing the wrong kind of client. I got efficient at writing proposals that nobody wanted. My "practice" was making me permanently bad at picking the right opportunities.
The fix is the same in both worlds: slow down, get feedback from someone better than you, and be willing to tear down bad habits even when it feels like going backwards. When I fixed my picking technique, I sounded worse for three weeks. Then I got better than I'd ever been. When I fixed my client targeting, revenue dipped for a month. Then it doubled.
Unlearning is harder than learning. But practicing the wrong thing is just rehearsing failure.
The breakthroughs come when you're not looking
Here's the weird thing about guitar. You practice a lick for weeks and it never clicks. Then you put the guitar down, go to bed frustrated, pick it up the next morning, and suddenly your fingers just do it. Musicians call this the "sleep on it" effect. Your brain keeps working on the problem when you're not consciously trying.
I've had the exact same experience in business. Wrestle with a pricing problem for days. Go coach my kid's football practice. Come back and the answer is obvious. Stress about a proposal all week. Take the kids to get ice cream. The right angle hits you in the parking lot.
We're told that hustle means grinding 24/7. But some of the most important progress happens when you step away. Your subconscious needs space to connect dots your conscious mind is too tired to see. The guitar taught me that rest isn't quitting. It's part of practice.
My best business ideas have come from the weirdest places. Mowing the lawn. Sitting through a school concert. That twenty minutes in the morning with coffee and the acoustic before the kids wake up. The fretboard and the business plan aren't as different as they look. Both reward the person who shows up consistently and gives their brain room to breathe.
Keep playing
I'm not a rock star. I'm a dad with 12 guitars and a business who's still learning both. Some days my playing is clean. Some days I fumble a chord I've played a thousand times. Same with the business. Some weeks everything clicks. Some weeks I wonder what I'm doing.
But I keep picking up the guitar. And I keep showing up for the business. That's the whole secret. Not talent. Not luck. Just the willingness to sound bad for as long as it takes to sound good.
If you're in the noise phase right now, whether it's a new skill or a new venture, here's my advice: don't stop. The breakthrough is coming. It's always closer than it feels. And one day you'll look back at the buzzing strings and the failed pitches and realize they were the tuition, not the verdict.
Keep playing.
About the author: David Strausser is the founder of Dead Brands, LLC, a single dad, and the owner of 11 electric guitars and 1 acoustic. He writes about ERP, business, and life at deadbrands.co. He still can't play "Eruption" but he's working on it.
Ready to talk business? Book a meeting with David — he'll probably mention guitars at some point. Fair warning.
Wear the brand: Check out the Dead Brands merch store — rock star style for business professionals.
